Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Max Fawcett writes that equivocal posturing about personal responsibility (from Jason Kenney among others) has offered no resistance to the spread of the coronavirus. And Rebecca Haines-Sah calls out Kenney's choice to treat lives as disposable in the face of COVID-19 as long as people have any additional health condition, while Haiqa Cheema addresses Kenney's racist scapegoating as another attempt to distract from his own glaring failures.

- Pete Evans discusses how the Libs' fiscal update does effectively nothing to address the disparate gender impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, while Rita Trichur is exasperated at the Trudeau government's continued delays in acting on child care (rather than continuing to offer rhetoric unsupported by real-world results). And Robert Hiltz points out that frontline workers - and particularly renters - are being left to weather a devastating second wave without government supports. 

- Luke Savage highlights how Canada's richest few are getting even richer over the course of a pandemic which has seen most people plunged into even more precarious circumstances. Shawn Langlois points out the same phenomenon at a global level as the sheer size of a capital pool leads to larger returns. Fred Hahn writes that Doug Ford has been deliberately reinforcing that trend by using COVID-19 as a distraction while pushing through favours to the already-privileged few. And Toby Sanger and Erika Beauchesne make the case (PDF) for progressive taxes to rein in extreme wealth inequality.

- Finally, Linda McQuaig reminds us that Canada has been a leader in pharmaceutical and vaccine research and production through a Crown corporation before - and can be again if we value public health over big pharma's profits.