Wednesday Evening Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Andre Picard writes about the unjustifiable limitations and inconsistencies in Canada's health care system:

Break your leg and the X-ray and cast will be covered, but you will need to pay for the crutches. Break your jaw and it will be wired at no cost; break your teeth and you will pay the dentist. Get cancer treatment at the hospital and there will be no charge; take the same oncology medication at home and you will pay dearly. Suffer from severe depression and your hospitalization will be covered, but psychological care and medications will not be covered by public insurance after you’re released. If you have diabetes and live in Quebec, many more of your drugs and supplies will be covered than in neighbouring New Brunswick. Need trauma care while visiting another province, and you could get stiffed with a big air ambulance bill. Live out your final days in a hospital and the state will pick up the tab, but do so in a nursing home and you will pay.

The list of inconsistencies and absurdities is a long one. Coverage often depends on where you live, where you work, your age – but more than anything, public coverage is limited by historical accident.
...

The inconsistent coverage of mental health care (and psychological services in particular), home care and prescription drugs has been the subject of much debate, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

If we are going to have a semblance of a national health system across 13 provinces and territories – without forgetting the large federal health system – it’s important to have equitable (not equal) access for all Canadians. Yet, the variations in coverage between jurisdictions have never been more pronounced.

...

Medicare cannot provide all care to all people at all times. We need to make tough choices on what is, and isn’t, in the medicare basket of services. We need to eliminate obsolete and wasteful practices, and embrace only new ones that are cost-effective.

We have the tools to do so. But good evidence isn’t enough. As the report notes, we need to “translate the language of science and evaluation into the language of decisions and public policy.”

- Jocelyn Timperley explores the long-term economic benefits of fighting climate change now, rather than having to answer for its effects later. And Merran Smith discusses the obvious risks of being left behind in a global transition to clean energy.

- Tammy Robert examines the Saskatchewan public's widespread recognition of the problem of climate change and willingness to help fight it - no matter how obstinately Scott Moe and the Saskatchewan Party try to stand in the way. And Jennifer Quesnel takes a look at the modest effect of an Alberta-style carbon tax even before accounting for rebates and investments from the new public revenue.

- Finally, Tom Parkin weighs in on the mirror-image cynicism of Doug Ford and Kathleen Wynne in Ontario's election campaign. And Donald Savoie discusses how Justin Trudeau is either taking Atlantic Canada for granted, or abandoning it altogether.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Canadians for Tax Fairness discusses the appallingly small tax contributions made by Canada's largest companies, the vast majority of whom have foreign subsidiaries to avoid paying their fair share.

- Meanwhile, Robert de Vries and Aaron Reeves point out the unfortunate reality that far too many people are prepared to overlook how the wealthy manipulate our tax systems while holding people living in poverty to a spotless ethical standard.

- Martin Regg Cohn writes about the Ontario Libs' purely political choice to hand free money to businesses as the price of increasing the province's minimum wage.

- And Sara Mojtehedazeh reports on the Wynne Libs' decision to open the door to massive loopholes to allow employers to impose unpredictable scheduling on workers.

- Josh Gordon discusses the need for a property surtax in British Columbia to ensure both a modicum of tax fairness, and sufficient funding to provide public services.

- Finally, Tim Quigley asks whether Saskatchewan voters can reasonably trust a Wall government which has repeatedly broken its promises on Crown corporations - and rights argues that if not, then an immediate repeal of Bill 40 is in order to protect our Crowns. 

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Michal Rozworski writes that the bidding war surrounding Amazon's second headquarters is just a symptom of a grossly dysfunctional relationship between governments and businesses:

We shouldn’t be surprised that Amazon can get away with using a few billion dollars of private investment as bait for public billions in return. Investment in the US, both private and public, is in a sorry state. Taken as a proportion of overall economic activity, businesses and governments are investing a fraction of what they did in the postwar years or even a few decades ago.

The business sector does not lack for means — profits margins, while down from record highs, are no longer in the doldrums. But rather than invest in new production facilities and new technology, corporations, under pressure from shareholders, are spending big on dividends and share buybacks or letting cash lay idle. Amazon is in fact one of the few major outliers to this trend, refusing to pay dividends and aggressively using profits to fund continuous expansion.

While private investment has given way to shareholders gorging themselves on profits, public investment has simply given way to rot. Last year, civilian net public investment in the United States amounted to a paltry 0.5 percent of GDP.

