Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- The Star's editorial board writes that while we can do more to provide supports to make workers less dependent on a single job, we shouldn't pretend there's nothing we can do to improve working conditions. And Lana Payne reminds Morneau and the Libs that there's nothing inevitable about increasingly precarious work:

Precarious and insecure work is not inevitable. Changing this outcome is also not impossible.

How can government create the conditions for good jobs to grow?

A $15-an-hour minimum wage, including in the federal sector, would help tens of thousands of workers. The federal Liberals could do that tomorrow simply by introducing a piece of legislation.

Let’s start with a committee — an advisory committee on ending precarious work. Its job will be to recommend to the federal government ways and means it can make a difference in the working lives of young people by taking the problem of precarious work head on.

Let’s get some ideas out there. In fact there are already tons of ideas being generated by unions, workers’ action groups, advocacy organizations, labour market economists and others who believe good jobs, stable jobs are critical to lifting people up. Let’s look at the incredible work already done in Ontario around the changing workplace review.

We could also do as Sen. Diane Bellemare is suggesting and have a national conversation on full employment.

Let’s not assume that young people are destined to be the most educated cohort in history, but will be worse off than their parents are because we have given up.

- Andrew Jackson offers his take on the Libs' apparent plans to fund massive amounts of P3 infrastructure through a private bank, and concludes it would do nothing to assist the public interest.

- Gary Mason discusses how British Columbia's lax fund-raising rules (which mirror Saskatchewan's) represent an affront to democracy. Justin Ling reports on the federal Libs' constant pay-for-play fund-raisers, while Robert Fife and Steven Chase report on a much-needed investigation into the practice. And Martin Regg Cohn notes that the Ontario Libs' reaction to a provincial consensus that pay-for-play should be illegal has to go on one last multi-million dollar corporate shakedown spree.

- Finally, Fair Vote Canada highlights how the results of Parliament's electoral reform consultations are strongly in favour of a shift to proportional representation. But Alison finds yet another galling example of the Libs - in this case Maryam Monsef - trying to pretend otherwise by disqualifying PR supporters from any conversation.