This and that for your Sunday reading.
- Murray Mandryk writes that any responsible government has to be willing to prepare for renewed restrictions on activity if the spread of COVID-19 requires it - though sadly, Scott Moe is falling short of that standard while reiterating his determination to prioritize profit over people.
- Matt Bruenig offers a framework for unemployment benefits which offers plenty of food for thought about how Canada's EI can be improved to cover far more people with fewer arbitrary restrictions and limitations.
- Blanca Mugyenyi highlights how preposterous it is for Canada to be pushing ahead with a $19 billion fighter jet purchase while laying the groundwork to cut off benefits to people in the face of a pandemic.
- Jim Pickard, Daniel Thomas and Gill Plimmer discuss how the Libs' infrastructure bank is serving as an embarrassing model for the UK Cons' scheme to privatize infrastructure development. And PressProgress points out that Doug Ford's PC government - which was happy to pour public money into trashing renewable energy and facilitating beer sales - has disappeared a billion dollars promised for repairs to Ontario schools.
- Zoe Yunker exposes the oil and gas industry's demands for perpetual power price subsidies from British Columbia. And Nathan Lemphers and Martin Olszynski discuss the need for Alberta to finally ensure that the fossil fuel sector pays to clean up its own messes.
- Finally, Abrahm Lustgarten highlights the climate migration which has already begun - but which is bound to accelerate if we don't rein in a climate breakdown which threatens to render vast swaths of the Earth uninhabitable. And Thor Benson writes that our experience with coronavirus-related shutdowns has only confirmed that we can't protect our planet merely by reducing individual emissions.
Our fighter jets can be used to strike WMD labs. I'd guess the benefits are hard to afford for a year. Winter will come, so I'd suggest a new stimulus to be enacted in late fall based upon industries working/vacationing/learning from home, and military contruction/refitting.
ReplyDeleteThe military is designed to function amid a pandemic, so it is probably safe to dump money towards constructing new civil defence infrastructures, and get as much hack/EMP/WMD-proof as is possible. And homes should be ready for their own holodeck environment eventually.
Retraining the workforce at University is in need of a backup plan. Eventually people who care about disasters will be able to manage biotech and we will have a gene therapy means of fighting diseases without enabling them more too. Until then, lots of basics things like buildings with own food and gravity drained water, inflammable, safe from a berserker robot, drone or car... we will be back in this kind of disaster environment with or without these kinds of investments to rebound with.