Exaggerated worries about debt and deficits and a pervasive ideology that the private sector can do everything better leave the public sector doing the minimum, barely keeping up as things fall apart.
...
(C)apital needs the public sector as much as the other way around. For all its glorification of enterprise and entrepreneurship, there is much that the private sector will not do: whenever the risks are too big or the benefits too diffuse to capture, the public sector has stepped in. From antibiotics to hydroelectric dams, from public buses to sewage plants, much of the infrastructure that makes life under contemporary capitalism possible is public or publicly funded.
...
Capital may be the force that ultimately socializes production and distribution, but it needs the state all along the way. Today’s public extortion racket is only the tip of the iceberg.

- And Linda McQuaig argues that the corporate raiders who strip money out of corporations such as Sears should be on the hook for the pensions earned by employees. 

- Toby Sanger examines the federal fiscal update and notes that there's plenty of room to expand public services. The CCPA offers a mid-term report card comparing the Libs' big progressive promises to their minimal action. And Seth Klein and Iglika Ivanova offer some suggestions as to how British Columbia's NDP government can take immediate action to reduce poverty while conducting its wider review of the problem.

- Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports that the Wynne Libs are falling far short of their promises of addressing precarious work - including by watering down equal pay provisions to exclude the workers who need them most, and failing to address the use of temp agencies to avoid employment standards. Stefani Langenegger highlights PATHS' report on the lack of employment protection in Saskatchewan for workers trying to escape domestic abuse. And Nicholas Keung reports on a push to ensure that migrant farm workers have an opportunity to pursue permanent residency.

- Finally, Matthew Taylor takes note of the Environmental Justice Foundation's study on the imminent surge of climate change refugees. And Mia Rabson reports on the massive gap between the goals set in the Paris climate accord, and the plans actually being made to address greenhouse gas emissions in Canada and elsewhere.

New column day

Here, on how a misguided war against "red tape" contributed to the deaths of dozens in the Grenfell Tower fire - and how we're at risk of becoming casualties as well.

For further reading...
- Details about the UK's obsession with red tape can be found in archives including the home page and housing and construction page.
- The Telegraph offers a summary of the Grenfell Tower fire. Robert Booth and Calla Wahlquist report on the safety concerns which had been brushed off for five years, while Samuel Osborne highlighted how two women who attempted to call attention to fire safety were threatened with legal action before becoming victims of the blaze. Sarah Knapton and Hayley Dixon set out some of the failures which led to the Grenfell tragedy, while Knapton also reports on the cheaper, fireproof cladding which contributed to the deaths of dozens. The Huffington Post offers eyewitness accounts of the fire, including the desperate attempts of residents to save their children while being unable to escape themselves. And Ann Pettifor discusses the role of deficit hysteria (another hallmark of regressive government) in causing the tragedy.
- Ontario's Red Tape Challenge site is here, while its express reference to the UK's precedent is here (h/t to Joshua Mandryk). And Nora Loreto discussed the dangers of the Wynne government's anti-regulatory stunt here.
- Finally, a list of the Saskatchewan Party's attacks on regulation (in the guise of both red tape and "modernizing") is here, while "Red Tape Awareness Week" continues to be a regular feature of the Saskatchewan Party's governing PR apparatus. And the statute requiring ongoing reporting on the latter front is here.

New column day

Here, on how several other provinces are setting new (and necessary standards) for worker protections while Saskatchewan falls further behind.

For further reading...
- Ontario's Changing Workplaces Review is here (in full), and here (in summary form). CBC reports on Kathleen Wynne's subsequent minimum wage announcement, while Sheila Block crunches the numbers on how it will reduce inequality. And Thomas Walkom points out how even Ontario's plan falls short of the mark in protecting people stuck in precarious work and allowing for labour to organize.
- Alberta's summary of its planned Labour Relations Code amendments is here.
- The governance agreement between the B.C. NDP and Greens is here (PDF), featuring the terms on labour and employment issues at 2(d) and (e).
- Finally, in contrast to all those current plans, the last substantial review of Saskatchewan's general labour and employment law took place in 2012, and resulted in this largely anti-worker set of provisions.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Patrick Butler writes about the increasing number of UK families mired in poverty and insecure housing even with one or more people working. And Ali Monceaux and Daniel Najarian discuss the importance of a fair minimum wage in providing people with a basic standard of living.

- Kelly Grant reports on the Libs' baby steps toward dealing with the high cost of prescription drugs. And Andre Picard offers some suggestions as to how to make our health care system work better, while John Geddes points out that Maxime Bernier wants to lead the Cons toward trashing universal health care altogether.

