As the coronavirus hit Québec in mid-March, detainees at Laval IHC held a hunger strike to appeal to the public and authorities to take action on their living conditions. The hunger strike ultimately brought attention not only to the conditions during the COVID-19 outbreak, but it has shown that the present crisis has exacerbated the unfair conditions that have long been the reality for many.

Despite claiming to take the climate crisis seriously, the Trudeau government has failed to put Canada on track to meet even dangerously insufficient targets for reducing GHG emissions. The profits from oil and natural gas flow to their producers and distributers—as well as the banks that finance them—and other investors whose portfolios include these stocks. These are the people who, under the current economic system, hold the most sway in determining government policy.

The Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War and the Mouvement Québécois pour la paix/Quebec Movement for Peace today are forwarding to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau an open letter from one hundred prominent Canadians, asking the PM to suspend Canada’s economic sanctions against the twenty countries against which it currently maintains these “coercive economic measures”.

Until we take the bold step to demand police transparency and hold them accountable for the actions of their officers, deaths of Indigenous peoples will continue. We, as a society, owe Neil Stonechild, Dudley George, J.J. Harper, Frank Paul, Greg Ritchie, Stewart Andrews, Jason Collins and 16 year-old Eisha Hudson better than that.

While official “deinstitutionalization” was widely celebrated after the closure of the Huronia Regional Centre in 2009, institutionalization continues in the systematic treatment of persons with disabilities. Recent cases during the coronavirus pandemic demonstrate the need for comprehensive reform, if not total abolition, of group homes, prisons, psychiatric institutions and long-term care facilities.

In addition to highlighting a lack of political will to provide renters and homeless populations with sufficient aid at their time of greatest need, this crisis exposes the deeper problem with relying on private markets to provide housing. Simply put: modest financial supplements will not fix this problem.

By shutting down so much of our economy and turning the media funding model on its head, there is a unique opportunity to change Canada’s media ecosystem for the better. We must continue supporting left media, but this is also the time to push for a CBC that is more accountable to the public, has the funding to better fulfill its mandate.

The government’s inaction reflects a deeply rooted attachment to risk-based, reactive paradigms when proactive initiatives that are precautionary and based on harm-avoidance are needed. The Liberal government is ignoring the reality that the virus does not discriminate, that prisons are porous to it, and that protecting the right to live is what defines us as human beings.

Dimitri Lascaris is intent to push the Green Party to the left, and to dispense with the notion that ideological camps on the right or the left have lost their meaning. He also wants to give progressives a place to stake their long-term future, and give the majority of Canadians who hold progressive views a real voice in parliament. Canadian Dimension spoke with Lascaris on Saturday, April 11.

As many Canadians remain isolated in their homes due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the Trudeau government quietly announced it was lifting its suspension of arms export permits to Saudi Arabia. It has also renegotiated the government’s $14 billion armoured vehicle deal with the belligerent and repressive monarchy.