Friday, February 19, 2021

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Matt Karp writes about the connection between heavily polarized politics, and the concentration of wealth in the hands of people whose interests are served by voters rooting for laundry rather than holding meaningful input into policy choices.

- May Warren reports on the reality that the faster-spreading B.1.1.7 variant of the coronavirus is likely to become dominant in Canada over the next few weeks. Lauren Pelley reports that even if the COVID-19 pandemic is reined in, we can likely expect to see forms of the virus become a regular part of our lives for years to come. Sophia Harris notes that any new measures to identify and contain COVID-19 and its variants have been conspicuously designed to ignore the truckers who represents the largest source of cross-border contact between Canada and the U.S. And the Star's editorial board warns that Doug Ford is once again refusing to learn from history in refusing to apply appropriate public health measures in the face of a newer and more severe threat.

- Emma McIntosh exposes how Ford is trying to dole out fast-tracked project approvals without environmental assessments to deep-pocketed donors while the public is trapped inside by a pandemic. And the Globe and Mail's editorial board rightly slams Ford's plans for another superhighway as a "sprawl accelerator" rather than a solution to problems of housing affordability and transportation infrastructure.

- Finally, Kim Siever points out how the Kenney UCP is barrelling ahead with new coal mining while claiming to have responded to public outcry by temporarily reinstating the policy which barred it. Graham Thomson highlights how the secrecy, deception and cronyism behind the coal mining plans offer a perfect microcosm of the UCP's governing philosophy. And Bob Weber reports on Dennis Lemly's warning about the foreseeable harm that mining will do to the major water sources affected by it

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