- Damian Carrington discusses new research showing how even relatively small rises in the sea level caused by global warming will massively increase flooding risks, while Chris Mooney notes that levels are in fact rising increasingly quickly. But Hiroko Tabuchi and Eric Lipton highlight how a single bad actor - in this case the Trump administration - can undermine any effort to regulate the causes of climate change.

- Meanwhile, Maude Barlow examines (PDF) how corporate-centred trade deals threaten the availability of clean and safe water. And Edgardo Sepulveda takes a look at the needless public expense being created by the Wynne Libs in order to avoid answering for their damage to Ontario Hydro.

- Finally, Matt Bruenig argues that class struggle is key to ensuring that the benefits of growth go to the many rather than the few:

If you believe, as Piketty argues in his book, that a reduction in growth will inexorably lead to a higher wealth-to-income ratio and a higher capital share, then perhaps the best you can do is pare down wealth accumulation and spread out its ownership through a progressive wealth tax.

But if you believe instead that the capital share does not rise inevitably but only as a result of capitalists getting the upper hand in the perpetual battle over the distribution of output in society, then many more solutions become plausible. Increasing housing supply and imposing rent controls, weakening intellectual property protections, empowering workers to fight for a bigger piece of the pie — all would have the same or even greater egalitarian effects.

American Airlines’ decision to increase its workers’ compensation caused over $2.2 billion of national wealth to vanish almost instantly — not because actual capital goods were destroyed, but because capital’s share was ever so slightly reduced. Empowering workers to repeat this fairly mundane episode again and again, throughout the economy, would likely be a much stronger brake on runaway wealth accumulation and inequality than a global wealth tax or other similarly elaborate strategies.

Class struggle still gets the goods.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Tim Bousquet writes that the push toward "social entrepreneurship" ultimately serves to undermine the importance of the public good:

My real worry here is that the phrase “social enterprise” is the softer, feel-good end of the push for increased entrepreneurship, which is always promoted as good thing, no downside whatsoever. But there are lots of downsides. One is the risk: most new businesses fail, and very often their failure results in tremendous hardship for the owner. The bigger issue, though, is that entrepreneurship is being sold as the solution to declining living standards — don’t worry about there not being a job for you at graduation, or that if you do find a job it will be temporary contract labour at shit pay, you can start a business!

The push for increased entrepreneurship and in particular the aiming of that message at young people is specifically intended to derail the labour movement. It’s no accident that the union-busting McNeil government is also heavily promoting entrepreneurship. (See also, union-busting Chronicle Herald prez Mark Lever’s celebratory promotion of the Ivany report.) And there’s a direct line from the privatization of services and the P3s to the policies of austerity designed to take money out of the pockets of working people and to give it to plutocrats.

The goal here is to privatize expectations. In a socially just world, we would have collective responsibility for, well, everyone. We would collectively — through properly funded post-secondary education, labour regulation, government social programs, and redistributive tax policies — help young people succeed in life, help them become contributing citizens with worthwhile lives.

But the push for entrepreneurship upends this: it’s all on you, kid. You want a university education? Pay for it your own damn self. You want to promote good values and have a decent standard of living as well? Then start your own business and good luck, sucker. Whatever you want, don’t be expecting anything from the rest of us.

- Meanwhile, Sheila Block and Trish Hennessy point out that even an election-year Lib budget isn't shifting Ontario away from the limitations of austerity politics. And Jonathan Watts reports on the Brazilian public's revolt against the imposition of anti-social policies by a corrupt and unelected elite.

- Mario Canseco highlights how B.C. voters feel helpless due to the influence of corporate money on Christy Clark's governing Libs. And Mike Smyth talks to Linda Higgins about her experience dealing with Clark as a citizen without high-priced access.

- Pierre Fortin discusses the successes of Quebec's universal child care program - along with its room for improvement in equity and quality of care. And Joanna Smith and Jordan Press report on how the Harper Cons went out of their way to avoid recognizing how child care enables women to participate in the workforce.

