Dear CCPA MB email subscribers,
We share the collective concern about the COVID 19 pandemic and CCPA Manitoba is taking all precautions. I do not normally write to this email list directly, however with the ever-changing environment with COVID 19, I thought it would be prudent to reach out and connect with our supporters and email subsribers.
Our research is available online at no cost at www.policyalternatives.ca and we plan on shortly releasing a rapid response analysis of what the Province of Manitoba can do to stem the impacts of COVID 19 on minimum wage and precarious workers. We will be reaching out to our partners in community-based organizations to see how we can support their important work at this very challenging time. And our regular research and commentary work will continue to be released online with notices send to this email list.
In the meantime, we know this is a vulnerable time and many are looking for progressive responses to the COVID crisis. Here is a small but mighty collection of progressive reading. Thank you for your dedication to CCPA Manitoba. If you have ideas or feedback for us, please email ccpamb@policyalternatives.ca.
By following the directives of public health officials, practicing social distancing and taking care of each other we will get through this. In solidarity,
Molly McCracken
CCPA MB director
Alternative Federal Budget 2020: New Decade, New Deal by CCPA National, March 16, 2020
“We release the 2020 Alternative Federal Budget—our 25th edition since 1995—at highly volatile moment for Canada and the world. The combination of COVID-19, a global oil sell-off, and the collapse of world financial markets threatens not only public health and safety, but also the stability of our economy, which will likely be in recession by the end of the year. Now is a time to think beyond the standard fiscal fixes and bank bailouts. It is a time for social solidarity, government leadership, and expedient, non-partisan co-operation to do everything it takes to protect the public.”
COVID 19 and the Canadian workforce: Reforming EI to protect more workers by David MacDonald, CCPA National, March 16, 2020
“The new analysis looks at which workers are least likely to have access to paid leave in the event of quarantine (either mandatory, employer requested or self-imposed), school closures forcing parents to stay home, or other COVID-19 work disruptions. It finds wide discrepancies in the receipt of paid leave based on income levels, geography and gender.”
Naomi Klein: Coronavirus is the Perfect Disaster for Disaster Capitalism
March 14, 2020
“When we’re tested by crisis we either regress and fall apart, or we grow up, and find reserves of strengths and compassion we didn’t know we were capable of. This will be one of those tests. The reason I have some hope that we might choose to evolve is that—unlike in 2008—we have such an actual political alternative that is proposing a different kind of response to the crisis that gets at the root causes behind our vulnerability, and a larger political movement that supports it.
This is what all of the work around the Green New Deal has been about: preparing for a moment like this. We just can’t lose our courage; we have to fight harder than ever before for universal health care, universal child care, paid sick leave—it’s all intimately connected.”
Economic Response to Pandemic: Go Big, Go Fast by Jim Stanford, March 13, 2020
“Just as World War II ‘solved’ the Great Depression by mobilizing enormous resources in an urgent attempt to meet a huge threat (global fascism), we now need another, peaceful war – a war on poverty, on epidemics, and on pollution. And by organizing ourselves as society to fight that war, we will actually make ourselves better off right now: creating jobs and incomes, providing needed care and services, generating taxes. And we will benefit in the long-run by winning those ‘wars,’ and building a safer, sustainable world.
This is the time to develop and advance a progressive vision for a massive, public-led reconstruction agenda.”
