Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Jim Stanford explores how a just transition plan can ensure that workers have new opportunities in the midst of a needed shift away from dirty fossil fuels - and also highlights how a blinkered refusal to accept the decline of the oil sector will only make matters worse for workers. And Thomas Lukaszuk writes that there's no reason for Alberta (or any other province) to obsess over oil rather than emerging clean technology.

- Karim Bardeesy writes about the need for a paid sick leave plan which ensures that people don't feel the need to contribute to the spread of COVID-19 in order to keep paying their bills. And Maryse Zeidler highlights how a focus on high-risk populations is crucial to our COVID response, while Bruno Mégarbane, Fanchon Bourasset and Jean-Michel Scherrmann find that stay-at-home orders do create a substantial benefit in reducing viral spread. 

- Jeremy Nuttall examines what other countries have been able to accomplish in providing long-term care where their focus is on the personal well-being of residents, rather than opening up rent-seeking opportunities for investors.

- But Theresa Boyle warns that a policy vacuum is allowing our health care system to shift increasingly toward privatized and profit-seeking services. And Joel Lexchin discusses how big pharma is trying to limit Canadians' access to needed medication, while Rachel Aiello reports that Pfizer is taking advantage of the need for COVID vaccines to seek special treatment from the federal government's next budget.

- Finally, as most of the world celebrates Donald Trump's long-awaited removal from office, Ta-Nehisi Coates points out the need to recognize and challenge the forces that allowed him to take it in the first place.