Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Frank Graves notes that for all the spin from the Cons and their enablers about public acquescience in program slashing, there's actually another issue taking centre stage among Canadian voters:

(I)f people prefer spending cuts to increased taxes and debt, they prefer “investment” in health, education and jobs by an even larger margin. At 63 per cent, that constitutes an overwhelming majority of Canadians and that number is up modestly but significantly since the 2010 budget. The emphasis on social investment is dramatically higher among women, younger Canadians, university graduates, and among non-Conservative supporters. So the front-page Globe and Mail headline suggesting Canadians are “bloodthirsty” is only partially true...

Decision-makers and budget planners should be aware of something new on the minds of Canadians: Income inequality. The issue has vaulted from relative obscurity to a pinnacle position in Canadians’ hierarchy of economic and social concerns...

Even arrayed against jobs and growth, health care, and education, the growing gap between rich and poor emerged as the top priority. It eclipsed such fiscal issues as taxes and debt by a margin of more than three to one.

- Susan Delacourt is rightly concerned about the prospect that elections might be decided by precisely the "least informed, least engaged" voters. But I'd think that by raising the concern she also hints at precisely the best way to change matters for the better: rather than simply trying to develop a better brand for a single party, the key is to get more people engaged so as to make it more difficult for political marketers to sway or dissuade voters with a single campaign.

- And while electoral reform alone may not resolve all the problems, it's certainly worth noting the role it might play in unifying and engaging Canadians who want to see their votes better reflected in national policies.

- Rev. Paperboy neatly sums up who bears responsibility for Robocon. And Dan Leger suggests judging parties by their tactics.

- Finally, Erin notes that artificially low resource royalties may be doing just as much damage to the provinces who accept them as to those whose non-resource economics are hollowed out as a result. Which may offer just one more line of attack if the Cons insist on "drill baby drill" as their 2015 slogan - and as Paul Wells notes, they seem to be headed in that direction:

Meanwhile, over on the other side, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver will on Monday deliver a keynote address to the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada, on what a news release called “the government’s plan to streamline the approval process for major economic projects across Canada. In addition, Minister Oliver will highlight Canada’s leadership role in exploration, mining and processing, which alone employees [sic] more than 320,000 people across the county (not counting related support sectors).”

Note that the word “environmental” didn’t make it into that release before “approval.”