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We should not be surprised but when times get tough we know who gets the worst of it. At this moment, like Greyhound in a previous year Foodora's closing soon after their workers got the right to join a union shows how much united  workers and Canada mean to them. The answer is not much. Workers everywhere are the primary victims of tough times and injections of temporary cash by governments in Canada and beyond really change nothing. Wobbly shop Libra Co-op and TorontotheBetter call on all to support a common better for all and not only in COVID times. The common good is not good enough. A truly social economy for public and private sector workers alike is the better answer.     

It's not a typo. A government spokesperson today live and in person on prime time TV felt no need to explain or apologize for the use of a for-profit private sector organization to do key COVID pandemic delivery work. The speaker, though uncomfortable to the point of abruptness implied this was a practical decision, as no doubt it is in an era of continuingly neoliberal economic policy that minimizes upfront costs while favoring private sector for profit agents over public or non-profit options. No claim was made that Amazon was cheaper or better for the  purpose. Unspoken and presumably unrecognized was the inevitability of such "practical" choices after years of federal cutbacks. Government services provided by private organizations is Canada's future if this kind of thinking dominates those in power. If Amazon do public services can it be long before many start to wonder why we need public services at all?

That the "vulnerable" are those most victimized by the latest infectious epidemic is no surprise and perhaps even less of a surprise that the most vulnerable of the vulnerable are those in long tem care establishments. The real questions are why are the vulnerable vulnerable, who are referenced so often now that they have become a kind of metereological human topic, as in like the weather vulnerability will always be with us. But, in fact, notwithstanding the fact of biological ageing extreme vulnerability is a consequence of socio-economic conditons. The poor sicken and die sooner than others. As for the extremely vulnerable in long term care they are extremely vulnerable because, simply put, they are, however fulsome current public expressions of sympathy, not a societal priority, primarily because, as in most cases no longer mearurably productive, they are unimportant for the economy and so esentiallly worthless, unlike those known as "elders" in first nations and other societies where age is respected. Responsible for the statistics then are: 1)inequality and 2)prejudice Get rid of the two and the current siutuation will not be repeated. A more equal, social, economy where all are responsible and respected for the contributions they make is the necessary basis for more effective reponses to the in fectious plagues that will, no doubt, continue to emerge as viral life forms identify ever new openings for their expansion.                 

                                                                                  Jonathon Hayward The Canadian Press

The fact that several wealthy people including politicians have contracted COVID19 because of their frequent travel contacts should not blind us to the fact that the majority of those who suffer and die will not be the affluent. In fact the truth is the everyday opposite. It's not just the travelling elite nor the health-compromised elderly, who usually die earlier than others, but the poor and the socially excluded who are suffering and dying in the greatest numbers. As is always the case, the social determinants of health mean a seemingly random disease is unfortunately fairly predictable in those it most affects. Critical thinker  Richard Wolff explains why in a recent interview at:
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/wolff/FMfcgxwHMsXXrrbwTRlnWVnDFzHTTHJL?projector=1
As an illustration of Wolff's argument, people are dying in greater numbers in nursing homes than healthcare institutions because those institutions are largely for profit, so the wages are as low as possible to boost the owner's surplus. However well meaning the staff may be in some homes most for-profit operational systems necessarily do the minimum to satisfy their modest and infrequently monitored standards of care. TorontotheBetter will seek out any homes that set an optimal level of afforable care for themselves and feature them in our directory. In the meantime for help with current stress and maintaining daily fitness check under Health and Wellness in the TorontotheBetter directory at http://www.torontothebetter.net/2tgbd-ps.html#healthcare
 

TorontotheBetter thanks TorontotheBetter reporters and the Maquila Solidarity Network for reminding us about the ongoing threats to garment workers in Bangladesh and beyond as their oppressive work conditions are now worsened by the COVID pandmic threat. These are hard times for all but spare a thought and show your support for those who suffer even in non-pandemic times, especially, on this date, for the 1134 workers who died in the Rana Plaza collapse of 2013.

