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If you’re like us, you were pretty happy to see the arse end of 2020. The pandemic meant that the better part of 10 months was spent in some form of lockdown-distancing isolation and the accompanying economic crisis threw millions of people in this country into deep and ongoing financial uncertainty.

Governments across the country – at federal and provincial levels – have used the pandemic and crisis as a pretext for squeezing workers of their rights, while rewarding huge corporations. This has taken many forms: rubber-stamping COVID-related workplace health inspections, overriding collective agreements, limitations on protests against resource extraction projects, use of police against Indigenous land defenders, changing labour legislation to strip unions of their hard-earned rights, mass evictions of people who cannot afford their rent because of COVID-related unemployment or any of the massive privatization campaigns that threaten to shift enormous amounts of public wealth to corporate coffers.

On top of all this, we were subjected to a seemingly never-ending US election campaign that brought all the worst elements of reactionary right-wing capitalism into our homes on an hourly basis. And, while we relish the end of Trump’s presidency, the outcome hardly inspires hope or confidence for progress or peace in the near future.

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