Since the birth of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, most member states have had to abide by the Agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which protects patents and copyrights including those applicable to new diagnostics, vaccines, medicines and medical supplies.

‘Project Wide Awake’ files obtained by The Tyee show efforts to secretly buy and use powerful surveillance tools while downplaying capabilities.

What can be done? Some have called for a ‘war economy’ where the state replaces the capitalist sector and directs and controls national and global resources towards people not profit. I prefer the term ‘social economy’.

In 2019, about 1.1 million Canadians were unemployed at some point during the year. Of these, 61.5% (669,600) had contributed to the EI program. Among those who had contributed to EI and had a valid job separation (for example, laid off or quit for just cause), 82.4% had accumulated enough insurable hours to be eligible for regular EI benefits, down from 87.4% in 2018 but little changed from 84.3% in 2017.

Rapid antigen testing is a mess. The federal government pushed it out without a plan, and then spent weeks denying problems with false positives.

This means unions and the climate movement need to be bold and step up the pressure on all parties for serious climate action.

A year since the Organization of American States made unfounded claims of electoral fraud in Bolivia, leftist leaders from across the region have called for its Trumpian secretary general to resign. Throughout its history, the OAS has been a tool of Washington’s domination of Latin America — and an obstacle to genuine efforts at regional integration.

The gender difference in firm-specific pay premiums varies substantially across the three largest provinces. British Columbia has the highest earnings gap (31%), of which 19% can be explained by the difference in firm-specific pay premiums, with women sorting into lower-paying firms playing a preponderant role. In contrast, 26% of the earnings gap in Quebec (21%) can be explained by the difference in firm pay premiums, with a greater part determined by the tendency of firms to pay lower premiums to women than men. Ontario lies somewhere in between in terms of the gap, the difference in firm pay premiums and the relative importance of the two components.

The story of the consumer’s involvement in the sphere of production is not new, as consumers have been providing unpaid labor to and otherwise subsidizing capitalism since at least the mid–twentieth century. Yet, as the economy has evolved, so too have the scope and complexity of consumer work. Such work has become especially vital for sustaining today’s digital economy in general and the so-called sharing, or on-demand, economy in particular.