Across Canada, the coronavirus crisis has accelerated the adoption of surveillance technologies—from systems that allow citizens to report neighbours who violate COVID safety precautions to contact-tracing through phones. But while these technologies are only beginning to be normalized among the public, they have been more commonly deployed among our most vulnerable communities.

Much is at stake in Legault’s ongoing refusals and denials. In espousing Québec exceptionalism, the premier fuels a disregard for the lives of Black, Indigenous, and racialized peoples. What is at stake in naming and addressing systemic racism in Québec is nothing less than life and death.

The Rule of Law is an attractive system because it suggests that everyone is subject to the same laws and requirements, that political or economic power is not allowed to deny anyone their entitlements or rights established in law. But, while the idea of it certainly exists in our rather self-satisfied Anglo-American settings, its implementation may leave something to be desired.

This marks the fourth installment in an ongoing curated series that asks contributors to imagine the perils and possibilities that will ground our collective response to or emergence from the COVID-19 crisis. The fourth edition is about infrastructure, with contributions from Hannah Muhajarine, Deb Cowen, Adele Perry, Dayna Nadine Scott, and Michael Mascarenhas.

As the COVID-19 crisis has amplified existing inequalities and accentuated the asymmetry of political and economic power in Québec and Canada, it is of vital importance to ensure that it is not exploited by the ruling and corporate classes to further disenfranchise those already with little power.

On June 17, the Trudeau government suffered a humiliating defeat by losing its bid for a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) seat to Ireland and Norway. It should be obvious by now that serious questions need to be asked about Trudeau’s foreign policy, especially with regard to Venezuela and the Lima Group.

Our team at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research has developed a ten-point agenda for a post-COVID-19 world. Last week, I presented this agenda at the High-Level Conference on the Post-Pandemic Economy, organized by the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA). We are certainly in need of a New International Economic Order.

Who is Bob Dylan in 2020? His new album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, finds him contemplating the tremendous weight of legacy and history and how to make sense of it all. Dylan tackles these questions by immersing himself in that history, becoming both subject and historian, both object of cultural critique and the critic.

The political context of anarcho-syndicalism from which the Modern School movement emerged is worth revisiting as a viable means for those who care about public education. This model has the potential to positively transform the anti-democratic administrative power structure within schools, as well as the austerity of neoliberal governments outside of them.

If the Liberals choose to discontinue payments through the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) without a viable UBI alternative, there is the ideological space for the NDP to insert themselves more prominently into the Canadian political discussion. This will allow the NDP to enter the next election with a bold progressive vision that Canadians understand.