Doug Ford is playing a cute game to muddy the water around health care privatization, but it helps to understand how the structure of Canadian health care helps him, a 🧵: When we talk about public health care in Canada, what we mean is that the state *pays* for insured health care services, not that the state *provides* them. Canadian health care is a monopsony - one payer, many providers - rather than a monopoly.

It's common to describe conservatism as a preference for traditions and a resistance to change. But this shorthand is not quite correct. It's actually a preference for traditions *that maintain inequity* and a resistance to change that *reduces inequity*. For example, the labour movement had its origins in the late 18th century and its early achievements include the five-day workweek and the eight-hour workday. Yet conservatives are only too happy to change those traditions.

🧵: I thought I was a fairly astute observer of the society I live in. I thought I was sufficiently cynical about our leaders and the limits of what I could expect from them.

I realize now I was hopelessly naive. Early this year, governments and public health agencies across the developed world executed an orchestrated pivot from protecting public health to letting people get sick en masse. This sudden change in policy was not based on any new information.

🧵: There are some difficult, dangerous truths that Canadians need to come to terms with and figure out how to confront:

We need to acknowledge clearly, explicitly and publicly that there is a serious organized violent, fascist, white supremacist movement in Canada. This movement is national in scale, flexibly structured, well funded by ideological and partisan bad actors, and highly motivated to broaden its base and encroach into the mainstream to seize the levers of power while retaining the superficial trappings of democratic legitimacy.

“Attacking the press is not the sole dominion of far-right, populist movements, said Journalists for Human Rights’ [Rachel] Pulfer, but for years it has become a staple of that end of the political spectrum, particularly for those running for office.”
apple.news/AwI6EqeLmR-ywl… “Society’s capacity generally to push back against conspiracy theories, against disinformation, just gets weaker and weaker as journalists are either unwilling to continue the work or unwilling to start the work because they’re afraid of … facing death threats”

I get that everyone is sick of the pandemic and I'm sick of writing about it too but I am extremely worried that we are sleepwalking into a slow-motion catastrophe so I can't stop. Let's run some numbers: The population of Canada is 38 million. Let's say each new wave of COVID infects 10% of the population. That means 3.8 million Canadians infected per wave. And given the wholesale abandonment of safety measures, that is likely conservative.

1/ A few folks who know me know that I'm married to a Canada Post letter carrier. I want to take a few minutes to praise letter carriers and to let you know a small thing you can do to help keep them - and everyone - safe. 2/ Letter carriers are more essential than ever. They deliver social assistance cheques, pension, disability and other payments. With retail closing everywhere, the only way to get most things now is to have them delivered, and a huge proportion of that comes through Canada Post.

1/ Metrolinx just awarded a $4.6 billion contract over 30 years to build, operate and maintain an 18 km, 19 station LRT system in Mississauga. Their LRT will be up and running in 2024. infrastructureontario.ca/Contract-Award… 2/ In #HamOnt, we're literally 3 months away from receiving the final bids from the consortia competing to win the contract, and the consortia are telling LIUNA they don't understand where the government got its latest inflated numbers from.