Dan Darrah is a writer living in Toronto.
Team owners in Canadian football made record profits while many of their players had to work second jobs to make ends meet. Now they’re using the pandemic as an excuse to claw back wages even further — a player fightback is the only way to change the game.
The anti-vaxx movement is a menace, but it feeds off public distrust nurtured by the appalling record of Big Pharma. We need an alternative model that strips out the profit motive and works for the public good — Canada’s Connaught Laboratories show how that model could work.
In 1990s Ontario, austerity measures provoked a long series of strikes and demonstrations known as the Days of Action. The high points of that mobilization can serve as a model for struggles to come as we face post-pandemic cutbacks.
After unionizing gig economy workers, Ontario’s courier union Foodsters United found themselves without an employer when Foodora filed for bankruptcy. Now they’re exploring how worker cooperatives could use the efficiency of platform structures to bypass corporate exploitation.
The Conservative Party of Canada has announced a new leader: Erin O’Toole. A seemingly spiritless, staid candidate, his leadership may nevertheless prove a strategic win for Conservatives.
Canada’s investor class has enjoyed decades of high profits from real estate, but the national housing crisis reveals the toll this has taken on working-class people. It’s all a textbook example of the private housing market’s inability to meet society’s housing needs.