Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Michal Rozworski writes that we need to respond to the coronavirus pandemic with investment in the society we want to build for tomorrow, not austerity to punish us today:

Our economy is ripe for transformative reconstruction. The key now will be both how much we spend and, crucially, how we spend it. First, we must ensure everyone can meet basic needs. Income supports, including CERB, cannot be cut off before the pandemic ends, and an overhauled unemployment insurance (EI) system is also urgently needed, one that covers all jobless Canadians and replaces more lost income. At the same time, sharply increasing public investment not dependent on the private market should be an immediate priority, starting with big expansions of healthcare, child care and public housing.

Women have been hit harder by this crisis in multiple ways—both losing more jobs and taking on more work in the home. We need a national childcare program with good jobs at its centre to both respond to the gendered nature of the crisis and start to revalue care work.

To prevent a lost generation among today’s youth who are also disproportionately affected, the government should launch a big public green jobs program with fair wages, training and union representation. Think how much introducing a generation of young workers to unions in their first job could do for reviving the labour movement—a movement that could then help ensure the recovery from this crisis isn’t as unequal as from the last one.

If we fail to do these things and more, it will be a choice, not because we could not afford it. The COVID-19 pandemic is largely an act of chance, but an economic depression on its heels would be largely of our own making.

- But Randy Robinson writes that the Ontario PCs, like their conservative cousins across Canada, are already looking for excuses to slash limited supports and impose grinding austerity.

- Perlita Stroh discusses how COVID-19 looks to be destroying decades of already-slow workplace progress for working mothers. And Matt Lundy points out how the impending end of the CERB may deflate the individual spending which has been kept up thanks to the presence of a reliable source of income.

- Jennifer Brown calls out Doug Ford for endangering the safety of children to try to save money on school reopening. And Alex Soloducha reports on the parents and students who aren't satisfied with shuffling deck chairs and calling it a Saskatchewan reopening plan.

- Finally, Max Fawcett writes about the recent removal of Sandip Lalli (former president of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce0 for the crime of insufficient praise for Jason Kenney as an example of the UCP's extreme crackdown on dissent in Alberta.