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India’s COVID crisis shows why Canada needs to oppose vaccine monopolies
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.
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Ford and Trudeau are sacrificing workers to protect corporate profits
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.
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Bill Gates says ‘no’ to sharing vaccine formulas with global poor to end pandemic
Bill Gates, one of the world’s richest men and most powerful philanthropists, was the target of criticism from social justice campaigners on Sunday after arguing that lifting patent protections on COVID-19 vaccine technology and sharing recipes with the world to foster a massive ramp up in manufacturing and distribution—despite a growing international call to do exactly that—is a bad idea.
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A post-pandemic social peace accord?
The key consideration is how the left should orient itself in the period that is now opening up. The concessions that employers and states make aren’t driven by wishes and hopes; they hinge on the willingness of those in power to provide them. The post-war approach was based on a capacity to broker social peace, while ensuring a robust flow of profits. There is no such prospect before us at present.
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Long-awaited ‘reforms’ fail to address realities of environmental injustice
Purported ‘reforms’ to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act amount to little more than nice words, with little to none of the material change that working Canadians need from environmental legislation. Real reform would recognize that the working class bears the brunt of industrial capital’s impact on the environment and resultantly faces disproportionately poor health outcomes.
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Over 25 years, world’s wealthiest 5% behind over one-third of global emissions growth: Study
As world leaders prepare for this November’s United Nations Climate Conference in Scotland, a new report from the Cambridge Sustainability Commission reveals that nearly half the growth in absolute global emissions were cause by the world’s richest 10 percent, with the most affluent five percent alone contributing 37 percent.
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Doug Ford is killing Ontarians and violating their civil rights
Doug Ford’s latest measures to fight COVID-19 will do nothing to actually stem the tide of the pandemic, but they will put the blame on working class people, steal their public spaces, allow profiteers to enrich themselves off employee suffering, and give the police dangerous powers which will almost certainly be levied against the most vulnerable Ontarians.
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Canada should follow Janet Yellen’s lead on corporate taxes
In Janet Yellen’s confirmation speech to US Senators, she said the government must “act big” to deal with the pandemic’s economic fallout. Three months into her role as the first woman treasury secretary, Yellen is going beyond big spending with an ambitious plan to rollback decades of corporate tax cutting. Canada’s Liberal government must grab the same opportunity to go as big, if not bigger.
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Trudeau’s climate strategy: Denialism through gradualism
In their attempt to please everyone, the Trudeau government is forced to lie about or downplay the severity of the climate crisis at hand. The problem is that when faced with an existential threat like catastrophic global warming, trying to please everyone—including the institutions that are causing the crisis—means the Liberals are standing in the way of necessary, systemic solutions.
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Canada’s duty to consult: a legal veneer for colonialism?
As in most areas of Canadian law, courts are more interested in legitimating and maintaining capitalist relations of domination than in providing real justice. Opposition to extraction should focus on transforming or working outside of the current legal system, since the duty to consult as it is used today is woefully inadequate to the attainment of justice for Indigenous peoples.