Police Raid by George Pemba. By Daniel Tarade (first published by the Municipal Socialist Alliance on Jan. 15, 2023) On the first Monday of 2023, Jan. 9, the Toronto Police Services Board (TPSB) held a special meeting to discuss and vote upon a proposed $48.3 million CAD increase to the Toronto Police Services (TPS) operating budget in 2023, which represents a 4.3% increase over the bloated 2022 operating budget. Like in most Canadian cities, TPS takes up the  biggest slice of the annual city budget at 22%. But by pushing a narrative that the city is increasingly beset by violent crime A ..read more

The Cliff by Kenzo Okada. by Matthew Kennedy (Guest Submission) The lack of a unified healthcare operating system is an urgent issue facing the healthcare sector. Dr. Tam's recent report, "A Vision to Transform Canada’s Public Health System" (The Chief …, 2021) discusses how, "the national data landscape is fragmented across jurisdictions, governmental organizations, and community-level data owners” (p. 58, para. 2). Moreover, in a statement of the report, Dr. Tam says, "Our pandemic response was hindered in part, by significant gaps in our public health surveillance and data systems" (Public ..read more

Jeune femme à la seringue by Émilie Charmy By Adam Sakiyama and Daniel Tarade (first published by Socialist Action on Jan. 26, 2023) Well folks, he’s done it again. Ontario Premier Doug Ford retrieved the major tool in his toolbox: privatization. This time, Ford brandishes privatization to hammer on the nail that is the province’s healthcare system. As reported by the CBC last week, “Ford and Health Minister Sylvia Jones are planning to make an announcement next week on expanding the number and range of surgeries performed in independent health facilities outside of hospitals.” Independent he ..read more

Color Study: Squares with Concentric Circles by Wassily Kandinsky. By Daniel Tarade First published by Socialist Action on Nov. 21, 2022 On Nov. 10, Eli Lilly, one of three pharmaceutical companies that collectively dominate the global insulin market, tweeted out, “we are excited to announce that insulin is free now.” With the adorned blue check, normally an indicator of a verified celebrity or corporate twitter account, the announcement went semi-viral. Eli Lilly’s stock price tumbled and many online laughed at how Twitter seemed to be imploding after a few short weeks with Elon Musk at the ..read more

Athens Is Burning! The School of Athens and the Fire in the Borgo by Salvador Dali. Content warning: Discussion of anxiety, depression, and suicide. By Daniel Tarade On college and university campuses across the country, students face a mounting mental health crisis. This is no secret, not to the administration and certainly not to students. In fact, I first heard of the troubling statistics collected by the 2016 National College Health Assessment survey when referenced by University of Toronto President Meric Gertler in a campus-wide email distributed following the third student death by sui ..read more

A Riotous Schoolroom with a Snoozing Schoolmaster. Jan Steen. By Daniel Tarade Like all capitalist-owned corporations, the priority of pharmaceutical companies starts and stops with shareholder profits. Rip the mask off of Pfizer, Scooby Doo-style, and you find the same motivation that exists just under the surface of Exxon-mobil, Monsanto, Amazon, and Halliburton. The capitalists that own Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca do not provide a service. No, they hold essential services hostage while they shake down the working class. If the COVID-19 pandemic has a silver-lini ..read more

Untitled II. Philip Taaffe. By Daniel Tarade As the worst pandemic of the past century continues into another calendar year, I reflect on the lessons I learned. I previously highlighted how the profit motive not only fostered the conditions for new pandemic strains to jump into humans but also for cruise ships to sail and planes to take off and stores to remain open while hospitals overflow with the sick and dying. I realized that the austerity endemic in capitalist society gutted our publicly-funded health care and outsourced manufacturing capacity, leaving us ill-prepared to respond to any ..read more

Geometric composition with factory landscape. Giorgio de Chirico. By Daniel Tarade Based on remarks given during the Socialist Action Canada webcast entitled “Will the Pandemic Ever End?” Just like a fire needs fuel, oxygen, and heat, a pandemic requires a virus, susceptible people, and contact between the two. And just like how we cannot separate wildfires in California, Australia, or the Amazon from human-made climate change, the organization of our society impacts on all conditions required for the outbreak of new and deadly viruses. Pandemics are not simply a natural process. We need to a ..read more

Girl in Yellow Sweater. Prudence Heward. By Daniel Tarade Nestled in the middle of Bob Dylan’s acclaimed album Blood on the tracks is one of my favourite songs. “You’re Gonna Make me Lonesome When You Go” is an unusually up-tempo Bob Dylan song that stuffs seven stanzas into a whirlwind of song. At 2 min and 54 seconds, the song features no interceding harmonica solos, no chorus, and almost no dead air. This is intentional. The out-of-breath song perfectly encapsulates the feeling of a magical summer fling. Dylan employs a few other strategies to invoke the feeling of an affair rather than re ..read more

After the Wedding. L.S. Lowry. By Daniel Tarade No person is an island. It takes a village. Circle of Life. We are stardust. Seven generations. These truisms reference connections between people and what we owe each other. Appealing to chaos theory, an action, no matter how small, dominoes around the world. You accidentally wave at someone who looks like your friend Nevraj in Toronto, and a union goes on strike in Australia. In the same way, ecosystems interdigitate. Food webs explode beyond neat textbook boundaries, nutrients cycle between the atmosphere and the ocean, and capitalist extract ..read more