Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Kaylie Tiessen offers some important lessons from Ontario's child poverty strategy - with the most important one being the importance of following through. And Christian Ledwell encourages Prince Edward Island's MPs to lead a push toward a basic income, while PressProgress calls out the Fraser Institute for trying to badger the new federal government into ignoring inequality and poverty altogether.

- Lisa Sachs and Lise Johnson write that the TPP is designed to entrench rules which favour wealthy investors while ruling out the public interest altogether in most government decision-making. Christopher Smillie notes that Canadian trades workers in particular look to lose out as a result of the TPP's open door to temporary foreign workers. Mark Dearn writes that the latest round of agreements involving Europe is designed to give disproportionate power to the oil sector in particular. And David Dayen points to a case where even dolphin-safe labelling was held to violate WTO rules as an example of the corporate intrusion into basic regulations.

- Meanwhile, Rick Salutin writes that ill-advised trade deals which undermine the livelihood of citizens only play into the hands of xenophobes and the politicians who encourage them. And Omer Aziz questions Justin Trudeau's decision to discriminate arbitrarily against male Syrian refugees.

- Michael Harris points out the RCMP's demand for unlimited online surveillance and makes the case for wariness in response.

- Finally, Lana Payne discusses the potentially dangerous effect of polls, with particular reference to Newfoundland and Labrador's election where policy seems to have been thoroughly wiped off the map.