A tale of two pandemics: Ontario’s finance minister holiday seasons in the sunlight whilst staff get infected and die
Very last Thursday’s pressured resignation of Rod Phillips, the finance minister in Ontario’s tricky-suitable Progressive Conservative government, demonstrated in equivalent evaluate the ruling elite’s disdain to the population and its hypocrisy above its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The affair has blown a mile-large hole in the Canadian ruling class’ promises, amplified by the mainstream media and the trade unions, that “we’re all in this collectively.”
Leading Doug Ford was forced to take Phillips’ resignation following it turned public that the finance minister expended around two weeks holidaying at a luxury resort for the ultra-rich in the Caribbean. This at the similar time as his govt was contacting on anyone to continue to be at residence during the holiday season to fight the virus’ spread, and had to introduce new COVID-19 “lockdown actions.”
Phillips, the former CEO of Morneau-Shepell and chair of Postmedia, flew with his wife on December 13 to St. Barts, exactly where the most highly-priced villas rent for $50,000 for every night. The Phillips family reportedly settled for a a lot more humble abode at just about $1,100 for each night time.
All through his getaway, Phillips continued to tweet photographs of himself traveling to tiny corporations in Ontario, and a Xmas Eve online video in which he posed versus a wintry qualifications while praising the get the job done of frontline well being treatment personnel throughout the pandemic.
The prevalent public outrage at Phillips’ conduct is a lot more than justified. Through the 18 times he was residing it up in St. Barts, Ontario recorded effectively around 40,000 new COVID-19 scenarios. Among December 13 and December 31, the working day Phillips flew back to Toronto and tendered his resignation, 2,237 folks died from the coronavirus throughout Canada according to official figures.
But it ought to be pressured, Phillips’ steps are not an illustration of person misjudgment, as he and all the media conversing heads are proclaiming. Fairly, it is an expression of the ruling class’ contempt for the life of doing work people today amid the finest wellness and social crisis in a century. As the Globe Socialist World wide web Site wrote in August, under conditions wherever the inventory markets are up, and the super-prosperous can buy nearly fast COVID-19 checks privately and journey in consolation and basic safety on their have chartered jets, everyday living has by no means been so great. “The coronavirus,” we mentioned, “is a poor person’s ailment.”
This applies completely to Phillips and his ilk in Canada. The country’s 40 billionaires have acquired over $50 billion in prosperity given that the starting of the pandemic. Major corporations, in the meantime, have employed authorities bailout funds to pay for lavish shareholder payouts and government bonuses even as they lay off staff and slash their hours. The extensive transfer of wealth that has transpired was overseen by the Trudeau Liberal federal government, which funnelled above $650 billion to the banking institutions and economical oligarchy virtually right away final March. (See: Canada’s pandemic wage subsidy: a slush fund for rich shareholders and company executives)
On the other side of the social divide, as of September 2020, just one in seven Canadians—more than 5 million people—was experiencing food insecurity, i.e. lacked the sources to acquire three proper foods a working day. In accordance to the Financial institution of Canada employment between reduced-wage earners has dropped 20 p.c considering that the commencing of the pandemic.
If there is something far more contemptible than Phillips’ behaviour, it is Ford’s endeavours to distance himself from the scandal and pose as an ally of doing work people outraged at his previous finance minister’s extravagance. This is a fraud on numerous ranges. 1st, Ford has acknowledged that he was informed of Phillips’ luxury family vacation in the sunlight about two weeks in advance of the story broke. Still he did not purchase his minister residence, allow alone self-discipline him. Only right after Philip’s luxurious vacation was publicly exposed did Ford, himself a multi-millionaire businessman, feign anger and wring his arms in excess of Phillip’s “letting down” the men and women of Ontario.
Much more essentially, Phillips’ flagrant flouting of the Ford government’s have public wellbeing recommendations and regulation is of a piece with the government’s criminal disregard for the very well-currently being and lives of operating people. Like their counterparts across Canada and internationally, Ontario’s Conservative federal government has prioritized company gains around workers’ life all over the pandemic.
