Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Angela Stewart interviews Malgorzata Gasperowicz about the potential for Alberta to eradicate COVID-19 with a seven-week shutdown, rather than letting new and more dangerous variants run rampant in the months before vaccines can be widely distributed. Jillian Horton observes that premiers who have been unable to recognize the sunk cost fallacy as it applies to their past decision-making are endangering large numbers of lives in the process. Martin Regg Cohn writes that there aren't many easy answers in determining how to handle schools - though funding proper ventilation and reducing community spread would seem to be obvious means of reducing the risk that exists.

- Jeannie Stiglic, Jenny Cowley, Charlsie Agro expose how payday lenders are exploiting Canadians desperate for short-term loans due to a lack of ongoing public supports. And Richard Partington writes about the massive debt being taken on by UK businesses who have been told they need to try to stay open regardless of the harm to public health and their own sustainability.

- Stefanie Marotta points out how workers are caught in the middle of jurisdictional finger-pointing between the Ford PCs and Trudeau Libs when it comes to being able to avoid going to work while sick. And Jeremy Appel writes about the investigation into last year's uncontained outbreak at Cargill's High River meatpacking plant - while Joel Dryden and Sarah Rieger report that there's another one underway. 

- Dharna Noor examines the massive financial costs of putting off a just transition to decarbonized energy, while the Guardian notes that major oil companies are already dealing with the reality that their past windfall profits aren't materializing anymore. And Ben Geman reports on Ford's announcement of a massive investment in shifting to electric vehicles (as a response to GM's loud publicity campaign to the same effect).

- Finally, Gwladys Fouche reports that in addition to participating in the movement away from funding dirty fuels, Norway's sovereign wealth fund is also pulling any support from corporations engaged in tax evasion. And Ashley Cowburn reports that even the UK Cons are going further than federal Libs in examining the prospect of a windfall profit tax so that the world's largest companies don't further add to their wealth and power as a result of a pandemic.