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One amazing thing is that state owned operations, like public transit, are being subjected to market forces and it’s being played off as a consequence of COVID-19. Its treated as a natural thing - unavoidable given the situation.
The issue here, specifically with a Winnipeg Transit isn’t that there are less people using it during a pandemic. The issue is that the service is made to depend on revenues from riders rather than being fully funded from taxes.
Government’s are rarely actually in a budget crunch. They don’t function the way individuals and firms do - they always have the option of increasing revenues through taxation, specifically of the wealthy and corporations. To liberals, it’s just a politically unthinkable option.
In Manitoba what our government has been doing is simultaneously slashing revenues while reducing spending. The Tories absolutely WILL and definitely already are in the process of using this crisis to impose further austerity on us.
These types of choices, couched in language of necessity and scarcity are absolutely ideological and political. However, we need to recognize that this is the language of liberal democracy now - the NDP would likely be floundering just as badly as the PCs and Liberals.
And it’s not even necessarily floundering. They’re doing their jobs perfectly well. The state is meant to protect the class interests of the ruling class - in our current situation, maintaining the rate of profit and ensuring society reproduces itself.
This is why electoralism is a joke. It will never be any kind of “praxis” in Canada because the hegemony of the bourgeoisie is so strong.
