The Status Quo Is Broken

The status quo is a broken system. There's so much suffering and that suffering is distributed so unequally throughout our society. All governments have been on the backfoot & have been reacting to this pandemic. Not one of them has taken a deep breath and thought instead of planning ahead, especially when it comes to Canada’s provinces. On November 25th, 2020 the Auditor General of Ontario released a scathing report of the many ways the Ford government completely botched the pandemic response. From a lack of public health experts on the command table to expensive American consultants who created a messy & confusing command structure.

So what does it say about a government that when it’s caught red-handed, it’s first instinct is to deny everything and fight back with more lies? The blame lies with the status quo and who governed in the past and who created this culture of acceptability of small falsehoods. Eventually those lies kept getting bigger until one day it became a government's entire modus operandi. ‘Neoliberal’ parties across the world let corruption and scandal fester and when the winds of tide changed they were swept aside to let even worse right-wing populist governments take their place. Only now, they used the precedent set by their predecessors and shamelessly flouted democratic norms and protections. You saw it south of the border, you saw it in India, Brazil, and a host of other nations and now you can see it in Ontario as well.

Now, I’m a hopeless optimist but optimism too needs to recognize the truth. The truth is we live in a profoundly sick society. It is profoundly sick when headlines talk about billionaires jostling for the position of who has the most ostentatious wealth whilst people, small businesses and the vulnerable are in real, gut-wrenching pain. However, the cure lies within us as well. We are in urgent need of newer voices in the halls of power. We need more parties working with each other to make sure the voices of all Ontarians are heard. We need electoral reform, a guaranteed livable income, more climate action, affordable housing reform, better care for our elders & so much more. However, it can only happen when we start voting for hope instead of fear. If you keep believing what people have told you for decades, we end up with what we've got for decades.

If we want something different, we need to act differently, advocate differently, vote differently. Tomorrow is rushing up fast & to change it we have got to look inwards. Once the mind is transformed, a better tomorrow is inevitable.