- Finally, Lynne Fernandez comments on the need to ensure safety for workers - particularly in precarious work where the standards we take for granted elsewhere haven't yet been established or enforced.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Gillian White highlights Peter Temin's work on poverty and inequality - including the standard which a person trapped in poverty needs to meet in order to have any meaningful hope of escaping:

Temin then divides workers into groups that can trace their family line in the U.S. back to before 1970 (when productivity growth began to outpace wage growth) and groups that immigrated later, and notes that race plays a pretty big role in how both groups fare in the American economy. “In the group that has been here longer, white Americans dominate both the FTE sector and the low-wage sector, while African Americans are located almost entirely in the low-wage sector,” he writes. “In the group of recent immigrants, Asians predominantly entered the FTE sector, while Latino immigrants joined African Americans in the low-wage sector.”

After divvying up workers like this (and perhaps he does so with too broad of strokes), Temin explains why there are such stark divisions between them. He focuses on how the construction of class and race, and racial prejudice, have created a system that keeps members of the lower classes precisely where they are. He writes that the upper class of FTE workers, who make up just one-fifth of the population, has strategically pushed for policies—such as relatively low minimum wages and business-friendly deregulation—to bolster the economic success of some groups and not others, largely along racial lines. “The choices made in the United States include keeping the low-wage sector quiet by mass incarceration, housing segregation and disenfranchisement,” Temin writes.

And how is one to move up from the lower group to the higher one? Education is key, Temin writes, but notes that this means plotting, starting in early childhood, a successful path to, and through, college. That’s a 16-year (or longer) plan that, as Temin compellingly observes, can be easily upended. For minorities especially, this means contending with the racially fraught trends Temin identifies earlier in his book, such as mass incarceration and institutional disinvestment in students, for example. Many cities, which house a disproportionate portion of the black (and increasingly, Latino) population, lack adequate funding for schools. And decrepit infrastructure and lackluster public transit can make it difficult for residents to get out of their communities to places with better educational or work opportunities. Temin argues that these impediments exist by design. 

- Vickiie Oliphant writes that inequality is looming as a major issue in Germany's upcoming election. And Justine Hunter notes that the growing gap between the privileged few and the general public is shaping British Columbia's provincial campaign.

- Meanwhile, the Tyee introduces readers to Christy Clark's club of lobbyists. And Emma Gilchrist points out how the fossil fuel sector has turned substantial donations to the B.C. Libs into massive public subsidies and policy favours.

- Mike Crawley writes about Ontario's limited introduction of pharmacare for young people, while Thomas Walkom points out the limitations of the Libs' hastily-assembled scheme. And Meagan Fitzpatrick discusses the hope that Ontario's first step will lead to a national pharmacare plan - though the more important analogy seems to be that just like Kathleen Wynne, Justin Trudeau will start implementing progressive policy if and only if he recognizes that it's his only hope of avoiding being overtaken by the NDP.

- Finally, Tammy Robert highlights the fact that the Saskatchewan Party's indignity being forced on people who die while on social assistance bears no resemblance to how governments across Canada handle the issue. And Scott Stelmaschuk reminds us about the federal tax implications of Brad Wall's plans to sell off chunks of Saskatchewan's Crown Corporations.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Eva Schaherl offers her take on how to fight against climate change:

• Stop being distracted by the “Sad!” theatre of the Greatest Show on Earth across our southern border. In Canada our leadership debates should be focused on how to save the world’s life-support systems, not imitating the hateful squabbles of our U.S. neighbours.
• Make climate the central issue in every byelection, election, leadership contest and international powwow. If our only sandbox falls apart, every other issue from migration to the economy becomes unsolvable.
• Ask young people what they think. They’re going to be stuck with this overheated planet, rising seas and unstable climate. Maybe we should lower the voting age to 16. It’s their future we are deciding now.
• We need to build a sustainable, renewable energy infrastructure that’s needed today and for the future. Not pour any more resources into extracting and burning fuels that will have to be phased out by the time our kids are having their kids.

- Meanwhile, in the "what not to do" department, Carl Meyer reports on the Trudeau Libs' decision to let oil lobbyists dictate environmental policy yet again, this time by delaying the implementation of methane emission rules past the next election. And Brent Patterson rightly points out that meeting a target 8 years down the road doesn't do anything to remove the added pollution which the Libs plan to allow in the meantime.

- Michael Harris writes that under Christy Clark's regime, the domination of policy choices by big and dirty business is equally apparent in B.C. And Laila Yuile points out the massive gap between the effort the B.C. Libs put into spin and empty promises, and their utter lack of interest in following through on anything that could benefit people.

- Similarly, Trish Hennessy notes that Kathleen Wynne is in election-year mode - which means trying to get Ontarians to forget how she's sold them out since taking majority power.

