Wednesday Morning Links

This and that for your mid-week reading...

- Is there any doubt that if the numbers in its health-care polling (28% for aising taxes to better fund health care investing more in health care at the expense of other programs, 11% for encouraging private payment) were reversed, Ipsos Reid would be breathlessly trumpeting that "more than twice as many people support two-tier health care as expanding the public system!" rather than declaring that neither is a popular option?

But have no fear: having failed to get numbers that can be spun in that direction, they're instead helpfully declaring that the other 89% of Canadians will have no choice but to bow to the will of the one in ten who want to put health care up for sale.

(Update/correction: Ian rightly notes in comments that there's an even more significant "heads privatization wins, tails the public system loses" aspect to the question, as the option to increase health funding comes from the same size of "tax-dollar pie". Which all the better reflects the corporatist attitude: don't even make it an option for people to choose to pay the amount of tax required to provide valuable public services, lest it prove to be the most popular.)

- Dave raises what would be a good point if the Harper Cons had shown the least bit of inclination to operate in reality or respect international laws. But would anybody really put it past them to make a show of introducing legislation to appear tough on refugees, even knowing that it's utterly unenforceable in several different ways?

- Philip Slayton's article last week is certainly a useful starting point for a discussion of what role the judiciary should play in shaping public policy. But much as I'd like to see improved access to information from all levels of government, I'm not sure that I agree entirely with Slayton's concerns about the decision in Ontario v. Criminal Lawyers' Association. After all, it's a fairly large leap from the Supreme Court of Canada's application of the Charter in cases where individual rights are obviously implicated to the establishment of new rights related to access to information - and I'm not sure the court could have been expected to move the boundaries any further than it did.

- Finally, Chantal Hebert's latest points out the difference between leaders who have actually had use for new ideas, and the Harper Cons who have been dedicated entirely to clinging to old ones as a rationale for destroying recent progress.