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The most vulnerable people in Toronto have also been the most adversely affected by COVID. It's not an accident and it's not a coincidence. It's complete abandonment by every level of government, and we need to treat it as such. [Thread]
Let's start with CERB, which (a) was means-tested, resulting in lots of people who needed it being unable to access it; (b) wasn't enough to cover monthly expenses in one of the world's most expensive cities; (c) wasn't available to folks on OW or ODSP; and...
(d) was prematurely cancelled and replaced by an array of more complex and harder-to-access programs which excluded even more people. Now the government is warning that hundreds of thousands will have to pay back what they received, even as we enter another wave of job losses.
It was obvious from the start that the program was flawed in many ways, that it excluded many people who needed it, and yet the government never did anything to address these obvious inadequacies to help the people who needed it most.
For instance, after months of talk about an evictions crisis, the federal government (finally!) announced a generous package of emergency rent relief. Except...it's only for businesses. Tenants don't even get a mention. https://twitter.com/viraniarif/status/1330966764658814981
The provincial government DID enact an eviction moratorium for a few months earlier in the pandemic, but with no rent relief. The Landlord Tenant Board reopened in August, and now they're rushing through a backlog with one-minute online hearings. https://twitter.com/KeepYourRent/status/1329873035973767169
If tenants are unable to access the hearings due to connectivity issues, the matter is decided without them, and some tenants are being ordered to repay thousands of dollars on extremely short schedules or lose their homes. https://twitter.com/KeepYourRent/status/1331094525532643328
Meanwhile, conditions for unhoused people in Toronto have been abominable. The emergency shelter spaces that the city has set up for the winter look like a panopticon-style prison: https://twitter.com/cathyacrowe/status/1324004735523893250
Many people have naturally preferred to set up camps in city parks rather than risk contracting COVID in unsafe and overcrowded shelters. But the city has unrelentingly harassed and disrupted these encampments, all while insisting the problem is much smaller than it really is.
Almost ten months into the pandemic, the city is shutting down grassroots efforts to supply people with a warm place to sleep: https://twitter.com/CBCToronto/status/1330314689184722945
They're also planning to evict encampments in parks across the city, while refusing to appropriate space in hotels or empty buildings: https://twitter.com/RafiInterfaith/status/1331087204983185410
People facing eviction or trying to stay safe in encampments are treated like parasites and criminals, and any efforts to organize and push back are met with an overwhelming police presence - something that's noticeably absent when business owners protest: https://twitter.com/DavideMastracci/status/1331274450176794629
Meanwhile, we've known for a while now that poor people and BIPOC are disproportionately far more likely to catch COVID than wealthy white Torontonians. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-covid-19-data-1.5669091
Despite this being widely discussed, no level of government has come up with a plan to protect low-income BIPOC. In fact, as awareness of the demographics of COVID patients have become more clear, governments have seemed much less eager to impose restrictions to slow the virus.
And those most likely to die from COVID in Toronto are of course seniors in long-term care homes, which have handled the pandemic abysmally and yet have faced no meaningful repercussions for their neglect and abuse.
In fact, the government of Ontario has taken action to protect LTC homes from facing liability over their handling of the pandemic and the deaths and suffering they have caused. (Uncoincidentally, the PCs have close financial ties to major LTC providers.) https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/covid-19-liability-protection-legislation-ontario-1.5769801
As the second wave picks up steam, we once again see surging cases and death counts in LTC homes, demonstrating that nothing has changed in response to the deaths of thousands across Canada. https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/nearly-half-of-all-residents-at-toronto-long-term-care-home-have-tested-positive-for-covid-19-1.5195246
What should be clear at this point is this is not an accident. Mass evictions, dangerous neglect of unhoused people, inadequate patchwork financial support for people in need, massive racial disparities in infections, even mass death of seniors - all are tolerated by governments.
This is the logical endpoint of prioritizing the profits of the already wealthy and powerful over literally every other goal. If any government was going to do anything about these problems, they already would have done so. They've had months. They've made their priorities clear.
This bleak neoliberal calculus must have a clarifying effect on our efforts to keep each other safe. Any effort spent trying to persuade governments to do the right thing will be wasted. They're well aware of the problems and they've made a deliberate choice to not do anything.
For instance, mass evictions in the midst of a pandemic are obviously completely objectionable, but we won't make any progress calling our MPPs to point this out and demand action. They know. They know and yet mass evictions are proceeding.
It's not exaggeration to say that all levels of government are indifferent to whether these evicted tenants live or die. They quite simply don't care what will happen to the thousands of people who are being pushed from their homes.
The same is true with regards to unsafe shelters and inadequate supports for unhoused people, or systemically unsafe long-term care homes, or structural racism making itself obvious in COVID demographics. They. Don't. Care. Certainly not enough to do anything meaningful.
The government is not a potential partner in finding solutions to these problems. They are an obstacle to solutions. Their loyalty lies with the wealthy and the powerful, and they will do their best to advance the interests of the wealthy and powerful. We need to act accordingly.
Politicians and political parties for the most part have no better natures that we can appeal to. Instead, we have to impose our solutions on them. We have to make their policies untenable or unenforceable. We need to imagine we already have power and then act like it's true.
