Introducing ... my new book

The Social Safety Net is officially out today!

I am irritated to no end that the Conservatives have owned the notion that Canada is broken, that Canada’s in decline and that only they have the ideas to make Canada great (again?). Pierre Poilievre has gotten a ton of political mileage out of this rhetoric despite never actually unveiling his plan to get there. It’s obvious why: his plan won’t turn anything around for average people. It will help the rich in new and unthinkable ways and we’ll watch from the sidelines howling.

The Conservatives have no right to claim that they have the formula to restore prosperity to Canada. They can’t pretend that the current decline is at least half their fault. But they do, and thanks to systemic attack on critical journalism and commentary in this country, we can count on like four fingers how many people have a mass audience to challenge this rhetoric. And neither do the Liberals. These two parties have colluded over the past 40 years to bring us to where we are today. (Sorry NDP but you barely warrant a mention right now).

It’s irritating. Watching all of this, and the junior-varsity commentary that passes for professionalism in this country feels like having seventeen bees in my clothes 16 hours of the day. Luckily, I sleep very well inspite of the irritation.

No, these guys have no right to own this narrative and I explain why in my new book, The Social Safety Net. It’s out today! Today! As Book One in a series (that I’m writing all the books in), The Social Safety Net lays the foundation for what’s about to come: how politicians from all parties chose cruelty over kindness, capitalism over sharing and profits over communities every single time they had the choice. The political transformation that has overhauled Canada is why people feel powerless, emergency rooms are shutting down, classrooms are becoming more violent and inflation driven by profit has been out-of-control. And I offer two paths forward — reforms versus revolution — to save myself from having to talk about solutions in future books (I mean, explicitly. Implicitly the solutions are obvious!)

You can buy a copy at your favourite indy bookstore or any of the big corporate stores: https://cibabooks.ca/bookseller-map

Sadly, you won’t hear me on any podcasts, radio shows or talk to any journalists about it today. If anything materializes in the next few days about the book, it’ll be a surprise to me. It feels like there is absolutely no maintream space to talk about these ideas unless you’re a shill for the Conservatives or a shill for the Liberals. Media is smaller than ever, management is even more careful about what ideas they let slide onto the air and the best reviews that I got for my last book came from people who no longer work as reviewers.

(And big thanks to the Montreal Review of Books who not only has reviewed it but also invited me to be part of their 2024 Summer edition launch!)

Nor do I have any events lined up. It’s August. I’m technically on vacation right now and do you know how much energy it takes to organize things these days? I have four conferences to organize in the fall, a tour for Sandy and Nora to map out for 2025 and zero bandwidth to do anything to celebrate the launch of this book. No launch, no publicity. It’s a vicious cycle that can only be broken by my boundless energy which is nowhere these days.

The Social Safety Net is my fourth book. The last two were both released under COVID restrictions. The launch of Take Back the Fight was me on a livestream drinking a bottle of prosecco while the sun cast itself over Canada and I existed online at something like 3:00 PM in every timezone in Canada. The launch of Spin Doctors happened just as Delta crested, Omicron emerged and Quebec City was hit by an ice storm: fewer than 10 people came. I feel traumatized by those years and have no idea how I’m going to organize something for this latest project. It all feels exceedingly daunting.

It’s especially daunting when I think about how few tools we have to challenge someone like Poilievre or Trudeau; how those of us who could do so have been systemically shut out of mainstream media. Dissent and critical opposition helped to build everything that has been good about Canada. And yet, today, dissent is your ticket to marginalization — anything to make sure that the comfortable remain comfortable.

The sad reality is that a book like this needs a movement to take hold of its ideas and promote it. That’s how left wing things work. You can’t just write something and expect people to trip on it accidentally and for it to become a sensation. And, as I know the state of movements these days, I approach today with perhaps more caution than optimism than with the launch of any of my previous books.

But at least there’s always still at least some optimism. And Book Two in the series comes out in May.

I’ll announce any upcoming tour dates here and at www.noraloreto.ca.