Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- PressProgress discusses now polling showing that a strong majority of Canadians favour a broad transformation of our society in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, with a focus on health and well-being. Tamara Lorincz suggests that we take the opportunity to withdraw from the purchase of fighter jets in order to put tens of billions of dollars toward more important ends. George Monbiot writes about the opportunity to make education more focused on the ecology which sustains us. And Naheed Dosani notes that the immediate response to COVID-19 demonstrates that there's no excuse for allowing homelessness to exist in Canada.

- Meanwhile, Andrew Jackson makes the case for any funding to large corporations being tied to equity stakes and consideration of larger social goals. Aaron Wherry discusses the minimal requirement that recipients of federal bailout money give at least a modicum of thought to climate change. And Tom Sanzillo notes that loans to the fossil fuel sector are virtually certain to turn out to be an utter waste of money.

- But in case anybody was under the impression that there would be anything less than a furious push to use COVID-19 to exacerbate the problems which led to its devastating impact, Jesse Snyder reports on corporate lobbying to eliminate any consideration of social and financial requirements in evaluating infrastructure projects. And Stephen Harper never passes up an opportunity to demand austerity and corporate obeisance, rather than making any effort to build a stronger society - while Grace Blakeley recognizes that the effort is based on little more than attempting to convince people not to believe their own eyes in seeing how public investment can make them better off. 

- Finally, Jason Warick reports on the push from Saskatchewan's Information and Privacy Commissioner - among many others - to ensure that the public has accurate information about the spread of COVID-19 in the face of the Moe government's inclination toward secrecy. And Adam Hunter reports on Moe's concurrent refusal to allow for any legislative accountability, while Murray Mandryk points out the absolute lack of justification for that stance.