Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Monika Dutt offers a reminder that some of the best investments we can make in improving public health are aimed at social factors:

As a physician, I often see people at high risk of poor health because they live in poverty. We know that poverty contributes to higher rates of many conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, depression, and even children having difficulty in school.

It is simply harder to be healthy when you lack a decent income. Many people can’t afford their medications, adequate housing, activities for their kids or nutritious food — some of the staples for being healthy. This is a serious concern in a place like Cape Breton, where there is such a high rate of poverty.

To reframe how we think about poverty and health, we need to consider what is needed to create healthier communities. One important aspect of that is the elimination of poverty.

- Michael Swan points out the Ford government's moves to turn welfare into a profit centre. Matt Elliott highlights the unfairness of the TTC's plans to crack down in forcing extremely high fines on people who lack the money for transit. And Antonietta Corado writes about her path from relative security to homelessness. 

- Emily Leedham discusses how the law is all too often stacked in favour of capital and against the interests of labour and other groups of citizens.

- Amber Bracken challenges the attempts of outside actors to portray and stoke division within the Wet’suwet’en. And Kate Gunn and Bruce McIvor offer a primer on the law involved in the use of unceded land.

- Finally, George Monbiot discusses how ongoing policy choices which destroy the natural environment are exacerbating flooding in the UK. And Collin Gallant notes that Alberta may be able to resolve part of its vast problem of abandoned oil wells by turning well sites into solar installations.