If capital sees the Olympic Games as the end of a pandemic and a way out of an existential crisis that could have—but didn’t—signal its collapse, the left must observe the Olympics as a beginning; as a launching point to organize and build to the next crisis, taking the failure of this one as a lesson and not an acceptance of our system’s seemingly eternal power.

Shifting perspectives is no easy task because news media has immense power to inform public discourse about drug use. Simply put, we urgently need coverage that gives space to the most marginalized folks in our society in order to humanize decades of drug policy failures. This would go a long way in an effort to change attitudes about drug use during the worst public health crisis in a century.

We should take this moment to reflect on political writing as a collective act. The writer comes from a community, physical and digital. The writer produces material that goes into those communities, even if we do not all experience life in those communities the same. Even during a pandemic, these spaces can be productive and powerful, serving as a part of the struggle for justice and accountability.

Following months of pressure and after more than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, British Columbia’s NDP government has finally announced plans to introduce a permanent paid sick leave program to cover the gaps in the federal government’s lacklustre Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit. Yet, as Alex Cosh writes, it shouldn’t haven take this much effort to win such basic protections.

As the pandemic unfolded, the momentum behind a Basic Income has grown steadily. Not surprisingly, people were given to wondering aloud: Just what kind of world would emerge post-pandemic? Would the megaphones of market fundamentalism holler about debt and deficit and the need to return to the decades of austerity, drowning out radical alternatives? Or would those who saw the plague as a canary-in-the-coal mine moment prevail?

After promising to establish national standards for long-term care in response to the tragic outcomes of COVID-19, the federal government has now washed its hands of that responsibility. It is instead passing the buck to a toothless accreditation industry to create updated standards. This band-aid solution is a far cry from what experts, advocates, and many residents, have long been asking for.

Canada’s role in obstructing India and the rest of the Global South in their attempts to waive vaccine patent rights is immoral, unjust, and completely illogical, propping up a system of extreme vaccine inequality by allowing just 16 percent of the world’s population, all of whom reside in wealthy countries, to maintain control of half of all confirmed vaccine orders.

Yes, it’s true: Ontario Premier Doug Ford is being outpaced in the realm of pandemic management by the tyrannical Romanov dynasty who governed at a time when bloodletting and miasma theories were still considered legitimate medical practice. If even they could figure out that paid sick days are key to managing a pandemic, it should be fantastically embarrassing that Ford cannot.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are not the only COVID villains in this country. But, as Canadian Dimension columnist and author Christo Aivalis points out, as leaders of Canada’s largest jurisdictions, they have among the most power, and can do the most good. Instead, they have chosen to sacrifice workers and trample on their rights when they need help the most.

Wartime brings with it more than just death and carnage. In the difficult choices that must be made for the good of a country, it gives leaders a choice. They can continue being politicians, worrying about the next election, or they can seize the moment. Justin Trudeau has chosen the former, and Canadians are paying the price with their civil liberties and their lives. Now is the time to invoke the Emergencies Act.