Soon after coming to electrical power in 2018, the Ford federal government went on an austerity spree, cutting billions from wellness treatment, training and social products and services. This provided gutting inspections of prolonged-phrase treatment facilities and substantial cuts to the public health and fitness businesses that have been in the forefront of combating the COVID-19 pandemic. These procedures straight contributed to the catastrophic affect of the virus on the province’s treatment-household residents, far more than 2,700 of whom have perished from COVID-19.
Through each the very first and 2nd waves of the pandemic, the Ford govt carried out lockdowns with massive loopholes designed to guarantee most producing and industrial functions remained open up and at full throttle. As a final result, an infection charges have surged in workplaces and doing work-course neighbourhoods.
Final spring, Ontario’s initial lockdown bundled exemptions for at the very least 73 kinds of businesses deemed “essential,” like vehicle assembly plants and jacuzzi suppliers. So as to make sure Ontario is “open for business enterprise,” to use just one of Ford’s favourite expressions, the government has barred community health authorities from releasing specifics of the places of office COVID-19 outbreaks, even when there have been dozens of bacterial infections.
Daily bacterial infections are now extra than double what they ended up at the peak of the 1st wave of the pandemic past spring, yet the next lockdown, introduced by Ford on December 21, permits an even greater selection of businesses to stay open up . (See: “The doing the job circumstances are hell” — Ontario will allow COVID-19 to operate rampant by way of workplaces )
The Ford government’s thrust to reopen faculties has likewise proved disastrous. Disregarding the warnings of professional medical professionals, the government ordered all elementary and secondary faculties to reopen for in-course instruction immediately after the summer time holiday seasons with pretty much no wellbeing and basic safety safeguards. This reckless transfer was observed as critical by the ruling elite, together with the federal Liberal governing administration, due to the fact it intended dad and mom could be freed from childcare obligations and pressured to return to do the job to crank out revenue for significant business. If the federal government was ready to impose this plan irrespective of common apprehension and opposition among academics and moms and dads, it was previously mentioned all owing to the schooling trade unions, which turned down all job action as “illegal.” The end result was that in October and November, educational institutions had been one particular of the principal resources of COVID-19 infection in Ontario and Canada.
While the Ford government’s policies have led to distress and loss of life for staff and their family members, significant sections of the Canadian ruling elite have welcomed them for safeguarding “the financial system,” i.e. company revenue and the accumulation of wealth by the super-abundant. The Toronto Star and other customarily Liberal-aligned commentators have touted Ford’s supposedly dependable response to the pandemic, favourably contrasting the steps of Ontario’s correct-wing populist leading and a single-time Trump-fanatic with the fascist-minded US president’s ruinous mishandling of COVID-19.
The advertising of Ford is a essential element in the Canadian bourgeoisie’s preposterous assert that all Canadians pulled jointly in reaction to COVID-19, location aside political quarrels for the popular fantastic, and that this proves the superiority of Canadian society and governance more than the dysfunction to the south.
The trade union paperwork, in addition to its critical function in enforcing the again-to-perform campaign, has offered substantially of the ideological cement for this reactionary Canadian nationalist propaganda drive. The Canadian Labour Congress, the country’s greatest union federation, claims in a banner atop the front site of its internet site, “In Canada, we have weathered the pandemic by sticking collectively and supporting every single other.”
The Rod Phillips scandal has exposed the grim fact powering this bogus propaganda marketing campaign: Canada, no much less than the other big capitalist powers, is riven by explosive class divisions and dominated by a bloated financial elite that is totally indifferent to the wellbeing and life of performing people today. Any genuine strategy to beat the pandemic ought to be based mostly on the independent political mobilization of the performing class to enforce a shutdown of all nonessential output with total pay back for all workers until eventually the pandemic is brought under management and to safe the financial investment of tens of billions of extra bucks in the chronically underfunded public health and fitness care technique. The fiscal resources desired to pay for this kind of a application are offered in abundance, but they have to be seized from the super-rich oligarchy and redirected to meet social demands.