One Year Later

March/April 2021 Issue

From the Editor

COVID-19: Neoliberalism’s Chernobyl

COVID-19 has been called neoliberalism’s Chernobyl with good cause. The capacity of our public system to adapt in the face of a sudden and major threat had been all but undermined by four decades of underfunding, leaving the hollowed out remains scrambling to adjust course.

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In this Issue

Pandemic living on the margins

Jewelles Smith

Disabled Canadians have been sidelined from—and by—many COVID-19 response measures. How can we learn from this experience to build greater equity going forward?

COVID-19 Monitor Print Disability Justice

Fighting on all fronts

Syed Hussan

The pandemic has exacerbated the existing crisis that migrants live in as a result of being denied basic rights and protections.

COVID-19 Monitor Print Migrant Rights

Waiting to count

Nathan Lachowsky

We know the value of disaggregated data. So why are 2SLGBTQQIA+ experiences still missing from government data collection?

COVID-19 Monitor Print 2SLGBTQ+ Equity

Our “right to housing” needs some teeth

Paul Taylor

While homeless encampments serve as some of the most jarring visual depictions of Canada’s housing crisis, they are not the only manifestation of the problem.

No plan, big problem

Michal Rozworski

The pandemic response is showing that undermining state planning capacity for four decades has resulted in states with low planning capacity. Who could have expected this?

Province has fiscal room to stop the suffering and serve the public interest

Molly McCracken

Austerity during a time of economic crisis is more damaging than previously thought, still, Manitoba continues apace with its privatization agenda.

Nothing about us without us

Anthony Morgan

After a year of seeing the racially-lopsided impacts of the pandemic in Canada I think that the framework I proposed in my October 2019 TEDxToronto talk is ripe for reconsideration.

When it mattered most

Erin Knight

How Canada’s decades-old digital divide left communities disconnected during COVID-19

Building on, and honouring, the Monitor’s past

Róisín West

Introducing the new Editor of the Monitor and celebrating the magazine's rich history.

The decline of collectivity

Ed Finn

The glue that holds any society together is faith that institutions, no matter how flawed, will always be committed to serving and protecting people from poverty, unemployment, sickness, and other afflictions. In Canada, that glue is coming unstuck.

Five books to understand... a pandemic

André Picard

In this new Monitor feature we invite a prominent Canadian to provide a reading list for better understanding a pressing topic.

Contributors

Authors appearing in this issue

Jewelles Smith

Jewelles Smith (she/her), PhD(c) is the Communication and Government Relations Coordinator for the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, and is a PhD candidate at UBC Okanagan. She resides in BC with her service dog, DaVinci.

Syed Hussan

Syed (he/him) is the Executive Director of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change and a member of the Migrant Rights Network.

André Picard

André Picard (he/him) is the health columnist at The Globe and Mail and the author of six books, including Neglected No More: The Urgent Need to Improve the Lives of Canada's Elders in the Wake of a Pandemic. Find him on Twitter at @picardonhealth.

Ed Finn

(1926-2020) Ed Finn was Senior Editor at the CCPA and editor of the CCPA Monitor from 1994-2014. Formerly, as a journalist, he worked at The Montreal Gazette and for 14 years wrote a column on labour relations for The Toronto Star. He also served for three decades as a communications officer for several labour organizations, including the Canadian Labour Congress and the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

Paul Taylor

Paul Taylor (he/him) is Executive Director of FoodShare Toronto and a lifelong anti-poverty activist. In 2020, Paul was named one of Canada’s Top 40 under 40 and Toronto Life's 50 Most Influential Torontonians of the year.

Nathan Lachowsky

Nathan Lachowsky (he/him) is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Health and Social Policy at the University of Victoria, as well as Research Director for the Community Based Research Centre. He conducts interdisciplinary research within a social justice framework in order to achieve health equity for marginalized communities.