Roundup of Election Views

There are tons of explanations for it. Here's a roundup of a few perspectives that helped me wrap my head around it all. 

Last January, British journalist George Monbiot predicted this possibility as a result of the American culture:

"People with a strong set of intrinsic values are inclined towards empathy, intimacy and self-acceptance. They tend to be open to challenge and change, interested in universal rights and equality, and protective of other people and the living world. People at the extrinsic end of the spectrum are more attracted to prestige, status, image, fame, power and wealth. They are strongly motivated by the prospect of individual reward and praise. They are more likey to objectify and exploit other people, to behave rudely and aggressively and to dismiss social and environmental impacts. They have little interest in cooperation or community. People with a strong set of extrinsic values are more likely to suffer from frustration , dissatisfaction, stress, anxiety, anger and compulsive behaviour. 

The Enshittification of Health Care

Last week David Moscrop wrote an excellent piece in The Walrus about Loblaw. 

He wrote, 

"If you live in Canada, you're probably part of the Loblaw ecosystem, whether you like it or not. . . . It accounts for nearly a third of Canada's grocery market. . . . Loblaw's sensational fourth-quarter results--$14.53 billion in revenue and $541 million in profit--suggest the mission is going well. . . . President Galen Weston Jr. was hauled before a parliamentary committee, which grilled him over soaring food prices. . . . Grocers in Canada have recently enjoyed not just higher profits but higher profit margins--a practice one might call profiteering. Retailers keep charging more, in other words, not just because of increased industry costs but because there isn't enough competition to stop them. . . . Another wave of outrage from customers and experts forced health insurer Manulife to walk back a deal to cover certain prescription drugs exclusively at Loblaw-owned pharmacies--an arrangement that would have deepened Loblaw's reach into Canadian lives, a presence already bordering on the imperial. . . . As Shoppers Drug Mart expanded into health services, critics warned it might be pressured into putting profits first and care second by cutting corners, rushing patients, and pushing unnecessary treatments. And right on target, Shoppers was recently accused of unethical billing practices in its MedsCheck consultation program.

Love Wins Over Hate

On social media, my Covid posts have suddenly lost all their troll-drawing capacity. The angry mob has moved on to bombard people's 2SLGBTQIA+ posts. Just a few months ago, just mentioning the word "mask" was considered divisive and harmful to the very fabric of society. Some people wanted to get me for it. Now it's divisive to condemn hate. 

This comes as no surprise. The messaging around parental rights has way more tractions as a means to divide groups, you know, like if anyone had some warped desire to form a militia of some kind. Jus' sayin'. All parents have an innate drive to protect their children from perceived harms, so that parental rights messaging really works in their favour to find more of a rabid following than masks restrict freedom ever possibly could. In this regard, the mantra of "parental rights" is pure genius!! 

Unspent Billions Exacerbating our Healthcare Crisis

From MPP Catherine Fife: "Ontario's Budget Officer has found that the Ford government failed to spend $7.2 billion of its budget last year, including $1.7 billion unspent on health as ERs are closing and surgery waitlists are growing."

Meanwhile, in just one specific case, three teens who were stabbed at a party in Clinton, Ontario, went to the ER, but it was closed. We have the funds to keep ERs open, but just don't want to spend it. 

More and more I'm concerned with a very conspiracy-type idea that those in power, not just politicians, but also CEOs and all the very wealthy who don't really have a title besides being the son or daughter of a business magnate, are wittingly de-populating the country and disabling the survivors in order to better manage the food shortages likely coming from climate change. I wrote a bit about that last month.

I know how crazy that sounds, but I really can't understand why else Ford would sit on billions of dollars and shut down hospital emergency services for people at a time of greater need. If it's just about privatizing health services, then you'd think he'd have pay-for-service outlets set up for people to use instead of driving to the next town. But he doesn't.

Back to Basics - Again

Leece's new and improved education system that he's flogging all over the place is keen on "Back to Basics" rhetoric, despite it being an archaic mantra. Conservatives love that old-school shit. Besides maybe a few people for whom it's a dog whistle indicating their anti-CRT side is winning, people have myriad ways of hating it:

• It implies that teachers are currently not teaching any reading or math, offending all the teachers and many parents who support them.
• It suggests removing "extras" like art, music, and phys ed. 
• It could mean some way of taking out any form of critical thinking or questioning of authority or any education around discrimination, implicit bias, or sex education so we create a society of automatons who will do as they're told instead of provoking thinking, caring adults.
• It's a way to get parents rooting for this alpha display of control just before they see how diminished educational funding really affects schools come fall.

