Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- The New York Times' editorial board comments on the predictable flow of the Trump tax cuts toward primarily the few who already had more wealth than they could possibly put to productive use. And Tom Parkin discusses Jagmeet Singh's expectation that Canadians expect better from their government:

Surely one sharp contrast will be drawn with Trudeau’s proposed Infrastructure Bank, which hands over public infrastructure financing to private capital investors. Trudeau’s private banking approach increases financing costs significantly. And, because investor profits are required, Trudeau’s plan gives private investors a significant role in controlling which infrastructure projects — roads, bridges, community centres, transit — go forward and which won’t.

On infrastructure, Singh has plenty of room to develop contrasting policies that regain public control over projects and redirect financing costs into more project construction.

Another sharp policy contrast is likely to be drawn over tax policies. Trudeau, like Prime Minister Stephen Harper before him, continues to cut taxes and maintain loopholes for corporations and high-income Canadians, creating an increasingly unfair tax system.
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Singh’s contrasting vow to “unrig” the tax system and restore fairness isn’t new. During his NDP Leadership campaign, Singh released a bundle of tax fairness proposals including increased corporate taxes, higher taxes on incomes over $350,000 and an estate tax on high inherited wealth. Those ideas may now get fine-tuned, but clearly they will not be abandoned.

The broad strokes of Singh’s conflict with Trudeau have been drawn. Jagmeet Singh doesn’t simply seek to replace Justin Trudeau. Singh seeks to rebuild a trust, broken by Trudeau, that public infrastructure and progressive taxation are social goods that create fairness and a strong country. If Singh can rebuild that trust he will have put himself on strong ground for his conflict with Justin Trudeau in 2019.

- Meanwhile, Ed Pilkington reports on the massive amounts of money spread around by U.S. billionaires to attack public-sector unions to lay the groundwork for this week's Supreme Court argument to trash the concept of collective action. And Rachel Cohen highlights some of the consequences if collective bargaining is treated as pure free speech rather than a separate class of activity.  

- Chris O'Neill-Yates reports on Husky's "economic" decision to risk a collision between an oil production vessel and an iceberg, while the Canadian Press reports on the HMCS Calgary's fuel spill off of Vancouver Island.

- Max Fineday argues that there's no prospect of reconciliation in Canada as long as Indigenous people's lives are being treated as expendable. And Tanya Talaga discusses how a long and shameful track record of deaths without accountability parallels the history of injustice for Indigenous people.

- Finally, John Nichols makes the case to lower the legal voting age to 16.