Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Derrick O'Keefe highlights how Canada's election would look if coverage focused on the issues which feature strong public support, rather than the two painfully unappealing perceived front-runners who ignore them:

(T)he Ipsos poll results released Thursday...show an enormous potential for class-based demands aimed at reducing economic inequality in Canada. A whopping 67 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement “Canada’s economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful,” while only 10 per cent disagreed.

Relatedly, polling done earlier this year for North 99 found 67 per cent in support of a wealth tax on the super-rich. A mere 14 per cent were opposed to the hypothetical new tax, which would apply at a 2 per cent rate on fortunes over $50 million. (The NDP has included a wealth tax in their election platform, proposing a 1 per cent surtax on fortunes over $20 million.)
...
Last month, author and researcher Seth Klein released polling he had commissioned from Abacus looking at public opinion on climate and a potential Green New Deal in Canada. The results showed 72 per cent support for a Green New Deal here and only 12 per cent opposed. However, the polling also found limited awareness. “In Canada, only a minority are aware or think they have heard of the term ‘Green New Deal.’ Fourteen per cent say they have definitely heard something about it while 19 per cent think they have heard something.”

In other words, the Green New Deal is wildly popular, but only a small minority actually know much about it. This gap is the most important polling result of all, and it points to the great potential for a surge in support for parties and candidates who wholeheartedly push Green New Deal policies. Taken together with the poll numbers on the wealth tax and the rigged economy, we can see there’s a significant and largely untapped potential in Canada for a politics that unabashedly pushes for tax fairness and climate justice.

- And Andrew Coyne comments on the lack of a meaningful distinction between the Trudeau Libs and the Scheer Cons.

- Mike Scott points out that the global transition toward electric vehicles stands to make almost all current oil production uneconomical. And Barry Saxifrage writes about Canada's dirty fleet of vehicles, along with the opportunity for economic development as part of the much-needed transition to EVs.

- Finally, Brian Hennigan discusses the criminalization of poverty and homelessness as a prime example of the exploitation of the working class.