Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- David Brady, Ryan Finnigan and Sabine Hubgen challenge the claim that there's any relationship between single motherhood and poverty. And Doug Saunders writes that there's an opening for progressive movements to take back the theme of family values which obviously bear no relationship to the policy cruelty of the right:

As the Brown University historian Robert O. Self found in his chronicle of this period, conservatives "energized by the legalization of abortion, the demands of feminists, the expansion of welfare, rising crime rates, and the increasing visibility of homosexuality, cast the nuclear family as in crisis and its defense as their patriotic duty … they sought to protect idealized families from moral harm."

It was politically very successful. Yet it was built on a flawed premise. Poverty, inequality, crime and dependence are linked to family breakdown. But family-values conservatives got it backward: Broken families are not the cause of social and economic deprivation; they're an effect. Those dreaded big-state policies hadn't undermined the family; they'd protected it.

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Stable and successful two-parent families tend to flourish where there's strong promotion of birth control and robust sex education, where child-care resources exist so that parents don't have to choose between work or children, where housing and social-assistance policies allow couples to have stable long-term tenure, where laws and social practices allow couples outside the traditional sphere of the heterosexual nuclear family to enter the security of marriage.

Beneath all that controversial liberal language of shifting identities and diversity and competing rights, you'll find the secret to family stability and, therefore, to upward mobility. If candidates are careful with that language, the next few years could see the return of the family-values left.

- Speaking of which, Renee Feltz reports on the lobbying by Koch-backed groups to undermine any movement toward paid sick leave in the U.S. - because for the plebes, the only acceptable response to illness is to suck it up and go to work anyway. 

- Kate McInturff reminds us why the continued gender pay gap is everybody's problem.

- David Pugliese points out that the Libs' agreement to sell military helicopters to Rodrigo Duterte was made with full knowledge that human rights abuses would result. And Tom Parkin puts the helicopter sale to the Philippines in context with Justin Trudeau's general failure to match words about human rights with meaningful action.

- Finally, Terry Dance Bennink, Maria Dobrinskaya and Antony Hodgson make the case for a proportional electoral system in British Columbia.

Saturday Morning Links

This and that for your weekend reading.

- Larry Elliott suggests we shouldn't be duped into thinking that policy biased in favour of the corporate sector is a necessity rather than a choice. And John Falzon notes that inequality too is the product of political decisions rather than an inevitability, while Facundo Alvaredo, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman highlight how the U.S. is going out of its way to make matters worse.

- Andrew Stevens discusses the fight for a fair minimum wage in Saskatchewan - and the fearmongering used to oppose one. And Kate McInturff writes about the persistent race and gender income gaps.

- David Weil writes about the challenging future faced by millenials stuck in increasingly volatile work arrangements. And Sam Riches offers an inside look at the realities of trying to juggle multiple gigs while lacking any income security.

- Andrew Jackson points out the continually-increasing level of consumer debt in Canada, and notes the reality that there's little apparent overlap between the many workers facing large debt loads and the privileged few who are accumulating assets.

- Finally, Adam Kassam highlights the many ways in which private dollars - in the form of both fees and donations - are papering over gaps in public funding for health care.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Mark Karlin interviews George Monbiot about the prospect of politics based on empathy, sharing and belonging.

- Andrew Jackson and Kate McInturff each offer their take on the federal fiscal update - with both lamenting the Libs' lack of ambition.

- Karl Nerenberg highlights how the federal government is ignoring the needs of workers facing precarity and poverty. And Brennan MacDonald reports that the Libs don't plan to change that pattern when it comes to giving workers more security through the pensions they've earned.

- Manuel Muniz notes that the same problem of an economy built around accumulating wealth for a few at the expense of the many is arising around the globe.

- Emma McIntosh reports on Ontario Environmental Commissioner Dianne Saxe's criticism of a provincial government which has consistently put Indigenous communities at risk. And Jorge Barrera exposes the neglect behind Health Canada's failure to respond to the human rights tribunal orders requiring that the federal government stop discriminating against Indigenous children.

