Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Ainslie Cruickshank reports on new polling showing that most Canadians support a transition to a clean energy economy even without having received much information about the path to get there. And Yvonne Hanson writes that a Green New Deal will only work if it pushes us toward both social and environmental justice:

In order to make climate solutions realistically achievable, we must first address the social barriers that stand in the way of making them happen. If people can’t afford climate-friendly alternatives, we must raise wages and invest in social welfare to put more money in their pockets so that they can afford to factor environmental costs into the cost-benefit analysis they perform when deciding what to buy. If people are driving their cars to work instead of taking transit, we must invest in a robust public transit system that incentivizes them to leave the car at home by making it faster and cheaper to get to work via transit.
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Put simply, the GND is a package of policy changes that would affect almost every aspect of Canada’s economy. The goal is to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs by using federal funds to stimulate the development of postcarbon social, economic, and physical infrastructure. Retraining fossil fuel industry workers, subsidizing the transition to renewable energy, funding community and co-op driven climate action projects, empowering Indigenous leadership, and guaranteeing fair wages, adequate low-carbon housing, and a robust social safety net for everyone financially affected by the transition away from fossil fuels.

Essentially, the GND would fund the transition to a postcarbon economy and mitigate the economic fallout that working class people may experience as a result of the transition. Climate action must create jobs for working people; no one can be left behind in the shift to a postcarbon economy.

- Simon Lewis warns against counting on sucking carbon emissions out of the air as a substitute for the steps we need to take toward a clean energy economy.

- Erica Alini reports on the continued concentration of wealth in Canada both within and across generations. And Steve Wamhoff writes that any claim about difficulty in collecting wealth taxes appears to be little more than self-serving spin on the part of the rich who don't want to pay their fair share.

- Thara Kumar discusses the need for additional investments in our public health care system, rather than a belief that for-profit corporate providers and individual self-funding represent the only option to add to our existing capacity. And Tammie Sutherland reports that Doug Ford's decree that students need to claim credits outside of school in order to graduate will only serve as a cash cow for corporate credit mills.

- Finally, Chris Selley writes about Ontario's miserable turn on the Lib-Con merry-go-round, as Ford wasted no time in matching the corruption of his ejected predecessors.