At the end of December
Maverick Citizenreported on a process launched by the C-19 People’s Coalition to develop a vaccine alliance and plan. This week, what has evolved into the People’s Vaccine Campaign published a call to action (see below) which has already been endorsed by more than 500 organisations across civil society. These include the Black Sash, Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, academic institutes, trade unions and the South African Council of Churches (Gauteng). The list is growing rapidly.
The call to action envisages a multifaceted campaign of vaccine literacy, monitoring and mobilisation to make sure no one is left behind. For example, one of civil society’s concerns is the silence on including migrants and refugees (documented and undocumented) in the vaccine campaign. As former health minister Aaron Motsoaledi should know, exclusion makes no sense from a public health perspective. As the president should know, continental solidarity
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At the beginning of December, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that he could see no path forward for a guaranteed basic income right now. For the sake of Canadians everywhere, he should spend some more time looking.
Many working Canadians are struggling in the current labour market. Globalization, rapid technological change and the gig economy have changed the nature of the labour market. People no longer spend the majority of their career working for one company; many jobs limit the number of hours an employee can work to avoid providing them with benefits; and jobs in the gig economy (for example, Uber drivers, food delivery drivers, renting out your home via Airbnb, and selling services or products through the internet) carry no benefits at all. About one-third of male workers and slightly more of female workers are now in some non-standard form of work. Women, Indigenous Peoples, Black Canadians, People of Colour and undocumented migrant workers are over-repr