- Finally, Nick Falvo calls out Brad Wall for delivering a reverse Robin Hood budget which takes from the poor to give to the rich.

New column day

Here, on what we need to do to clean up political funding - and how both the Saskatchewan and federal systems offer painful examples of the problems with big money in politics.

For further reading...
- Brad Wall's top-up pay from the Saskatchewan Party - being one of the many noteworthy uses of the corporate and out-of-province money finding its way to the party - was the subject of reporting here and here.
- Progress Alberta's report on the Saskatchewan Party's out-of-province fund-raising and other dubious practices is here. And it's particularly worth examining its comparison between provincial systems.
- For other reporting on the Saskatchewan Party's foreign ownership, see here, here and here.
- Robert Fife and Steven Chase reported on the federal Liberals' cash-for-access fund-raising. And Adrian Morrow summarizes a few of the questionable practices from Kathleen Wynne's Ontario government.
- And finally, Martin Regg Cohn and Andrew Coyne are among other commentators pointing out the need to get big money out of politics - whether through direct donations or through bundling.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- The Star's editorial board writes that while we can do more to provide supports to make workers less dependent on a single job, we shouldn't pretend there's nothing we can do to improve working conditions. And Lana Payne reminds Morneau and the Libs that there's nothing inevitable about increasingly precarious work:

Precarious and insecure work is not inevitable. Changing this outcome is also not impossible.

How can government create the conditions for good jobs to grow?

A $15-an-hour minimum wage, including in the federal sector, would help tens of thousands of workers. The federal Liberals could do that tomorrow simply by introducing a piece of legislation.

Let’s start with a committee — an advisory committee on ending precarious work. Its job will be to recommend to the federal government ways and means it can make a difference in the working lives of young people by taking the problem of precarious work head on.

Let’s get some ideas out there. In fact there are already tons of ideas being generated by unions, workers’ action groups, advocacy organizations, labour market economists and others who believe good jobs, stable jobs are critical to lifting people up. Let’s look at the incredible work already done in Ontario around the changing workplace review.

We could also do as Sen. Diane Bellemare is suggesting and have a national conversation on full employment.

Let’s not assume that young people are destined to be the most educated cohort in history, but will be worse off than their parents are because we have given up.

- Andrew Jackson offers his take on the Libs' apparent plans to fund massive amounts of P3 infrastructure through a private bank, and concludes it would do nothing to assist the public interest.

- Gary Mason discusses how British Columbia's lax fund-raising rules (which mirror Saskatchewan's) represent an affront to democracy. Justin Ling reports on the federal Libs' constant pay-for-play fund-raisers, while Robert Fife and Steven Chase report on a much-needed investigation into the practice. And Martin Regg Cohn notes that the Ontario Libs' reaction to a provincial consensus that pay-for-play should be illegal has to go on one last multi-million dollar corporate shakedown spree.

- Finally, Fair Vote Canada highlights how the results of Parliament's electoral reform consultations are strongly in favour of a shift to proportional representation. But Alison finds yet another galling example of the Libs - in this case Maryam Monsef - trying to pretend otherwise by disqualifying PR supporters from any conversation.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- In The Public Interest studies how the privatization of services leads to increased inequality:

In the Public Interest’s analysis of recent government contracting identifies five ways in which government privatization disproportionately hurts poor individuals and families...

1. Creation of new user fees: The creation of new user fees to fund public services disproportionately impacts the poor. As government budgets have declined, some jurisdictions have tried outsourcing services to private companies and allowing those companies to charge fees to the end-user to subsidize or completely fund the service. Many of the services that use this contracting and payment structure are those that poor individuals and families must use or are subject to through their interactions with the government.
2. Increase in existing user fees: Residents of jurisdictions that have privatized critical public services such as water or transit have experienced steep increases in their rates—such increases particularly harm low-income residents and those on fixed-incomes.
3. Privatization of the social safety net: Programs that provide and deliver critical support to the poor are often the subject of privatization experiments, many times with tragic results. Because these programs assist those who have little to no political power, these programs are low hanging fruit for privatization.
4. Decreased wages and benefits: Privatization increases income inequality through the decline of contracted workers’ wages and benefits. When governments directly provide a service, they often provide living wages and decent benefits to workers. When private companies take control, they often slash wages and benefits in an attempt to cut labor costs, replacing stable, middle class jobs with poverty-level jobs.
5. Increased socioeconomic and racial segregation: The introduction of private interests into public goods and services can radically impact access for certain groups. In some cases, as the public park example in Section 5 shows, privatization can create parallel systems in which one system propped up by private interests typically serves higher-income people, while another lesser quality system serves lower-income people. In other cases, the creation of a private system, such as charter schools in a school district, siphons funding away from the public system meant to serve everyone. In some situations, poor individuals and families can lose access to the public good completely.