Darwin on our Capacity for Love

 Linda McQuaig wrote about the Ontario Place debacle:

"Ford plans to "spend $400 million building a parking garage for the convenience of well-to-do spa users, while scrimping on the most basic educational materials in Ontario's schools. That scrimping--education funding has dropped by $1,200 per student under Ford--explains why classroom shelves are empty after teachers remove the learning materials they've provided. . . . 

The government is actually swimming in money--even as it hollows out key public programs, underfunding schools, shutting down hospital emergency wards and doing nothing for the homeless. . . . 

Not So Different from the US

Crutches_and_Spice, an American, has some hard truths for Canadians. 

She responded to this comment: "23 years old and I've never lived through a school shooting in my country, I get surgery for free, as a queer person I'm a protected class. 

Here's her response (link): "For now! I would estimate it's going to take less than five years for your entire healthcare system to be privatized...

@crutches_and_spice Replying to @Brogan ♬ original sound - Crutches&Spice ♿️ :

And a commenter responded: "This seems the big 'if' - maybe Poly-Error could pull a minority, but I just don't see Cons pulling enough votes in 905 to ever get majority." 

And C&S's response to that (link): "You're concerned with the wrong party..."

@crutches_and_spice Replying to @holmskjellhylar ♬ original sound - Crutches&Spice ♿️ :

I have many of the same concerns. It's nice to think that Trudeau is nice, but he often looks very cosy with Ford. I feel like they're playing us with a good cop, bad cop shtick and that idea that the Libs will save Canada from the meanies is an illusion - Chomsky's been saying that since forever - but it gives me the tiniest bit of hope in all this bleakness. 

If he's not our knight in shining armour, then it's up to us to save ourselves collectively. 

And I have no idea how to do that. 

There's no point in complaining to MPs if they're all in on this - at best on either end on a neoliberal continuum from "let them be sick, hungry and homeless and remove LGBTQ rights" (gross) to "let them be sick, hungry and homeless and keep LGBTQ rights" (swoon), but definitely on that continuum. And I still maintain that that little bit on offer, not just LGBTQ rights but continued access to abortion and less racist, less ableist party should win (maybe NDP in Ontario next time). But we can't rely on government to help us. We have to educate the masses about the actual effects of deregulating industry, watering down rights,  privatization, and continuing to let Covid run wild. In a class discussing dementia and the elderly, I mentioned the neurological effects of Covid that will create a huge need for help with dementia for all ages, and this was brand new information for people. The general public still doesn't know the risks they're taking going to the grocery store unmasked.

I have no idea how to get the message out. I've been preaching to the choir for a long time.

Who are the people who are on board with Ford's privatization path? I literally haven't met any online or in real life. It clarified how tight my bubble is when he was re-elected. But I get it: Since the hospitals are full, because of Covid, and we want faster service, we should have a right to pay for it, and that will reduce the wait times in public hospitals. Except that simplification misses the fast downward spiral caused by shifting funding from public to private entities and a whole host of other issues. It's another Me First scheme that benefits a few at the expense of the many and brings out the selfish in people. When we get into survival mode, we'll be all id, fighting for our place at the front of the line. 

So many conversations about all this go nowhere, but sometimes I'm able to have an effect. I keep wearing a mask in public in the face of laughter or worse, but sometimes there's a moment of solidarity with another masker, or, on rare magical occasions someone sees me with my mask on and PUTS ON A MASK. And every little bit reduces transmission, which reduces the burden on the healthcare system, which will reduce wait times, which will take away all the perceived benefits of privatizing healthcare. In our era, we can fight the man just by wearing a mask!   

I don't really know how to fight. But I hope I can go out with kindness if I don't get too scared that my lizard brain takes over. 

(Also, on all the "Canada's better than the US" comments C&S is getting, here's a comparative look at how we fare. Pretty much on par.)

