Eight weeks into the shutdown, the prescriptions Canadians got filled before the pandemic or in its early days are starting to run low.
For those who rely on those medications to stay healthy, or even to stay alive, this is a new and personal health crisis stacked on top of a very public one. After all, those with underlying health problems are most at risk if they contract the coronavirus.
In many ways, COVID-19 has exposed the inequities in our society. It has taken the cracks in our society and blown them wide apart – including access to medications.
Canada’s news organizations are in mortal peril, and it’s time for the federal government to take on the two marauding tech giants that are largely to blame.
Facebook and Google have pillaged the Canadian digital advertising market over the past decade. Between them, they have scooped up the vast majority of the revenue in Canada’s $6-billion-plus online advertising market — advertising that has been the chief source of revenue for Canadian media organizations.
COVID-19 has sparked an important conversation about the nature of decent work and the inadequacies of Canada’s social safety net that is long overdue.
The vital roles played by jobs that many once considered undeserving of a minimum wage hike, and the importance of ensuring that all of us have enough money to pay the rent and put food on the table, are important lessons that we must all remember in the post-pandemic world.
Across this country, individual Canadians are pulling out their sewing machines to make surgical masks and donating them to local hospitals and grocery stores. Others are using their home 3D printers to make the parts for visors.
It’s heartwarming, inspiring and shows the power of a motivated community instinctively making sure their country is properly supplied by making for ourselves the things we need most.
It is that instinct we must all follow now as a country.
By Gavin McGarrigle, Western Regional Director and Linda MacNeil, Atlantic Regional Director
The speed and depth of the economic downturn inflicted by the COVID-19 crisis has been unprecedented. The Canadian economy took a 9% hit to its gross domestic product in March 2020 and the labour market shed over a million jobs. The numbers for April and May are likely to be even worse.
Across Canada, long term care facilities are emerging as epicentres of the COVID-19 pandemic, with half the country’s pandemic deaths occurring in such facilities.
We’ve all heard the horrific stories coming out of Bobcaygen and Dorval of long term care facilities overrun with COVID-19, and patients and grandparents dying alone and separated from their family in time of need. Police are investigating the situation in Dorval.
On the afternoon of Saturday March 28, timing that leaves no doubt he was seeking to avoid as much media scrutiny as possible, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s government emailed school boards announcing a 14 per cent cut to the education system.
After school boards are done scrambling with the change, Kenney’s new education cut could translate into 20,000 layoffs of education assistants and other support staff that help make Alberta’s schools high-quality.
We have all seen the incredible images of young families holding up babies to closed windows at long term care facilities, showing new grandchildren to residents under lockdown.
Older children hold up bristol board signs reading “We love you, Grandma” as residents and family members press their hands to opposite sides the glass.
As heartwarming as these images are, there is a sadness to them because of the important emotional connection that is lost and so important to the health of long-term care residents.
We’re calling relatives and neighbours to check in on them, reaching into the pantry to make groceries last just a little longer, and relying on health care workers to help us navigate the new world of isolation, screening, and care.
For me, it means negotiating for Unifor members over the phone instead of across the table and talking to news networks by Skype from my kitchen.
For too many, the COVID-19 crisis means sudden layoff and isolation.
This year the annual United Nations’ World Water Day comes at a pivotal moment for Canada. Defending freshwater resources has been a growing concern for Indigenous communities—and for good reason. Safe drinking water is a human right, but it is far from something that many remote First Nations can take for granted.
There are at least 61 long-term and dozens more short-term drinking water advisories in effect for Indigenous communities across Canada. Some communities haven’t had access to safe drinking water for decades.