- Meanwhile, Robert Benzie and David Rider note that Kathleen Wynne seems happy to give away public money to subsidize the privatization of Ontario Hydro in the name of managing public money.

- CBC reports on the Saskatchewan Party's decision to undermine the operations of Saskatoon's Lighthouse shelter - with no regard either for the people who rely on it, or the social costs of addressing their needs through other avenues such as police or health care resources. And PressProgress points out the revenue problems facing cities in providing the services citizens need.

- Sean Kavanagh reports on the difficulties facing Manitoba's low-income workers due to the lack of any adjustment to the province's minimum wage. And Paul Karp discusses the difficulties in trying to enforce basic health, safety and employment standards in the gig economy.

- Rafael Correa highlights the need for the international community to work together in ending the abuse of tax havens.

- Finally, Brian Kahn writes that our atmosphere appears to have passed the 400 parts per million carbon dioxide threshold permanently - marking just one more example of the irreversible damage we've already done to our environment. And Kevin O'Connor offers a reminder that Saskatchewan is the worst offender going when it comes to carbon pollution, while Joe Romm points out the plummeting prices that are making renewable energy into the clear choice for the future.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- James Stewart examines how Donald Trump could be paying zero taxes using shelters designed specifically to enrich real estate developers while serving no social purpose. And Alexandra Thornton and Brendan Duke point out the "pass-through" loophole being exploited more and more by U.S. corporations.

- Daniel Tencer reports that the Libs' plan to make it easier for employers to exploit foreign workers comes at a time when any labour shortage is coming to an end. Scott Vrooman discusses how the media is being distracted by Justin Trudeau's PR stunts when it should be calling attention to issues like the Libs' willingness to arm human rights abusers.

- Jhumka Gupta and Reginald Tucker-Seeley discuss the connection between prejudice and social health. And Paul Wells points out that the Libs' interest in social policy seems to be limited to its ability to attract and benefit big money from abroad.

- Rob Ferguson examines how the Ontario Libs' election financing legislation is set up to benefit nobody but themselves. And it still amazes me that a review process started as a response to a government pay-for-access scandal is clamping down on other parties' activities while doing nothing about that issue.

- Finally, Katharine Hayhoe lists just a few of the ways in which climate change stands to affect our health.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Reuters reports on Tidjane Thiam's recognition that inequality and underfunded education likely played roles in the Brexit vote's outcome. And David Blanchflower rightly argues that the UK will need economic stimulus in the wake of the vote - though I'd be less optimistic as to the prospect of it being provided in light of the corporatist dogma of the current government.

- James Wilt challenges the claim that we should let oil barons off the hook for climate change and instead place the blame on everybody as consumers of fossil fuels:

(I)n addition to ignoring technological alternatives (public transit, geothermal heating, passive solar homes) and other ways of living life (Indigenous land-based communities or inner-city attempts at minimalism like No Impact Man), such visual rhetoric implies that oil and gas companies simply provide the goods that people demand to maintain their “average” lifestyles.

But it wasn’t “average” North Americans who knowingly spread climate misinformation, funded climate denying organizations, leased record amounts of land to oil and gas companies, invested in highways over public transit, created and maintained subsidies to fossil fuel companies and promoted the construction of pipelines and export facilities that will neutralize any emissions reductions made in other sectors.

“We live in a society in which responsibility for everything is being offloaded onto the individual,” says William Rees, professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia and originator of the “ecological footprint analysis.” “It’s this ‘there’s no such thing as society.’ That’s just not true. The real things, the real game-changers here, would be regulations imposed by government.”

But the “we” rhetoric  conveniently ignores the incredible access that oil and gas companies have to government via ongoing lobbying efforts.

For instance, since the Liberals were elected in October, Suncor has met with federal officials 54 times, including three times with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Imperial Oil and Shell Canada have contributed an additional 37 and 38 meetings, respectively.

Industry organizations have also done their fair share of lobbying, including the Petroleum Services Association of Canada (52 meetings), Canadian Gas Association (45 times), the Canadian Energy Pipelines Association (44 meetings) and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (36 meetings).