Moral Injury and Definition Creep

In a class this week we talked about moral injury, but it was presented and discussed as if it meant any time there's a clash of values. One of the examples given was being in university and realizing people in the next bed were having sex. Another explained that people protesting 2SLGBTQIA+ rights are experiencing moral injury, upset that what's acceptable has shifted, which is against their morals. 

Those examples hit me as decidedly not what I understand moral injury to be. So I researched the origin going back to Jonathan Shay and his definition, which he amended from his original to include further research:

"Moral injury is present when there has been (a) a betrayal of 'what's right'; (b) either by a person in legitimate authority (my definition), or by one's self--'I did it' (Litz et al.); (c) in a high stakes situation. Both forms of moral injury impair the capacity for trust and elevate despair, suicidality, and interpersonal violence. They deteriorate character."

The high stakes part of it can't just be dropped to include every situation or else all coming of age experiences and cultural differences are necessarily injurious. I provided my own example, back in September 2020, in which the province and school boards decided we all had to mask but everyone had to take off their masks at once for a 45-minute nutrition break halfway through the morning (they were just there for four hours of school), and kids weren't allowed to leave the room at the time. They all had to be in a room unmasked together. This was six months before vaccinations were available and at a time when some hospitals ran out of sedatives for intubated patients. It was nuts! I spoke up, over and over and over, and was chastised or ignored. I was struck then with the horrific punch-in-the-gut realization that those in power had a concept of acceptable losses of schoolchildren.   

On Track for Privatization

A couple weeks ago, Texas came very close to passing a bill defunding public education: a "school choice" bill that would provide vouchers for parents to be able to "use taxpayer dollars to pay for private school tuition." It passed in the Senate, but then died in the house. They'll try again.  

Jordan Roberts pointed out that "the Ford government has hired consultants from Texas, Louisiana and Tennessee to help do the same here." Earlier he provided receipts to show that "Galen Weston's cousin, Claudia, developed Fraser Institute's programs to undermine public education. She sits on the SickKids Foundation board with the rest of the worst people in Ontario":

Why We're Not Keeping Kids Safe from Covid

I mentioned a bit about McKinnon and Co. in footnote to a recent post on health care privatization, but these threads need a wider audience. I can't verify any of this, but it all comes with legitimate links and images from the documents. Long story short, Canada put economic recovery and in particular getting women back to work, over children's health and safety. To get women working, they needed them to believe that their kids would be safe in schools and daycares.

First, from Anneke (a bit tidied up for comprehension):

So, remember when I said the Special Advisory Committee on Covid-19 was “the force behind our Canadian pro-infection train?" Well, now I think the "Industry Strategy Council" established by @ISED_CA in May, 2020 was the force that drove them all. Here's the who, what & why… 

On May 8, 2020, Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science & Economic Development announced that this new council will serve as “advisory board to assess the scope and depth of Covid-19’s impact on industries and inform government about specific sectoral pressures.” Industry Strategy Council Meetings were held June 8-Sept 15, 2020 where members shared experiences and heard from ministers/industry about hard hit sectors including transportation, air travel, tourism/hospitality, retail and oil and gas, and worked on positioning Canada for "economic recovery." 

And @GovCanHealth only attended two meetings, the 1st to provide "an epidemiological overview of the pandemic and public health approach for restarting the economy" and the 2nd to "present health indicators to guide PHOs in monitoring & preparing for Covid-19 resurgence scenarios as the Canadian economy reopens." Whereas McKinsey & Co attended exactly three Industry Strategy Council meetings. The 1st to provide "supporting materials highlighting economic responses to Covid-19 across the globe," the 2nd to show "health measures other countries have taken as they re-open their economies." At the 3rd meeting, McKinsey & Co "presented economic recovery scenario modelling for the advanced manufacturing, agri-food, health and biosciences sectors" and "international approaches to understand sectoral pressures and cross-sector strategic directions." All meetings are here.  

Pandemic Historic Ties to Fascism

I'm very concerned with the public largely ignoring Covid despite a growing shift to get kids to replace workers who are lost to Covid deaths or disability after convincing us that everything's back to normal. If it's no longer an emergency, then governments no longer have to do anything, or - more importantly - pay for anything. And they're no longer on the hook for any potential lawsuits. So now a few places, like the CDC, are finally acknowledging the mess we're in, now that there won't be repercussions to the reveal. It's very disconcerting that we're so much on our own to deal with this ongoing pandemic. That didn't work very well in the past.  

