#Elxn44 Roundup

The latest from Canada's federal election campaign.

- David Miller discusses the steps Canada needs to take to help avert climate disaster - as well as the differences in the federal parties' plans to achieve them (or not). And Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood writes about some crucial climate myths, with the overall message that we can't pretend we're doing enough or on the right track already. 

- David McLaren rightly criticizes the Cons' attempt to entrench precarious gig work as a permanent trap for workers. 

- Elise Stolte discusses how the financialization of the housing market has made it impossible for many people to find affordable and acceptable rental homes. And Patrick Condon highlights the need for far more ambition in ensuring the right to housing is met, while also noting the crucial differences among the parties. 

- Christine Dobby takes a look at voters' choices on telecommunications, with particular attention to the Libs' broken promises to make connections to the world more affordable. 

- Brett Forester examines the parties' platforms on issues facing Indigenous people. 

- PressProgress contrasts the well-known answers to the opioid crisis (including ensuring a safe supply) against Erin O'Toole's insistence on pushing only access to private institutional rehab facilities. 

- Finally, Our Politics offers a slick (if necessarily simplified) look at the policies on offer from the major federal parties. And the Courage Coalition provides its take on the choices facing progressive voters and activists. 

Thursday Evening Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Jonathan Aldred calls out the combination of handouts to the rich, cultivated attitudes of self-reliance and antisocial assumptions which have exacerbated inequality over the past few decades:

European countries have, on average, more redistributive tax systems and more welfare benefits for the poor than the US, and therefore less inequality, after taxes and benefits. Many people see this outcome as a reflection of the different values that shape US and European societies. But cause-and-effect may run the other way: you-deserve-what-you-get beliefs are strengthened by inequality.

Psychologists have shown that people have motivated beliefs: beliefs that they have chosen to hold because those beliefs meet a psychological need. Now, being poor in the US is extremely tough, given the meagre welfare benefits and high levels of post-tax inequality. So Americans have a greater need than Europeans to believe that you deserve what you get and you get what you deserve. These beliefs play a powerful role in motivating yourself and your children to work as hard as possible to avoid poverty. And these beliefs can help alleviate the guilt involved in ignoring a homeless person begging on your street.

This is not just a US issue. Britain is an outlier within Europe, with relatively high inequality and low economic and social mobility. Its recent history fits the cause-and-effect relationship here. Following the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, inequality rose significantly. After inequality rose, British attitudes changed. More people became convinced that generous welfare benefits make poor people lazy and that high salaries are essential to motivate talented people. However, intergenerational mobility fell: your income in Britain today is closely correlated with your parents’ income.

If the American Dream and other narratives about everyone having a chance to be rich were true, we would expect the opposite relationship: high inequality (is fair because of) high intergenerational mobility. Instead, we see a very different narrative: people cope with high inequality by convincing themselves it is fair after all. We adopt narratives to justify inequality because society is highly unequal, not the other way round. So inequality may be self-perpetuating in a surprising way.

- David Climenhaga predicts that the UCP's review of health services - like so many before it - will cost more than it ever recoups in promised efficiencies. Brielle Morgan, Katie Hyslop, Cherise Seucharan and Tracy Sherlock highlight the absurdity of offering more money to foster families to house children after findings of poverty-based "neglect" than to the vulnerable families who only lack sufficient financial resources to be able to provide an adequate home. And Jesse Snyder reports on new research showing how blinkered fearmongering against carbon pricing stands to increase the cost of any climate progress.

- Brendan Kennedy discusses what the future will look like in New Brunswick as climate change continues to exacerbate the flooding which has become commonplace in recent years. And Charlie Smith looks at the effect of a movement away from air travel on cities such as Vancouver which currently rely on air traffic as a major part of their local economies.

- Finally, Simon Dyer offers six factors to look for in determining whether a climate policy is viable. And David Miller highlights how the NDP's climate plan measures up to the scope and urgency of our climate crisis.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- David Miller weighs in on the high costs of austerity and the knowing deception of the right-wing politicians who pretend cuts don't have consequences:

It's a kind of political and economic law: these kinds of budget cuts always result in worse service. And there is a corollary: the conservative politicians who demand such cuts always refuse to accept responsibility for them, and pretend there is no connection between the actions they took and their direct repercussions.

