Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- James Wallace calls out the Ontario Libs' track record of consistent cuts to health care and other vital public services (with the exception of election-year promotional items). And Tom Parkin contrasts that pattern against Rachel Notley's protection of public services from the cuts threatened by her competitors.

- Meanwhile, Andre Picard writes about the need to deal with social inequalities in order to bring a long-overdue end to tuberculosis in Canada:

The rate of tuberculosis among the Inuit is 300 times higher than among Canadian-born non-Indigenous Canadians not because they are more susceptible to illness, but because they lack adequate housing, malnutrition is commonplace due to a lack of affordable food and scant employment opportunities mean too many families have trouble making ends meet.

Going forward, we cannot underestimate the size of the challenge. But the way to tackle public-health problems is with precise goals and concrete plans and, to its credit, Ottawa is taking that approach.

...

Dealing with chronic housing problems, punishingly high food prices and financial challenges in the part of Canada with the fastest-growing population is going to require much more money and visionary plans that extend well beyond tackling one disease by 2030.

TB is a symptom of social inequity. It is also an opportunity to demonstrate what reconciliation means in practical terms.

The litmus test for success will not be if the bacterium stops spreading, but whether the conditions that have allowed it to spread for so long disappear.

- Eryk Bagshaw highlights the tens of billions of dollars Australia loses every year by electing not to get full value for resource extraction.

- Finally, Laurin Liu examines the new wage gap facing young workers. And Gaby Hinsliff points out that organized labour and citizen activism is already shaping a gig economy which to date had done little but make work more precarious.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Bruce Campbell points out how Donald Trump's blind hatred toward any type of regulation can impose costs in Canada and elsewhere to the extent we're bound by trade deals which make "harmonization" an expected standard. And Pia Eberhardt recognizes that there's no point in locking ourselves into the CETA as a response to Trump's view of trade - though that excuse should ring particularly hollow given that the same voices pushing it were demanding exactly the same corporate privileges when Barack Obama was setting the U.S.' trade policy.

- Meanwhile, the Tax Justice Network highlights the latest revelations from the Panama Papers showing that thousands of U.K. intermediaries have been facilitating offshore tax evasion.

- Sheila Block examines the effects of Ontario's increased taxes on the 1%, and concludes that they substantially increased public revenues without doing anything to affect gross incomes.

- The Star's editorial board makes the case for Canada to suspend its "safe third party" agreement with the U.S. until there's some reason to think refugees are actually going to receive a fair hearing under the Trump administration.

- Finally, Tom Parkin writes that Justin Trudeau's broken promise of electoral reform was exactly what made him seem different from his failed predecessors. And Laurin Liu calls out Trudeau for using women as political cover for his most dubious choices.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Tim Harper writes about Scott Vaughan's final report as the federal environmental commissioner:

Scott Vaughan doesn’t have the profile of some of his contemporaries but as the environmental commissioner bowed out with a final report Tuesday, he reminded official Ottawa how much he will be missed.

Vaughan is leaving after five years of what he calls — in typical understatement — identifying “gaps” in the environmental policies of the Conservative government. More often than not, those gaps are more like chasms.

He also departs at a time when the environment and the economy has never been so intertwined in this country, a point he hammered home before taking his leave.

...

“We know that there’s a boom in natural resources in this country and I think what we need now, given the gaps, given the problems we found, is a boom in environmental protection in this country as well,” he said.

- Meanwhile, Aaron Wherry has some suggestions to make the Parliamentary Budget Officer more effective based on the U.S.' Congressional Budget Office. But I'm not sure there's much hope the Cons will accept "more resources" as an answer if it might cut into their advertising budget.

- The Star-Phoenix rightly called the Cons' robocall attacks against Saskatchewan's federal electoral boundaries commission "disgusting" - and just in time for the Cons to fess up only once the case had been proven against them.

- And Bill Tieleman is working on exposing the shadowy figures behind B.C.'s million-dollar corporatist media blitz.

- Finally, NDP MP Laurin Liu offers her ideas to make Parliament more effective and representative.