Long Term Care Homes

When did we stop caring about old people? When we turned over their care to the private operators who ignored, neglected, abused and then, during Covid-19, sentenced them to death. Alone.

Let’s take back control of all Long Term Care homes in Canada and make them public. Publicly financed and run under, and with, conditions that we set and we inspect and enforce. Fully staffed with highly trained and skilled care givers represented by unions.

Those who say we can’t do it for whatever jurisdictional or financial or regulatory issues can go feck themselves. If we care about old people we take it back.

The Internet

Who owns the Internet? Google? Mark Zuckerberg? Bill Gates? Jeff Bezos? Why are we letting these guys dominate our virtual space so that they can make money. Why can’t we have free, universally available wireless service anywhere in Canada. Because of those guys and their willing accomplices in Bell and Rogers and Shaw.

We used to own the phone system. It was a public utility and we gave the local telephone companies a license to operate it as long they followed our regulations and made it available to everybody. Now, it’s like they own the system and we have to follow their directions. Plus, service is expensive and unreliable for most Canadians.

Let’s create our own Public Internet company financed through a levy on anybody who wants to use if for commercial purposes. We’ll take a billion from Google and Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. Add another billion from Bell and Rogers and Shaw. That’s $7 billion to get us started.

Personal Protective Equipment

When we really needed personal protective equipment, where were the Canadian manufacturers? We didn’t have any, not at the level we needed it. We had to send planes to China to beg them for masks, some of which turned out to be defective.

It’s not just masks and gloves and face shields and hand sanitizer. There’s tons of essential equipment we need now and will need more of in the future that our great manufacturers are not making. Toilet paper is not a problem, but almost everything we need to protect us is in short supply.

Why not create a Crown Corporation that does just that. Ensures we have what we need when we need it. If nobody else can make it, we make it ourselves in the public and not private sphere. Let’s not wait for General Motors to take another four months to retool to make masks. Let’s do it ourselves.

Air Canada

We used to own Air Canada. Then they went bankrupt and we bailed them out. When they came back they said they wanted to be a private company. The market demanded it they told us. Then they went bankrupt again and we bailed them out again. Now the shareholders demanded and we free up the regulations so they could fly unfettered and make more profit. Then they went bankrupt again and we bailed them out.

Now that nobody is flying anymore because of Covid-19 they are threatening to go bankrupt again unless…. wait for it… they get another bailout.

Okay, let’s bail them out, but let’s make Air Canada great again by bringing it back into public ownership. If we’ve got to bail them out, let’s get something out of it instead of stale peanuts, sorry pretzels.

Make it public again

There was a time in Canada when we used to make things public, things like medcial care, elementary education and old age pensions. Things that were so important to us that we figured we couldn’t be our true selves without them.

It’s time to do that again. It’s time to: Make it public again!

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