Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Rupert Neate writes about the twelve-figure tax avoidance by the U.S.' largest tech firms, while noting that Amazon stands out as the worst offender. And Meagan Day interviews Ramesh Srninivasan about the need to democratize the administration of the Internet.

- Meanwhile, Grace Blakeley makes the case to socialize the financial sector to ensure it serves the public rather than facilitating the concentration of wealth. And Anoosh Chakelian hopes that a devastating report on child poverty will offer a much-needed reality check in the course of the UK's general election.

- Animal Justice notes that Jason Kenney and Doug Ford are following in the Republicans' footsteps by planning to punish people for attempting to expose animal abuse.

- Chris Turner writes about Kenney's pursuit of modern-day McCarthyism. And Graham Thomson notes that rather than representing a necessary result of otherwise justifiable choices, the framing of large number of people as enemies is central to Kenney's political strategy. 

- Finally, Omar Washington writes that the re-election of Justin Trudeau in the wake of his blackface exploits represents a sad failure on the part of Canada's electorate. And Jordan Bober argues that Trudeau should at least recognize the need to put electoral reform back on the table after an election which has produced some of the most distorted first-past-the-post results yet.

Parliament In Review: June 16, 2011

While June 16 was a shortened day due to the NDP's weekend convention, it wasn't lacking for a few notes of interest.

Issue of the Day

While the Cons took the opportunity to serve notice of their intention to impose back-to-work legislation at Air Canada, the NDP's focus on pensions offered an ideal response - encapsulated in Jack Layton's question which of course received a typical non-response from Stephen Harper:

The government should not be getting involved so early on in the process and picking winners. The workers are currently fighting to protect their pensions. They do not have a choice, because the government did not do what was necessary to strengthen and protect the retirement pensions of workers here in Canada.

Why does the government want to impose a pension model that leaves people to fend for themselves?

Meanwhile, the Cons seem to have somewhat anticipated the issue, using one of their members' statements to criticize the NDP for having an interest in improving the Canada Pension Plan. No word yet on their progress in excising all references to Jim Flaherty proposing exactly the same thing.

Cooperation Runs Amok

The day saw several outbreaks of civility in various forms - including a round of mutual back-patting on the mega-trials bill which all parties agreed to pass, and Elizabeth May asking a question to enable Irwin Cotler to finish a speech which got cut off. But the spirit may have gone a bit too far in a round of "points of order" which were nothing of the sort in response to the news of an Air Canada settlement.

In Brief

Within the debate on the mega-trials bill, Joe Comartin took the opportunity to point out the Cons' habit of trotting out the same victims of crime on multiple occasions in support of legislation they themselves kept from passing. Peggy Nash introduced a private members' bill against animal cruelty. And the Cons offered some signal as to how they plan to deal with the NDP's ascent to Official Opposition status: by simply whiting out "Liberal" and replacing it with "NDP" in repeating their stale attacks.