- Finally, Paul Wells weighs in on the incoherence of Quebec's Bill 62. And Chantal Hebert notes that opposition is building based on competence issues as well as the discriminatory nature of the bill.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Drew Brown discusses how the Libs' claim to represent - or even understand - the interests of Canada's middle class is disappearing. And Steven Chase and Robert Fife expose Bill Morneau's broken promise to set up a blind trust for his assets while he makes decisions which will affect their value, while the Canadian Press reports that the consulting firm bearing Morneau's name (and in which he still holds a stake) will profit from the unwinding of Sears' pension plan.

- Paul Finch, Jared Melvin and Harpinder Sandhu suggest that land value taxes and closed loopholes could alleviate British Columbia's affordability crisis.

- Jen Gerson views Naheed Nenshi's reelection in Calgary as a much-needed rebuke to attempts by professional sports franchises to blackmail municipalities.

- Kathryn Blaze Baum discusses some of the considerations behind a possible tax on sugary drinks - though the UK's model of merely allowing their manufacturers to profit in different ways hardly seems to be the best possible outcome.

- Finally, Kate McInturff studies the best and worst places to be a woman in Canada. And Anne Kingston offers some ideas to close the persistent gender gap.

Thursday Evening Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Duncan Cameron writes that democratic socialism can produce a fair economy for everybody. And the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives puts the possibilities in concrete terms with its alternative federal budget.

- Armine Yalnizyan argues that it's long past time for a budget focused on gender equality. And Kate McInturff points out a few simple steps which could be taken toward that goal.

- Andrew Jackson offers some hints as to implement progressive policies in the face of the Trump administration. But Chantal Hebert notes that Justin Trudeau seems more interested in using Trump as an excuse for regressive choices and broken promises.

- Risa Lavizzo-Mourey and Victor Dzau examine the many social factors that contribute to poor health - and the importance of investing in social equity to achieve better results. And Doug Irving offers a U.S.-focused summary of the social determinants of health.

- Finally, Tom Parkin discusses the contrast between the NDP's substantive and respectful leadership campaign and  the Conservative circus led by Kevin O'Leary. And Thomas Walkom analyzes the start of the NDP's race, while Michael Laxer writes about Niki Ashton's campaign launch.

New column day

Here, on the hope that this past weekend's protests will be just the start of an activist response to Donald Trump and his corporatist and authoritarian allies.

For further reading...
- Robert Booth and Alexandra Topping reported on last weekend's rallies from a global perspective. Tanara Yelland discussed the march on the ground in Washington, while Caroline Mortimer commented on the protest in Sandy Cove, Nova Scotia and Morgan Modjeski wrote about the one in Saskatoon. And Kate McInturff rightly criticized far too many commentators for downplaying the significance of a widespread, international and women-based protest.
- On the subject of areas crying out for further activism, Human Rights Watch highlighted Russia's steps to minimize domestic violence and its perpetrators. And Adam Bienkov wrote about Theresa May's plans to make the UK in to even more of a haven for corporate tax avoidance, while Dave Seglins, Rachel Houlihan and Zach Dubinsky again reported on Canada's own poor track record in that area.
- Finally, I again mention SaskForward as a prime opportunity to start shaping what Saskatchewan's popular agenda will look like in the years to come.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Joel Wood highlights the social cost of carbon as a crucial reason to work on reducing greenhouse gas emissions rather than insisting on doing the absolute least the rest of the world will tolerate. And needless to say, Brad Wall's idea of an argument for the position that we should have no policies aimed at actually reducing emissions is rather less than compelling - particularly given Chelsea Harvey's warning that we can't rely on technology to remove emissions from our atmosphere later on.

- Max Ehrenfreund notes that for all the criticism too often leveled toward public housing, it actually produces dramatic improvements in the opportunities for children who grow up in it:

Comprehensive new data published this week challenges the cultural consensus on public housing. For all their flaws, housing projects can have remarkable positive effects on the children who grow up in them, researchers conclude in a paper published by the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research.