Most Canadians simply don’t have that kind of pricey access to pressure governments to shape policies. Nor can many throw large amounts of money at political parties during campaigns or pay thousands for exclusive access to premiers at fundraisers.

- Meanwhile, Adrian Morrow uncovers the identities of the donors paying for access to Kathleen Wynne. And CBC reports on Justin Trudeau's stay at "summer camp for billionaires".

- Jim Pugh makes the case as to how a basic income would be better for business than perpetual insecurity. And Steven Greenhouse examines the move toward organization among on-demand workers.

- Finally, Victoria Wiebe discusses the need to better coordinate primary health care and mental health resources.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Carolyn Ferns writes that a long-awaited child care program would represent the best possible Mother's Day gift for Canadian families.

- Danyaal Raza and Ritika Goel remind us how housing affects a wide range of health issues. And Matthew Yglesias looks into the positive effect of new low-income housing on all types of neighbourhoods - but particularly poorer ones which otherwise lack for new development of any kind.

- Meanwhile, Kenyon Wallace and Mary Ormsby report that Ontario is just now getting around to systematically tracking the deaths of homeless people.

- Judith Lavoie reports on British Columbia's woefully inadequate mining enforcement within a ministry tasked with promoting the same industry it's supposed to be regulating. And Charlie Smith reports that Christy Clark's government has no intention of recognizing any responsibility for that utter neglect of the public interest.

- Finally, Andrew Coyne compares Kathleen Wynne's (however belated and partisan) eventual recognition of the problem of big-donor influence to Clark's continuing corporate cesspool. And Tom Parkin highlights the need for the Trudeau Libs to implement greater accountability and electoral reform before falling into the bad habits of a government accustomed to shutting out the public out of convenience.

New column day

Here, on how political fund-raising scandals in Ontario and British Columbia only highlight the complete lack of rules governing donations in Saskatchewan.

For further reading...
- SCOTUS' Citizens United decision is here (PDF). And Michael Hiltzik discussed its effect after the fact, while Charles Wohlforth offered a personal view on how fund-raising affects political decision-making.
- Martin Regg Cohn broke the news about Ontario's fund-raising quotas for cabinet ministers here. And Adrian Morrow followed up by exposing both a fund-raiser closely tied to the Hydro One privatization's beneficiaries, and the connection between corporate subsidies and donations.
- Meanwhile, Gary Mason reported on Christy Clark's five-figure access fees. And the CP reported on the dividing line between the B.C. Libs who want to keep the status quo as long as they can, and the NDP which is pushing for limits.
- The Globe and Mail's series on money and politics featured a column on Saskatchewan's particularly outdated rules governing political donations. And Tammy Robert has been reviewing the current state of donations in Saskatchewan.
- Finally, the CP surveys fund-raising rules across Canada. And Duff Conacher points out that any province looking to remove big-money donations from its political system will find a prime example in Quebec.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Emily Dugan writes about the Equality and Human Rights Commission's finding that young UK adults are facing the worst economic prospects of the last several generations. And Betty Ann Adam reports on Charles Plante's work on the value of a living wage, both for employers and society at large.

- Sutton Eaves wonders why climate change wasn't a defining issue in Canada's federal election. And Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis highlight the urgent need for an activist push for progress now.

- Lindsay Hines and Cindy Karnett report on the B.C. Libs' culture of secrecy, including their either destroying or falsely denying the existence of documents surrounding their unfair firing of eight researchers. And Ashley Csanady points out the Wynne government's breach of confidentiality on the first report ever delivered by Ontario's Financial Accountability Office.

- Speaking of which, that report is far from the only source rightly slamming the Wynne Liberals for refusing to listen to reason when it comes to their foolish selloff of Hydro One, with Thomas Walkom and the Star's editorial board both speaking out on that front as well.

- Finally, Patrick McGuire reveals that expectations as to confidentiality are rather different when it comes to information being demanding by the government - as the federal government not only demanded that Vice's protected journalistic material be handed over, but slapped a gag order on Vice to prevent it from reporting what had happened. And Ian MacLeod reports that it isn't just journalists who have reason to worry, as the Libs are making noises about using the secret CSIS disruption powers passed under C-51.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Jennifer Wells writes about the drastic difference in pay between CEOs and everybody else. And Henry Farrell interviews Lauren Rivera about the advantage privileged children have in being able to rely on parents' social networks and funding rather than needing to learn or work for themselves:

One of your most counter-intuitive arguments is that students from working class and lower-middle class backgrounds are less likely to get elite jobs, because they concentrate on studying rather than their social life at college. That’s the opposite of what the conventional wisdom would suggest. How does these students’ devotion to academic seriousness hurt their job prospects?