They often get away with this because the consequences aren't immediately obvious to the general public, or only hit politically disempowered parts of the population. For example, in the 1980's and early 1990's, the TTC deferred maintenance as a way of coping with budget challenges. Deferred maintenance is another word for a cut. It's pernicious, because citizens can't easily see the cut and exercise their right to vote against it, yet it can have serious consequences. A tragic subway crash of 1995 in which three people were killed had a number of causes, the most critical of which was the failure of a fail-safe arm — a safety mechanism specifically designed to prevent an accident when a train misses a signal.  It didn't work, and if it had, the accident would not have occurred. Following the accident, a coroner’s inquest found “underfunding since the mid-1980s has contributed to the deterioration of the system and has jeopardized the safety of the TTC.”  As result, the transit commission changed its practices to make the maintenance of a state of good repair its highest spending priority.

The effect of these kind of hidden cuts is felt at all orders of government —  the Walkerton contaminated water disaster is a good example of provincial actions directly leading to a tragedy — but it is particularly challenging for cities because the vast majority of municipal spending is on actual day-to-day services...
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In all of these situations, the conservative politicians advocating the cuts use euphemisms like “efficiency” to pretend their policies are not going to affect people when they know, or ought to know, that isn't true.  In the case of Toronto, any experienced elected official knows that expenditure constraint has a direct impact on services.  Yet we still see politicians calling for the TTC to provide better service at the same time as giving directions calling for significant budget cuts.  They pretend the cuts won’t have an impact and hope that the public will not notice.  But slowly and eventually, they will. 

- Katie Hafner writes about the devastating impact of social isolation on seniors. And Jonathan Charlton reports that the Saskatchewan Party's health cuts are set to exacerbate the problem in Saskatoon among other negative effects on people. 

- Douglas Campbell and Lester Lusher examine the causes of growing inequality in the U.S. and find that it can be traced largely to upper-class tax slashing rather than trade.

- Luke Harding reports that Denmark has become the first country to buy leaked data from the Panama Papers in order to fully investigate tax evasion.

- Finally, Neil MacDonald writes that while the long-awaiting inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women will represent an important opportunity to examine systemic racism, it won't have the effect it should unless all of Canada pays attention.

Tuesday Morning Links

Content goes here.

- Brian Topp highlights one of the main lessons coming out of David Miller's time as mayor of Toronto:

The current debate about Toronto’s government and future demonstrates a hard political fact. If citizens cannot see what their government is doing, then, politically, to some extent, it is as if those achievements didn’t happen. It is extremely difficult for any government at any level to communicate what it doing to citizens. Speeches by the chief executive don’t do the job.

Lesson for the future: the next time there is a progressive administration in Toronto, it needs to find a way to clean the dirty boys out of the back door while still operating a muscular and unabashedly political strategic/communications team.

- I'm all for creative efforts to engage citizens online. But keeping in mind the enthusiasm for Rick Mercer's Doris Day petition just a decade ago, what are the odds that the Online Party of Canada won't vote itself out of existence if it's in any danger of getting anywhere?

- Needless to say, it's not at all surprising that knowledge about Sean Bruyea's now-vindicated privacy concerns went all the way to the top. But don't worry: while the PMO is perpetually involved in message control, it does seem to be willing to accept limitations on its power when it comes time to actually doing anything useful:

On Sept. 26, 2006, Shaw wrote Bruyea to inform him that neither the PMO or veterans affairs minister’s office could get involved in the handling of his personal file in order to deal with his benefit entitlements. She referred Bruyea to a department official. The e-mail did not address Bruyea’s concerns about the mishandling of his private information.

- Finally, today's Angus Reid poll would be a lot more meaningful if it hadn't unduly limited its scope to respondents' opinions of the Cons and Libs. But there's still an interesting gap between questions of high-level economic policy - where the Cons have a lead - and the one dealing with jobs which is currently a wash between the two parties included in the poll. And the more Canadians start to distinguish between job issues that affect them directly and more abstract issues like debt and inflation, the more trouble the Cons figure to have in trying to run a campaign on the economy.