Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath speaking during the party’s campaign kick-off event in Hamilton, April 2018. She announced her pending resignation as ONDP leader on June 2, 2022. Photo by Joey Coleman/Flickr. The Ontario election is over and it’s time for the post-mortems. Not that waiting is compulsory. On election
Continue readingAuthor: David Moscrop
Canadian Dimension: The hopeless malaise of the Ontario election
Progressive Conservative Party leader Doug Ford. Photo courtesy QP Briefing. Doug Ford and his Progressive Conservatives spent the election in Ontario hiding from protestors, the press, and the public. Ahead of the leaders’ debate, nurses were pushed around. PC candidates opted out of local debates and dodged the press. There
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Moving beyond the centrist consensus in Election 44
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole pose with TVA moderator Pierre Bruneau before the French language election debate at TVA studios in Montreal, September 2, 2021. Photo by Martin Chevalier/Le Journal de Montreal. Canada’s 44th general election
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Canada’s in a prolonged housing crisis. There’s one trick to getting out of it: Build more (non-market) housing
Each of the major national parties have housing plans that purport to address the housing crisis through a mix of supply and demand side measures. Photo by Scott Webb/Unsplash. The housing crisis is a top issue during the federal election—a contest that 60 percent of people say is “more important”
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Skipping to the apocalypse
A family pose outside of a prefabricated fallout shelter, 1962. Today, survival shelters are back in vogue, particularly among the billionaire class, to stave off the ramifications of new threats like climate change. Photo from Flickr. The klaxons have long been sounding on the existential threat climate change poses to
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: The billionaire space race is an exploitative, wasteful farce
Hoping for material good to come from a private space race is a long and risky bet being made by the self-interest of billionaires driven by ego and the profit motive, writes David Moscrop. Image by Canadian Dimension. Of all we do as human beings, you might think space travel
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Fixing the housing crisis will mean treating shelter as a right—not a commodity
The housing affordability crisis is not just a crisis of home ownership, affordable rent, and access to permanent shelter; it’s also a crisis of community and well-being, writes David Moscrop. Photo by Zia Syed/Unsplash. When police in Toronto launched an incursion into Trinity Bellwoods Park to remove an encampment of
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Tear down that statue!
On the night of June 6, demonstrators tore down the statue of Egerton Ryerson that stands outside the Toronto university named after him. Watching the statue fall, writes David Moscrop, one could see a small but notable act of accountability. Image by Canadian Dimension. On Sunday night, demonstrators tore down
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: With Greyhound gone, let’s replace it with a national public intercity operator
A national public intercity service, especially if supported by regional public services, would make for a welcome system dedicated to the public interest rather than the profit motive. Image by Canadian Dimension. After serving Canadians with varying degrees of success for the better part of a century, Greyhound Canada has
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Writing politics during the pandemic
Neon installation by British multimedia artist Tim Etchells, displayed on the side of the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens, Greece from November 7, 2016 to July 31, 2017. Photo from Unsplash. Throughout the late winter and spring in Ontario, frustration with Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government grew as COVID-19 cases
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