LR – Working and lower-middle-class children are less likely to participate in structured extracurricular activities than their more privileged peers while growing up (and when they do, they tend to participate in fewer of them). This hurts their job prospects in two ways. First, it affects the types of schools students attend. Elite universities weigh extracurricular activities heavily in admissions decisions. Given that these employers—which offer some of the highest-paying entry-level jobs in the country—recruit almost exclusively at top schools, many students who focus purely on their studies will be out of the game long before they ever apply to firms. Second, employers also use extracurricular activities, especially those that are driven by “passion” rather than academic or professional interest and require large investments of time and money over many years, to screen résumés. But participation in these activities while in college or graduate school is not a luxury that all can afford, especially if someone needs to work long hours to pay the bills or take care of family members. Essentially, extracurriculars end up being a double filter on social class that disadvantages job applicants from more modest means both in entering the recruiting pipeline and succeeding within it.

- In a similar vein, the Economist examines the high costs of living in poverty. And Justin Kong points out how an improved minimum wage would go a long way toward providing needed income security.

- Daryl Copeland discusses how the Cons have trashed Canada's reputation on the international stage, turning us from a productive partner into a pariah. And Derek Stoffel reports on how the tarnished perception of Canada as a country is extending far beyond the diplomatic sphere.

- Thomas Walkom writes that Ontario voters may learn a lesson from the political scene as Kathleen Wynne, one of the main faces of the federal Libs, collapses under the weight of scandals and broken promises.

- Finally, Alice Musabende raises the concern that Canada's political parties are being too quick to pull candidates over minor controversies.

On balanced options

Dave McGrane offers a historical perspective on how deficits for their own sake shouldn't be seen as an element of left-wing or progressive policy, while Excited Delerium takes a look at the policies on offer in Canada's federal election to see how it's possible to pursue substantive progressive change within a balanced budget. But let's examine more closely why it's wrong to draw any equivalence between the Trudeau Libs' platform, deficits and progressive policies (despite their frantic efforts to pretend there's no difference between the three).

Taking the Libs at their word, their current plan is to engage in deficit spending over the next few years, then balance the budget by 2019. So to the extent one might be inclined to prefer a measure of fiscal health other than balanced budgets (such as keeping debt at a stable proportion of GDP), the Libs aren't offering that choice - only a delayed return to balance, with the additional money spent in the meantime being necessarily limited to short-term projects. 

And once the budget is balanced, the Libs are attacking the very idea of national programs such as the NDP's child care plan - which is designed to fit within balanced budgets while actually building a substantial new social benefit in the longer term.

Fortunately, we don't need to look far to see the Trudeau philosophy in action, as his leading provincial proxy is offering up exactly the mix of unfocused short-term infrastructure spending, privatization in the name of false economies and cuts to actual programs implied by the federal Libs' platform. 

The contrast between the NDP and the Libs then represents a classic case of long-term planning with permanent returns, versus instant but fleeting gratification. And Canadian progressives who have seen the Harper Cons deliberately inflict long-term damage on our federal institutions should be wary of settling for the latter.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Laurie Penny argues that Jeremy Corbyn's remarkable run to lead the Labour Party represents an important challenge to the theory that left-wing parties should avoid talking about principles in the name of winning power - particularly since the result hasn't been much success on either front.
- Trevor Pott discusses Canada's popular backlash against an unaccountable and security state, particularly when it's deployed primarily to silence dissenting political views.

- Bruce Johnstone writes that contempt for the law is par for the course from the Harper Cons. And Bruce Livesey reports on one of the Cons' latest batch of hand-chosen economic advisers - whose qualifications consist of lying about her past to take a position with a scandal-plagued energy company with a regular history of consumer and regulatory abuses.

- Murray Mandryk points out that the Cons' angry, old base - as epitomized by Earl Cowan - figures to be a hindrance rather than a help in trying to win over swing voters. But as Bruce Campion-Smith notes, the Cons may be counting more on limiting opposition voters' access to the polls than on actually earning support.

- Finally, the Star's editorial board chastises Kathleen Wynne for her ill-advised attacks on Tom Mulcair. And Dan Darrah examines Justin Trudeau's choice to complain about the NDP's progressive policies instead of presenting any meaningful plans of his own.