Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Dru Oja Jay points out the connections between improved public services, decreased inequality and meaningful action to fight climate change.

- Adam Corlett challenges spin from the UK Conservatives intended to mislead voters about the relative tax contributions of the wealthy as opposed to everybody else. And Larry Elliott reports on the harm the Conservatives' austerity has done to an underfunded public health system.

- Meanwhile, Matt Taylor writes that the U.S. is setting up the next financial crisis by once again handing reckless banksters the ability to write their own rules. 

- Andrew Jackson calls for a new Canadian trade strategy aimed at establishing a fair playing field including protections for workers and the environment in any country seeking preferential access to Canadian consumers.

- Lois Ross highlights the need for migrant farm labourers to be offered the same protections which apply to other workers.

- Laurie Monsebraaten reports on a healthy drop in food bank use in Ontario due to a combination of an improved minimum wage and increased social benefits. And Seth Klein and Iglka Ivanova point out how British Columbia can and should put an end to deep poverty in the very near future.

- Finally, Jim Stanford argues that a minor complaint over a modest mistake in the Ontario NDP's fully-costed platform serves largely to highlight the utter lack of transparency or plausibility in the scattershot promises made by Doug Ford and the PCs.