Many media comments about how quickly Canada and the world will return to normal after this crisis reflect a nostalgia for those times. As often with nostalgia “it ain’t what it used to be.” The world we would go back to is an ugly, unjust one for much of the world’s population and for the future of the planet.

Our normal included the dominance of neo-liberal ideas that see competition as key, “free markets” as the best way to allocate resources and inequality of income as a virtue, reflecting our worth in the economy.

Governments, at the behest of the corporate elite, shrunk the state by lowering taxes, especially on the wealthy. This weakened social safety nets, re-allocated wealth into the pockets of corporations and their CEOs while workers real wages stagnated for decades.

Neo-liberal international trade and finance rules were imposed on countries in the Global South, which were forced to open markets, ensure corporate capital mobility and shrink the state. Capital mobility without labour mobility led to outsourcing of production to low-wage economies and the hollowing out of the manufacturing sector.

What did normal look like in Canada on the eve of the pandemic? About 79 per cent of the GDP and a similar per cent of employment was in services. The economy was sustained largely by consumer spending and export of a few commodities, in the extractive and agricultural sectors, that were vulnerable to the vagaries of global markets.

The services sector is not a pretty picture. While we have software developers and bankers, the majority work in retail, hospitality and tourism and had low paid, precarious jobs with few benefits. Even worse was the emergence of the “gig” economy where services are provided by turning workers into fake independent contractors whose situation is even more precarious.

It is only in health and education services, both publicly funded, that workers enjoy decent pay and benefits and these have been under attack and vulnerable to cuts. We were sitting on a stool with only two legs — a sudden shock and the stool tips over.

Not long ago we had a global financial crisis. What did we learn from it — not a lot. Those responsible were never held accountable and ordinary tax payers and workers paid the price. Income inequality continued to increase, becoming so high as to draw the attention of media and economists after the Occupy Wall Street protests. But by and large neo-liberalism was unbowed.

Why, despite disasters, did it march on? One reason is that disasters, for those in positions of power within the global economy, can be used to advance their interests. Naomi Klein in her book “The Shock Doctrine,”described how disaster capitalism works. In the midst of natural (hurricanes) or man-made disasters (e.g. the U.S. lraq invasion) corporations and allied governments use the crisis to re-engineer economies and policies in a neo-liberal direction.

We are already seeing a push by big corporations to delay, defer or abandon measures and government regulations. What pay increases have been given to our “front line workers,” in food retail, are temporary. Most of the policy measures put in place to weather the storm are short term.

Dependence on global supply chains and the lack of local production to meet needs have been brought home to us. In the areas of food, drugs and health care, neo-liberalism has put us in this position of being dependent on imports, being subject to stringent patent rules pushed by pharmaceutical corporations in trade agreements, and having inadequate capacity in our health care systems to deal with the crisis despite the heroic efforts of health care workers.

Neo-liberalism created an industrial scale global food system, which in itself, many argue, is conducive to emerging pandemics. Neo-liberalism left us with many Canadians in precarious, low-wage jobs with no benefits and no sick leave. Many have lost their jobs or been forced to work on the front lines in jobs that are now dangerous.

Meanwhile some corporate CEOs demand to be bailed out after having increased shareholder dividends, bumped up share prices and cashed in for a windfall, even as they take out advertisements thanking essential workers. When the stool tipped over those on the bottom got hurt, low income, women, racialized and other minorities and the elderly. The crisis revealed our economies are fragile and not resilient.

If there is good news it is in the response of ordinary people around the world, as George Monbiot noted in a recent Guardian article, who have worked in solidarity and community, rediscovering what he calls the Commons. They have not descended into self-seeking, competitive behavior.

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A few governments, such Spain’s, recognize the economy is broken and begun to look at a guaranteed basic income, which even progressive Canadian conservatives like Hugh Segal have long advocated.

We must not return to normal. We must be vigilant and call out governments and corporations trying to use this disaster to shore up their position. We must challenge them to abandon the old normal that has wrought so much damage on ordinary people and the planet on which we all live.