- Tavia Grant writes that at least one region of the globe - Latin America - is seeing some real progress in combating inequality. And the World Bank has some ideas to keep up the momentum:
The bank still sees room for improvement. It recommends governments incorporate the goal of equal opportunity into public policy and make further reforms to strengthen the social protection system.- Back in Canada, it's another week, another finding of pollution caused by the tar sands and covered up by the Harper Cons. Not to mention a concerted effort to exploit foreign labour to ensure Canadians can't find good jobs. Nothing to see here. Enjoy your publicly-funded propaganda campaign.
It also urges governments to break the “vicious cycle” of low taxation and low quality of public services, by using some of the region’s commodity windfall to improve public services.
- Though Jeffrey Simpson does maintain enough residual faith in the prospect of making improvements to suggest that a national drug plan for seniors is in order. And Lawrence Martin is downright Pollyannaish in suggesting the Harper Cons might recognize that a judicial finding of electoral fraud might cast their legitimacy into enough doubt to require a federal election.
- Finally, Stephen Whitworth doesn't see much more reason for optimism at the provincial level:
(O)ne gets the distinct sense that Saskatchewan’s current leadership class have no vision, no imagination, no appreciation for the arts and no respect for the great things about this province’s history.
I submit that everything cool is getting kicked because in general, the business class and its toady politicians are ashamed of Saskatchewan’s historic achievements, which really, all come from the political left: health care, crown corps, arts boards and the co-operative sector. All that stuff really did make this place better but our conservative-types didn’t build it (actually, they fought it every step of the way) so they have to dismantle it. Because if they can’t have a legacy, NO ONE gets a legacy.
I mean, we’re in a boom and we’re starving our universities for funding? What a joke. I thought Saskatchewan was a have-province.