At all times the conditions garment-workers labour in are for the most part un-unionized and unhealthy, During the COVID pandemic they are deadly. To play your part in action for the people who slave to make others look good first learn about the petition at:
https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-scoops/online-petition-major-fashion-companies-pay-international-garment-factories-struggling-coronavirus-pandemic-1203555672/

and to sign it click here: https://www.change.org/p/unless-gap-primark-c-a-payup-millions-of-garment-makers-will-go-hungry?use_react=false

There's a fortune to be made and a lot of talk about a new normal, but will it be the old normal of big pharma that treaps the reward and takes the public hostage in return for a cure? Now's the time for governments like Canada, currently contributing massive public finance, formerly so scarce, it was said, to the search for a vaccine, to set some conditions on their largesse. If governments are not to own the vaccine outright then another option that moves us toward a fuller social economy is for publicly accountable states to require payback for any enterprise that wins the COVID  intellectual property lottery, Here are a couple of suggestions: require any vaccine to be in the public domain or governed by a creative commons license. Crisis is opportunity and now is the time for "the common better" to establish a new kind of public ownership for the fruits of our common human endeavour. Let the example of legendary no-patent, no-copyright radiation inventor and double Nobel winner Marie Curie be the world's inspiration. Nobody "owns" knowledge; it is a social outcome that belongs in our shared knowledge commons, the universal library of all we know.   

Since profit is the primary motivation for much of the Canadian long term care [LTC] industry it is no surprise that such homes are less well resourced and managed than they could and should be, particularly of course in critical times like the present. The current Ontario public health officer has stated that the  problem of long term care deaths is not a matter of will but of resources. But why spend your resource money on  voluntary possibilities when your purpose is profit?  Much sanctimony is now being expressed by certain Canadian leaders about their care for the elderly who are bearing the brunt of the COVID 19 pandemic, but the evidence shows that those most victimized are so for predictable reasons. As, on the whole, relatively limited contributors to economic GDP they, like the homeless, are not a social priority and so they are left to the devices of the market place, where the rich, who can pay, may survive, while others do not. The latest information about the LTC sector  shows that as a result of decades of neoliberal disinvestment by all governments, conditions in the sector have grown worse and the current disaster was waiting to happen. 

If crisis is opportunity now is the time to take a further step towards a comprehensive social economy by implementing a rigorous charter for the operation of long term care homes if they remain private and to enhance standards and income support for those that are public or non-profit. The COVID pandemic is only one of several that have afflicted the most vulnerable over the last twenty years - remember SARS and H1N1. Like the others it is one too many and TorontotheBetter calls for future commitment to a "common better" where all are treated with dignity and support at all times. Public investment, so scarce in neoliberal times, is now being released, but unless structural change is made a condition of the investment society will be confronting more crises like COVID in the not too distant future.                      .  

Looking for anything to further boost their pro-business credentials Tory leader recently hit on the example of Singapore and its radically "open and free market economy". Only problem is that Tory spokesman and Singapore booster Pierre Poilievre, unlike the writer of this post, who spent his early childhood on the island and attended the same university college as Singapore's independence leader and long time prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, seems to have little personal knowledge of the tiny island that has a better standard of living than Canada. Key point: Singapore was led to independence and prosperity by a leader, by profession a labour lawyer, anti-communist yes, but open to socialism, who created the People's Action Party that combined an enthusiasm for  enterprise deriving from Singapore's location as a commerce crossroads, with an aggressively interventionist state. Poilievre harps on Singapore's entrepreneurial spirit and its small government but for ideological convenience forgets much of the rest crucial to its history.There are indeed lessons here for Canada, but it looks like many are lost on Tory ideologues like Poilievre.       

Ever wondered why Jeff Bezos of Amazon, who had historically shown little interest in the good of the planet, though much in increasing his own wealth, decided, a couple of years ago, to purchase Whole Foods, the corporate organic food flagship store of the 1980's?  From a socio-economic sense it's not hard to fathom: organic food was becoming the next big thing in retail, with new generations increasingly committed to preserving the natural environment. Our current pandemic-threatened situation makes the business aspect of the purchase frighteningly clear. A: Amazon/Whole Foods pays low wages to often idealistically inclined, but non-union, workers, while B: charging high prices to the relatively affluent customers who can afford them. A + B = high profits. Now that Amazon workers are asking for free COVID 19 testing after some of them have tested positive TorontotheBetter calls for all workers at Whole Foods and beyond, to have their tests subsidized by their employer. Toronto Whole Foods customers are in an excellent position to support the workers by making their solidarity with them known the next time they are in local Whole Foods stores.   
for details see: www.telesurenglish.net/news/ under "Nationwide-sick-out".