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Toronto needs a bailout for the ages
Without proactive and big-dreaming progressive leadership at all levels, the municipal financial crisis will only grow worse. As we ask about the city we want, the question then becomes: what kind of leaders do we want, and what kind of leaders should we kick to the curb? Is their urgency proportionate to the scale of our city’s crises? Is it life and death to them as it is to us?
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The Day After: Arctic
This marks the sixth 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 sixth edition is about the Arctic, with contributions from Crystal Gail Fraser, Julia Christensen, and James Wilt.
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A carrot for the bosses and the stick for the workers
We are entering a period of crisis that is simply without precedent and the course the federal government is pursuing shows a clear intention to ensure that working class people will pay for that crisis, while corporations are cushioned and supported by the state. Unions and communities will have to respond to this with a united fightback against attacks on workers’ rights and public services.
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COVID-19 exposing Canada’s dependency on temporary foreign workers in the agri-food sector
The agriculture industry’s anxious calls to re-open borders demonstrate the value of migrant labour, and what workers are really owed. Moreover, this shows the complicity of Canadian governments in propping up questionable capitalist schemes based upon the exploitation of the migrant underclass.
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In the time of COVID, laissez-faire comes to bear in Ontario
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has been praised for his government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis, but his “hands-off-the-market” approach is simply a continuation of neoliberal, small-government ideas that harken back to the Mike Harris government of the mid-1990s, which led a full-frontal assault on the public sector.
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The Day After: Extraction
This marks the fifth 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 fifth edition is about extraction, with contributions from Michelle Daigle, Isabel Altamirano-Jimenez, Anna Stanley, Arn Keeling, and James Rhatigan.
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How settler colonial states use incarceration as a tool of dehumanization during the COVID crisis
Incarceration is a manifestation and continuation of chronic and interwoven structures of oppression. It is used to enforce racial capitalism, apartheid and colonialism, from the US to Canada to occupied Palestine. This system is not broken because it tolerates the death traps prisons and jails have become. It is functioning exactly as designed, and will not provide justice in response to this tragedy.
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COVID-19 and mass unemployment—the NDP and beyond
Where is the independent voice for working people in this pandemic? Humanity is battered by both COVID-19 and a deep economic depression. We are not in this together. Canadian workers need a party that speaks for them. This is supposed to be the New Democratic Party. This article reviews the NDP’s actions in Canada and draws the conclusion that we need much better.
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Jean Chrétien’s austerity made Canada less prepared for COVID-19
Nearly three decades after Chrétien and Martin gutted federal support for the Canadian welfare state, the pandemic has made it clearer than ever that was a mistake. A federal role in health and social programs is necessary not only to make sure they are adequately funded, but also to be certain that the quality of programs and services is maintained across the country.
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Forget basic income—in Canada, the new normal should bring a public housing revolution
To better address inequality, we might first consider the comparatively unsexy, un-new idea of pursuing public housing and housing decommodification on a massive scale—call it a public housing revolution. Building tens of thousands of new social housing units every year, thus addressing backlogs and waitlists in the major megacities, is an obvious way forward.