A comment onling from x3r0gxx, 

"It's worth noting here how a lack of government response to pandemic deaths and financial devastation in 1918-onward directly emboldened the Nazi party, and the left failed to organize in response long-term. It's no coincidence that fascist organizing ramped up dramatically in 2020."

That's from an article on this paper, which shows that the less governments spend on their people, the greater the relative population decline due to the pandemic. That just makes sense. And it's terrifying!

Where Does the Buck Stop on Mandates??

So Dr. Kieran Moore, CMOH, claimed he doesn't have the authority to institute mandatory masking in schools, and that boards can "consult with their local medical officer of health." It was later clarified that the CMOH can order masking in schools, or local health units, and it's not up to individual school boards. The Ottawa Citizen reported, 

Several medical officers of health have said they would prefer the province bring in mandates. Although they have the power to do so themselves under provincial public health legislation, they say it is difficult to enforce and makes for uneven rules across the province. Ottawa's Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Vera Etches, has said she would support local businesses and organizations that bring in mask mandates--something the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board did earlier this year after provincial mandates were dropped. It is again set to debate the issue. . . . On Wednesday, OPH (Ottawa Public Health) posted a message on Twitter saying it would "fully support any business/organization that chooses to implement a mask wearing policy." That leaves schools and post-secondary institutions to make their own decisions.

But BOY is it tricky to find out where responsibility lies on this!

Privatization in Ontario

 It's vital in Ontario that we understand the problems with privatization because the shift of essential services from the public to private sphere is happening right under our noses. Brittlestar does a great job of explaining it here: 

The typical disaster capital scheme goes something like this: 

1. Wait for a crisis (or create one). Then people will be busy struggling to manage and won't have the resources to protest the government or, in all the chaos, will be otherwise willing to allow new sweeping changes to take place without a thorough democratic process. This Covid situation just fell into the laps of the uber-right-wing.

Strap One On For Safety!

I wrote about the almost total absence of PSAs around using masks to prevent transmission of a virus that, in some areas, kills ten times as often as traffic collisions, and then look at the possible reasons we're being pressured to ditch this simple and effective tool: On Mandates: Mitigating Over Minimizing. I wrote it a week ago, before the new CDC guideline change that throw us all under the bus (see Eric Topol's takedown of it here), and then I spent a week in the woods to emerge, of course, too late to fix a glaring error -- an extra word bungling up a sentence. It happens. 

Here it is:

A mandate isn’t necessarily tyrannical. It’s a rule that, in any good government, is devised to protect the people from harm so we can better live and work together. We must monitor legislation to ensure we stop laws that can harm people, but we also need to get involved when harm comes from a lack of legislation. A good mandate is put in place when harm can be prevented in an enforceable way. For instance, despite the fact that skin cancer costs many lives each year, and suntan lotion can prevent these deaths, using suntan lotion isn’t mandated. It would be nearly impossible to enforce its use. Seatbelts, on the other hand, have been mandated for decades. In the states, traffic collisions take about six times as many lives as skin cancer*, so seatbelts potentially save more lives than sun lotion. They’re also much more easily noticeable and enforceable. 

I was just 11 years old, when I was first forced by my mum to strap myself to a car with a 2″ vinyl band with metal clips that held me tight against the seat. It felt like wearing a straight jacket, and I protested the infringement on my freedom. I wasn’t the only one; in many places “resistance was the norm” to seatbelt laws. Mum was avoiding fines of $240 from our Conservative Premier Bill Davis (about $1,200 now), and she was further cajoled by ads on TV showing the aftermath of people thrown from a car. Children weren’t kept from these gruesome images, sometimes shown at school assemblies. Such was the level of care we could expect back in the 1970s. 

LTC Homes: Ownership Matters

Nancy Olivieri, Michael Hurley, Vivian Stamatopoulos, and Natalie Mehra explained Doug Ford's sneaky passing of Bill 37 just before Christmas in today's Toronto Star.  They warn, "Hope to live out your old age in dignity and comfort? Think again." 