Children who spend more time in public housing will earn hundreds of dollars more each year than they would have if their parents had not received housing assistance from the government during those years. Children who benefit from public housing are also less likely to be imprisoned, according to the data.

Not having to worry about paying private-sector rents, parents might have more time to spend on their children — helping them with their homework, keeping them out of trouble and guiding them to a more successful adulthood, the researchers theorize.

- Meanwhile, Dawn Foster writes that the differential treatment of owned housing (which can be inherited) and rental tenancies (which can't) results in inequality being exacerbated over the course of multiple generations.

- Nicole Kozloff, Carol E. Adair, Luis I. Palma Lazgare, Daniel Poremski, Amy H. Cheung, Rebeca Sandu and Vicky Stergiopoulos study the success of Housing First programming in assisting homeless youth. But Laurie Monsebraaten and Hina Alam point out the desperate lack of federal and provincial funding to support municipal housing programs.

- And in a similar vein, a group of citizens concerns about B.C.'s education cuts highlights the dangers of relying on fund-raising rather than public revenue to fund necessary educational services. 

- Finally, Kate McInturff examines the gender gap across Canada's cities, and finds that the major cities on the prairies are clustered near the bottom when it comes to gender parity.

Sunday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Michael Bader argues that a cynical view of politics represents the most important barrier to progressive victories:

Cynicism is a corrosive force in our politics and culture, but one that is invisible to us because it seems so normal. My patients feel the same way. They keep repeating patters that are familiar and experience deviations from these scripts as anxiety provoking. It’s my job to help them see, through education and by creating new corrective experiences in which they are encouraged to freely choose a healthier way to be, that their emotional reality and distress are not something hardwired and inevitable. My underlying message is that transformational change is possible.

Progressives need to convey this same message in the broader political arena. The problem we face is that political cynicism of the sort that suffocates us today masquerades as realism, a realism that warns us that transformational change is a pipe dream and that aspiring to what we really want is a recipe for disappointment. When a patient conveys this belief, I see it as a symptom of an emotional injury rather than objective reality and I seek to change it, not surrender to its inevitability.

That's what a progressive movement should be doing on a social level; challenging cynicism and drawing people to our cause because our cause is big and grand and mirrors their own buried wish to be part of something that big and grand. We need leaders who can present such a vision and fight the realists who want us to be afraid of our own deepest longings.

- And on the subject of visionary policies which are too often dismissed based solely on questionable assertions as to feasibility, Jeff Krimmel points out how a basic income offers important benefits across the income spectrum.

- Craig Scott sees this week's federal budget as an all-too-familiar example of the gap between the Libs' campaign rhetoric and their actions while in power, while Kate McInturff writes that the Libs' budget falls far short of expectations for women in particular.  And Alan Freeman discusses how the CFIB was one of the groups which saw campaign commitments abandoned in the budget - though he rightly notes that the group's past willingness to be used by the Harper Cons may represent part of the explanation.

- Elena Holodny writes about the increasing number and cost of extreme weather events as the most readily visible symptom of climate change.

- Finally, Rose Hackman examines the effects of pervasive and groundless surveillance on a minority population.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Kate McInturff puts forward some big long-term goals which deserve to be discussed as we elect our next federal government. And Leah McLaren discusses how a lack of child care affects every Canadian:

The single most shocking thing to me about becoming a mother was the lack of affordable child care, both in Canada and in Britain (where I was living when my son was born). It was an issue I had heard responsible people around me banging on about for years, but one that had sort of floated above my comprehension, like the sound of the grown-ups talking in the animated Charlie Brown.

Like car insurance or taxes, I expected organizing child care to be a pain – one of those annoying but ultimately surmountable aspects of grown-up life. What I did not expect it to be was a financially crippling, life-paralyzing quagmire.

