Last week, virtually every attendee arriving at CANSEC—North America’s largest annual arms trade show—was met with the piercing cry of “war criminal,” as over 300 protesters gathered to denounce war profiteering and Canada’s complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israeli armed forces and political authorities since October 7, 2023.

Successive governments put nuclear onto the fast-track while shouldering clean, cost-effective and safe renewables to the side of the road. It is an astonishing coup. Without putting up their own money, and without bearing the financial risks, the nuclear industry has captured Ontario’s energy policy and turned Crown agencies into nuclear cheerleaders.

Who can be a fascist? Or a better question is: is any group of people inoculated against fascism, who can’t “catch” or succumb to it? Like Jews, perhaps? As the child of a survivor of Auschwitz, I am especially interested in this question. And my answer has always been the same: Suffering under fascism in no way immunizes any group against falling for it.

If we wanted to create a world where everyone has affordable housing we would. We would take a track similar to France, Austria, or Finland and work to undo cultural stigmas against renting and social housing and use non-market alternatives to provide decent homes for all. But our leaders have made it clear that they have no interest in following this path.

Until King Charles displays genuine nobility by publicly advocating for unpopular causes like stopping Israel’s Gaza genocide, he warrants no special treatment. Instead, he must be challenged to explain his preference for bland platitudes as Western governments empower brutal regimes with military, financial and diplomatic support.

Fresh off what must have been a crushing election loss by their favoured Conservatives, right-wing media are getting desperate in their quest for any evidence that it might have been a result of large-L Liberal mainstream media bias. They are grasping at straws in their search for any facts they can twist to fit their narrative.

It is in the US where the real kindling for the TradCath movement has been laid. There has been serious concern in recent years that this cultural reaction could manifest in a full-blown Church schism which could even see the secession of some portion of the American Church from the Holy See—a faction sometimes referred to as “MAGA Catholicism.”

In a first-past-the-post system like Canada’s, it’s not unusual for the major parties to consolidate support in the run-up to an election. But in the bigger picture, the NDP—and the Canadian left more generally—seems to be at a loss for purpose in a political landscape that is suddenly oriented around threats from our southern neighbour.

Jack Layton was the first progressive politician who inspired me enough to go to a rally. He used to say optimism is better than despair. I think he was half right. Right now pessimism of the intellect says the Canadian left is in a bad place. But optimism of the will demands that if we have failed, we fail again, and fail better until we succeed.

We often speak of a “housing crisis” and it is certainly true that profit-driven housing provision means rapidly intensifying hardship for hundreds of thousands of people. However, the beneficiaries of upscale redevelopment and parasitic speculation are now experiencing a crisis of their own, as the speculative bubble they’ve created bursts spectacularly.