Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Noah Ivers writes that people need to take the first COVID-19 vaccine available in support of everybody's health, rather than assuming that consumerist philosophy applies to vaccinations. Arthur White-Crummey reports on new modelling showing how Saskatchewan is at grave risk of seeing our infection and intensive care rates spiral out of control before mass vaccinations are possible. And Murray Mandryk points out the folly of gambling with people's health and lives in the face of new and more dangerous variants.

- Andrew Jackson highlights how right-wing actors are trying to use the remote threat of inflation to undermine any discussion about meeting people's needs in providing relief and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. And Armine Yalnizyan notes that the care economy needs to be central to our recovery plans, while Iglika Ivanova and Lynell Anderson comment on the need to go beyond B.C.'s first steps in making child care available to everybody.

- Liz Walker and Shanice Regis-Wilkins discuss how organizing workers is more important than ever when they're facing new risks to health and welfare in the workplace. And Daniel Karasik talks to activists about building mass resistance to government neglect of human needs.

- Mitchell Beer writes that while the Libs insist on trying to have it both ways, we face a stark choice between responsible environmental policy and ongoing handouts to the fossil fuel sector. And in case there was any doubt which side to choose, Oliver Milman reports on the latest revelations as to how oil and gas companies suppressed their own knowledge about the harm done by air pollution in order to avoid regulation which would have protected public health, while Andrew MacLeod discusses the cleanup costs foisted on the public after oil and gas companies have skimmed of their profits then abandoned their environmental responsibilities. 

- Finally, Chauncey Devega discusses how the right's culture war messaging - most recently in the form of complaints about "cancel culture" - serves primarily as an excuse to try to negate the equal rights of minority groups in order to exclude them from democratic decision-making.