In Canada (as in Britain), I was shocked to find little or no access to affordable child care during my son’s first years of life. Like most families, we shouldered the heavy financial burden of full-time child care all on our own with no help from the government or extended family (everyone lives out of town). It was either that or one of us quit working. Not a pretty choice, or a realistic one for most parents, either.

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Child care is not a women’s issue. It’s not even a family issue. Like health care or education, it’s an all-of-us-in-it-together issue. And yet it’s also something many of us don’t think about until we are hard up against it, confronting the impossible life choices that materialize when you live in a society with a lack of affordable daycare – a society that sentimentalizes children but not the act of actually caring for them.

- Lindsay Tedds discusses how the Cons' tax giveaways for resource exploration represent all that's wrong with public policy which serves only to enrich investors rather than serving the public interest. And David Dayen highlights how mortgage foreclosure fraud continues in the U.S. even after being publicly exposed.

- Derek Seidman notes that in addition to improving conditions in specific workplaces, the push for a $15 minimum wage is also serving as a rallying point for the labour movement as a whole. And Unifor highlights the importance of an improved Canada Pension Plan as another means of ensuring financial security regardless of one's immediate employer. 

- Finally, Terry Glavin follows up on Alan Kurdi's tragic story with some suggestions as to what can be done next - though it's worth noting that the convention he points to as a barrier to the Kurdis' effort to seek refuge does nothing to prevent a country from doing more than the bare minimum.  Ratna Omidvar, Joseph Yu and Kai Wong make the case to bring 1,000 refugees to the GTA alone. And Aaron Wherry takes a broader look at our options in dealing with refugees and other displaced persons, while Karl Nerenberg and Michael Harris are particularly pointed in criticizing the Cons' callousness.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- In advance of this weekend's Progress Summit, Robin Sears comments on the significance of the Broadbent Institute and other think tanks in shaping policy options:

The Center for American Progress was the wakeup call for progressives around the world. Independent-minded, massively funded, deeply professional, it was created to develop winning agendas for a new Democratic president. Key Obamites trained there. Core strategies and goals were polished there. Their success helped to spawn a third generation of think tanks who understood that to have real impact, good ideas had to be married to credible execution.

In Canada today, the two ‘conviction-based’ parties of left and right as political scientists are wont to label conservatives and social democrats—have thriving think tanks that have played important roles in both the idea baking and the training of a new generation of political activists. The Manning Centre—unlike the Fraser institute—has become less fringe and more effectively political. The Broadbent Institute has quickly found its groove as a forum where greenies, left liberals, New Democrats, and independent activists can hammer out new progressive visions and the tools to deliver them.
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The Broadbent Institute’s executive director Rick Smith and his small but impressive team seem so far to have found their footing, pushing the envelope a little, rallying partisans as required, and avoiding the curse of think tanks everywhere: becoming pedantic, boring, and irrelevant. Their annual gatherings of the progressive clans have exceeded most cynical old-timers’ expectations; convening a new generation from outside partisan politics, from the NGO and environmental movements, left liberals and social democrats, and helping them build bonds both personal and political.

Ten years from now—or maybe much sooner—one may expect a proud young minister celebrating the success of a dramatic new initiative, just endorsed by Parliament, telling reporters, “Well, it all started late one boozy night, at the Broadbent summit!”

- Meanwhile, Desmond Cole interviews David Hulchanski on rising inequality in Toronto and elsewhere. And Kate McInturff notes that increased inequality is just one of the harmful results of an obsession with fighting deficits rather than improving the lives of citizens.

- Roy Romanow highlights the imminent dangers facing Canada's health care system if we don't fill in missing pieces including a pharmacare program.

- Raveena Aulakh reports on the Council of Canadians' damning study on the protection of water in Canada. And on the subject of regulatory negligence, Allison Martel finds that CN Rail has seen a massive jump in derailments even as it's carrying more hazardous products including crude oil.

- Finally, Bob Hepburn discusses how Stephen Harper decided to use the politics of fear as his main means of clinging to power. And thwap observes that a reasonable amount of Parliamentary pushback has gone a long way in countering the spin when it comes to C-51.