Monday Evening Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Brent Patterson criticizes the Libs' short-sighted plans to privatize public services in lieu of any coherent economic policy. And Tom Parkin calls out their bait-and-switch approach to infrastructure.

- Robin McKie reports on Nicholas Stern's recognition that his much-cited work on the impacts of climate change only underestimated the damage we're doing to our planed. But Carol Linnitt writes that you'd never know the Libs had agreed to the Paris climate agreement from their destructive choices while in office.

- Gordon Kent points out that for all the implausible attempts to paint the oil industry as primarily providing jobs (rather than easy returns on capital), the workers actually making a living there are asking for more sustainable alternatives. And Samantha Page highlights the devastating environmental impacts of fracking.

- Kyle Curlew discusses Bill C-51 as a byproduct of Canada's long and embarrassing history of overreacting to minimal threats with extreme restrictions on our civil rights. The CP reports on the NDP's efforts to ensure at least a somewhat more effective system of parliamentary oversight than the Libs are prepared to offer - though even that falls short of the accountability we should expect of an agency which has taken on the right to disrupt citizens without warning. And Ian MacLeod reports that in addition to setting up an additional "oversight" mechanism which sees and reports only the information which the government wants to share, the Libs are slashing resources from existing watchdogs including SIRC.

- Finally, Susan Delacourt discusses the understandable frustration many Canadian have with our electoral system. And Susan Bradley reports that Prince Edward Island voters have expressed their preference for a mixed-member proportional system in a plebiscite.