Ford doesn't want us to know what's been stolen from Ontarians. This bill "smooths the way for billions of public dollars to be funnelled to for-profit LTC for another generation," allowing Ford to promote for-profit ownership and issue new licenses to operators with terrible records. 

Covid-19 has exacerbated problems in LTC homes, but the problems were already quietly brewing: 

"Decades of tax-funded incentives aimed at improving for-profit facilities were offered to their operators--and were declined. . . . for-profit LTC is worse than that in publicly run facilities, across a range of outcomes. Owners siphon off revenue to shareholders, spend 24% less on direct care, have fewer staff and lower pay compared with non-profits, and fail to deliver on standards of care. . . . Ford confirmed plans to allocate thousands of new beds in 30-year licenses to for-profit companies, including to operators of homes in which the military exposed hideous examples of neglect . . . paid for by public taxes, and by residents' fees."  

On McQuaig's Sport and Prey

Linda McQuaig's newest book, The Sport and Prey of Capitalists: How the Rich are Stealing Canada's Public Wealth, is a fast read full of local history and written as history should be written, as colourful stories about fascinating people! But, in order to try to remember any of it, I've whittled it down to the bare bones here. She comes down hard on Trudeau, both of them, and for good reason, but takes a generally non-partisan role in exploring the good and bad players in our history.

Her concern throughout: "We've failed to appreciate our heritage as a nation that has embraced public enterprise to great effect" (6). Then she traces our gradual acceptance, at a huge cost to our country, of the neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatization, and union busting through the history of specific industries affecting Canada today: the banking system, tar sands, railways, 407, hydro, and medicines.

On Betsy DeVos in Ontario

Betsy DeVos is coming to talk to the Minister of Education, apparently to learn about our schools. Let's hope the meeting just goes in that direction.

When she was first appointed by Trump, OSSTF warned,

DeVos has been a strong advocate for the creation of more charter schools in her home state of Michigan, as well as expansion of school choice and the voucher system in education. She has also been a strong advocate for right-to-work legislation and has contributed millions of dollars to the Republican Party in Michigan. The expansion of charter schools in Michigan has led to about half of all students in the city of Detroit attending one of these schools. While most charter schools in the United States are “not-for-profit,” Michigan’s charter school law allows for-profit charters to be established. What has resulted in Detroit is intense competition for students between public and charter schools. Thanks to DeVos’s efforts to promote choice and charter schools, a multitude of new schools were established in Detroit, even though overall enrollment was in decline. As a result, schools have engaged in “bidding wars” to draw kids, and the money that they bring with them, into their buildings These campaigns have included the offer of incentives to students, such as iPads, gift cards and bicycles.

Yesterday, Harvey Bischof, President of OSSTF said,

Ms. DeVos is a vocal proponent of programs that divert government funding away from public education and into private hands, to pay for tuition at private and religious schools. [...It's] alarming, and frankly an affront to our members, that Ontario would allow someone who openly promotes a corporate assault on public education to visit schools in our province. The Ministry of Education should reconsider this visit and send a strong, clear message to Ms. DeVos and other proponents of privatization that public education in Ontario is not for sale.

I fear that we're already headed for privatization, and she's just here to show us all the way down the rabbit's hole. All the celebration over e-learning and the virtual high school is the first step in ditching real live teachers for automation and outsourcing. There's a huge downside to tech that we ignore at our peril when we get too excited about the next new thing.

We need educated professionals in classrooms, face-to-face with a limited number of kids, to most effectively impart an education. Only an in-person educator can connect with students and guide them through critical thinking problems with a real time back and forth of ideas. Only when we're there can we gauge the faces of students for confusion or enlightenment. Yup, there's some boredom mixed in there too sometimes, and it's important to see it and be able to switch gears enough to keep them on track.

And education must be fully public and accessible by everyone everywhere. We've seen the mess Charter schools can make. Ontario all too quickly follows on in the path of each new American plan just as the U.S. starts to realize their plan isn't working. Remember whole language?? I really hope we're strong enough and smart enough to listen politely to DeVos and then do our own research before making another inane decision. This one could devastate our education system, not just for one generation of kids, but for many who follow.