The Politics of Affordability

September/October 2022 Issue

From the Editor

The politics of inflation: The good, bad and the ugly

It has been a long, long time since Canadians had to worry about high inflation

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In this Issue

The great unaffordable North

Saba Javed

Inflation is coupled with wildfires and loss of infrastructure to create an affordability problem unlike anywhere else in Canada

Monitor Print Inflation

Cost of food at a crisis level

Maria Rio

As we grapple with yet another wave of COVID, the parallel poverty crisis in Toronto has been exacerbated past its breaking point and will have enduring societal impacts.

Monitor Online Monitor Print Food Justice

The financialization of rental housing in Canada

Martine August / Andy Crosby

Canada is experiencing a permanent rental housing affordability crisis, which has only intensified since the COVID-19 pandemic began. At the same time, we’re seeing a greater consolidation of rental housing apartments by financial firms, accelerating the “financialization of rental housing,” a trend underway in Canada since the 1990s.

Housing & Homelessness Monitor Print Inflation

Inflation and the general ineffectiveness of monetary policy

Louis-Philippe Rochon

There is no denying that inflation has become a major economic and political problem, reaching almost double digits in many industrialized countries. Canadians hear about it, and we certainly see it at the pumps and in the grocery stores, with many increasingly struggling to meet their weekly and monthly expenses. The fundamental question that we must ask now is what can our institutions do to bring inflation back down?

Power, profit, and the politics of inflation

Alex Himelfarb

The Consumer Price Index (the major measure of inflation) rose 8.1 per cent in June compared to last year—the biggest jump in almost 40 years.

The devil’s crowbar: how the right weaponizes inflation

Randy Robinson

The brand of turbo-charged capitalism that we call “neoliberalism” arrived in North America on a rising tide of inflation.

Contributors

Authors appearing in this issue

Randy Robinson

Randy Robinson is the Ontario Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Follow him on Twitter at @RandyFRobinson.

Trish Hennessy

Trish Hennessy (she/her) is a senior communications strategist with the CCPA national office and director of its Think Upstream project. She co-founded the CCPA’s national growing gap project and the CCPA’s Ontario office.

Alex Himelfarb

Alex Himelfarb (he/him) is the chair of the CCPA national office board, former Clerk of the Privy Council and academic, and chair or member of several voluntary sector organizations.

Saba Javed

(she/her) is a policy and culture writer based in the Yukon. Saba’s other love is political organizing—she’s worked on multiple campaigns as a researcher, campaign manager and candidate with the NDP. Twitter: @saba_javed01.

Louis-Philippe Rochon

Louis-Philippe Rochon is a full professor of Economics at Laurentian University; editor-in- Chief, Review of Political Economy; c o-director, The Monetary Policy Institute; founder of the Review of Keynesian Economics, and e ditor, The Monetary Blog.

Martine August

Martine August is an assistant professor in the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo.

Andy Crosby

Andrew Crosby (he/him/il) is in the final stages of completing his PhD in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, on unceded and unsurrendered Algonquin land. His research engages with various themes relating to housing justice—including tenant resistance to the financialization of rental housing, domicide, liveability, demoviction, and gentrification.