Public services and privatization

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Donald Trump makes people sick, himself and his entourage included. Given the U.S. president's shameful, almost criminally negligent record on COVID-19, it will be surprising if he is re-elected on November 3. A sizeable expat community aside, most Canadians will not have a say in that race but its outcome will be felt globally.
Halifax,NS/St.John’s, NL—A new report released today, Many Dangers of Public-Private Partnerships (P3s) in Newfoundland and Labrador provides evidence about these deals that should make Newfoundlanders and Labradorians very concerned about how their government is making decisions when it comes to spending public revenue. 
The living wage was first calculated in Atlantic Canada in 2015 (Halifax). Antigonish was added in 2016 and Saint John, New Brunswick in 2018. Last year, we calculated the living wage rate for St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. This year we have added two more Nova Scotia communities: Bridgewater and the Cape Breton Regional Municipality. The calculation of the living wage provides communities with the following information:
The COVID-19 infection rate for prisoners in federal penitentiaries is nine times higher than the general infection rate in Canada. Meanwhile, social movements across North America are calling for substantive law enforcement reform and the dismantling of systemic racism. Together, these developments call the prison system into question. 
Illustration by Michael DeForge
It has been six months since we shut down the economy to all but essential activities in an effort to contain the spread of COVID-19. Federal and many provincial emergency measures introduced since then, though imperfect and unevenly available across Canada, have stabilized incomes and bought governments time to figure out what comes next.
  Reviewed in this article:  Bigger than Bernie: How We Go from the Sanders Campaign to Democratic SocialismMeagan Day and Micah UetrichtVerso (March 2020), $33.95 Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe BidenBranko MarceticVerso, January 2020), $25.95 ***
The summer issue of the Monitor features two previously published reports on the crisis in Canada's nursing homes, one from the CCPA's national office, Re-imagining Long-term Residential Care in the COVID-19 Crisis, and one from the CCPA-BC,
Last week was National Public Service Week. There usually isn’t a lot of fanfare, but there should be. All Canadians should be encouraged to recognize the public sector workers helping our country weather the brutal impacts of COVID-19.
Public debates over public-private-partnerships (P3) rarely focus on the maintenance component of these agreements, even though it is this component that is the primary concern over the life of what are often thirty-year plus P3 contracts. While we sometimes get glimpses of what these maintenance contracts mean for our public institutions⁠—prohibitions on decorating walls or opening windows, etc⁠—for the most part, we assume that a P3 school or hospital operates much in the same way that a public school or hospital operates.