A few thoughts on the WE controversy (thread): here we are, yet again, faced with an ethics scandal at the doorstep of the Prime Minister’s office. As with the SNC-Lavalin affair, the dominant media narrative appears fixated on the moral failing & corruption...

of Trudeau & some of his cabinet. And while it is important to ensure accountability for this decision - who knew what & when & why WE was awarded $900 million to administer a suspect ‘volunteer’ initiative - there is something more fundamentally problematic going on here...

At its core, the WE scandal exposes the anti-democratic nature of our current political-economic system. It’s about the triumph of private interests over the public good. It’s reflective of a style of economic reasoning in which decisions are made routinely that...

benefit the privileged few without truly helping those in need (and this is regardless of the pandemic). That it made sense to give we the $ (gasp, how could we ever trust public servants to do this), or to pay students less than minimum wage to ‘volunteer’...

(let’s save the real welfare for corporations) demonstrates how our so-called liberal democracy works best when it’s looking up the social hierarchy, not down. It’s the same dynamics that made the SNC-Lavalin scandal possible - the increasingly symbiotic relationships...

between governments and the private sector (whether it be corporations or charities with deep political connections). Free market mentalies dominate within these circles - logics that are, once again, inherently anti-democratic (and these same logics dominate workplaces)...

Political cynicism and disengagement results, which only further emboldens the elite to continue what they’re doing. So in the end, the WE scandal is about a corrupt system, not just about corrupt or unethical individuals. And until and unless we are willing to...

address the inequalities that are baked into the current system (we’re looking at you, neoliberal capitalism) then we should expect to see more of these sorts of scandals in the future; regardless of whether Trudeau & Libs remain in charge.