Friday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to end your week.

- Laurie MacFarlane points out how increases in land values have resulted in massive and unearned disparities in wealth.

- Kevin Page, Claudette Bradshaw, Geoff Nelson and Tim Aubrey write that a national housing strategy needs to focus on the availability of both affordable housing, and social supports to allow people to stay in it. And Charles Gauthier highlights the importance of viewing people in homeless shelters as neighbours rather than outsiders.

- Michael Plant and Peter Singer discuss the folly of failing to provide mental health supports which would substantially improve well-being at no net cost. And Jim Guy comments on the need for pharmacare to complete Canada's health care system.

- But Alex Matthews-King reports on a new study showing the connection between austerian governments and a disregard for human life, as upwards of 120,000 people may have died from the UK's cuts just since 2010. And Frances Ryan notes that austerity politics are designed to do the most damage to the people who can least afford it:

I can’t decide what’s worse. That for the best part of a decade, this government and its predecessor have brought in a relentless string of cuts, and lined up the most marginalised members of society to take the burden; or that they are doing so while deliberately failing to monitor the damage it’s causing.

Setting a fire and then walking away doesn’t mean no one is going to get burned. Nowadays, for some, the flames are increasingly hard to avoid. This week alone, academics released research establishing austerity can be linked to 120,000 extra deaths between 2010 and 2017, with cuts to the NHS and social care dubbed “economic murder”. Meanwhile, as more than 40,000 children prepare to be left with no money over Christmas because of the rollout of universal credit, the Trussell Trust estimates that food banks will need an extra 2,000 tonnes of food because of the hunger this will cause.

It’s little wonder ministers are doing all they can to avoid a chain of evidence linking what’s happening in this country to the policies they’re bringing in. The Conservatives may not want the public to know, but thanks to the EHRC, it is there in black and white: while the wealthy are being protected, seven years of austerity is inflicting gross hardship on Britain’s poorest.

- Finally, Thomas Walkom comments on the massive gap between the Libs' rhetoric and actions on climate change and human rights. And Jordan Press fact checks Justin Trudeau's false claims about his response to tax evasion.