Has the labour movement stalled?
Few people, save the most militant market fanatics, will deny that unions have served an important historical role. We cast our minds back to capitalism’s birth pangs in the Industrial Revolution and shudder at the small army of children frogmarched into Blake’s “dark Satanic mills,” at the men and women mangled by 14-hour shifts spent working above violent steam-engines, at a world without minimum wage, safety regulations, coffee breaks, or weekends. It was organized labour that made capitalism humane and resilient enough to survive its many internal and external opponents in the 19th and 20th centuries. Those “good union jobs” made the working class a participant in—rather than pawn of—the successes of global capitalism...

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Some businesses flourished during the pandemic. But who, and why?
In pre-pandemic times—ah, remember them?—the startup ecosystem in Atlantic Canada seemed to be unstoppable: explosive growth, record-breaking investments and seemingly endless innovation. Did the global health emergency slow that breakneck pace of development? Not quite. “These kinds of disruptions create opportunity as much as they create chaos,” says Rob Barbara, a partner with Halifax-based investment firm Build Ventures. Many young Atlantic Canadian startups pivoted quickly when the pandemic hit: in St. John’s, for example, both Granville Biomedical and PolyUnity began 3D printing test swabs, face shields and other equipment for health care workers. That ability to transition quickly is a distinguishing feature of a startup...

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