Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Ziyad Al-Aly offers a reminder of the immense body of evidence showing that COVID-19 leaves a lasting impact on the brain. And Hannah Devlin reports on new research on the sustained impact of "brain fog" in particular. 

- Ryan Meili writes about the syndemic effects of communicable diseases and poverty. And Scott Santens exposes the billionaire-funded campaign to prevent local governments in the U.S. from alleviating poverty through basic income projects. 

- Drew Anderson examines the absurdity of Danielle Smith's ban on clean energy, as the same government pushing through open-pit coal mining on the side of mountains declares that renewable energy will be stifled in the name of "pristine viewscapes". And Jason Wang writes that the attack on renewables is contrary to any desire to keep utilities affordable, while Duane Bratt points out that it's also irreconcilable with any interest in economic efficiency. 

- Meanwhile, Anderson also notes that the nasty surprises in the UCP's budget include making Alberta the latest province to target a specific tax toward emission-free vehicles, confirming their desire to subsidize carbon pollution. And Graham Thomson observes that the UCP is managing to break promises and defy belief by simultaneously imposing austerity, borrowing more and relying more heavily on one-time resource royalties. 

- Finally, Andrew Gregory reports on new research into the large number of health risks from ultra-processed foods 

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Scott Santens writes about the flaw in markets which fail to distinguish between goods and services which lack value, and those which people lack the money to acquire through the market.

- Lisa Cox reports on new research suggesting that the harm we've already done to our planet's climate may be twice as severe as previously assumed. And Bora Plumptre examines how Canada's emission reductions in other sectors have been - and will continue to be - almost entirely outweighed by additional carbon pollution from the oil and gas sector.

- Meanwhile, Nora Loreto contrasts the willingness of Canadian governments to pour billions into moving diluted bitumen for export against their stinginess in ensuring people are able to travel within Canada.

- On that front, Pam Palmater weighs in on the importance of transportation as a means for Indigenous people to protect themselves and their families. And Alexandra Collins highlights how a lack of available housing perpetuates cycles of violence against poor women.

- Finally, Reinhart Reithmeier and Peter Love point out why we need our political leaders to understand the value of science. And the Western Producer calls out Jason Kenney for ignoring the evidence favouring safety protections for agricultural workers.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Kenan Malik reminds us of the ongoing importance of unions in fighting for fairness and equality. Frank Witsil reports on a push to rebuild labour strength in the service sector in the U.S, while Cole Stangler points out that U.S. youth have a significantly more favourable view of unions than of corporations. But Molly Gott and Derek Seidman document the attempt by the Republicans and their backers to undermine the strength of any public-sector education system and the teachers who work within it.

- Sam Pizzigati suggests using public purchasing power to encourage fairness within corporations as a way to rein in income inequality. And Philip Mattera studies (PDF) the systematic theft of wages by U.S. employers.

- Scott Santens discusses the potential for a basic income to spur creativity and innovation by reducing the downside of personal risk-taking.

- Anne Casselman comments that environmental disaster is becoming increasingly common due to a lack of climate change action and preparedness.

- Finally, Tera Hunter examines the U.S.' long history of child-snatching - which again remains an ongoing problem in Canada as well.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Sarah Anderson studies how corporate tax cuts enrich CEOs, but don't do anything to help workers. And she then follows up with this op-ed:

If claims about the job-creation benefits of lower tax rates had any validity, these 92 consistently profitable firms would be among the nation’s strongest job creators. Instead, we found just the opposite.

The companies we reviewed had a median job-growth rate over the past nine years of nearly negative 1 percent, compared with 6 percent for the private sector as a whole. Of those 92 companies, 48 got rid of a combined total of 483,000 jobs.

At the companies that cut jobs, chief executives’ pay last year averaged nearly $15 million, compared with the $13 million average for S&P 500 companies.

Instead of tax-rate cuts for these big corporations, the coming tax debate in Congress should focus on making wealthy individuals and big corporations pay their fair share.

American multinationals hold $2.6 trillion in profits “offshore,” on which they would owe $750 billion in federal taxes if the money was repatriated. In most cases, these foreign profit stashes are merely an accounting fiction. Companies retain full access to these funds for use in the United States and could, if their executives so chose, use them to create jobs here.

Ordinary Americans have to pay all the taxes they owe each and every year. Offshore corporations should be required to do the same.

- Meanwhile, Bryce Covert points out how the Amazon-Whole Foods takeover - like other unchecked corporate consolidation - can be expected to harm workers in the long run.

- Jerry Dias discusses how NAFTA served to convert desirable jobs in Canada (and the U.S.) into exploitative ones in Mexico. But Sean Higgins reports that it's the Trudeau Libs who are fighting to preserve corporate-biased dispute resolution systems which have been used mostly to challenge Canadian governments.

- Scott Santens reminds us of the devastating ripple effects of personal financial insecurity which could be solved with a basic income. And Frances Ryan writes about the UK Cons' thoroughly inhumane policy of punishing people for being too ill to report for social services appointments.

- Finally, Selena Randhawa talks to Indigenous people about the suicide epidemic among First Nations youth and the hopelessness which drives it.

Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Christo Aivalis offers some suggestions for a set of progressive and effective tax policies:

My view is that the Left has to combine the general philosophy of economic redistribution with the practical needs of getting the money to preserve existing social programs and build new ones. We have to make greater peace with forms of taxation that are currently deemed regressive, because they can offer efficient paths to revenue collection. This doesn’t mean, however, that we can’t also explore means to make existing tax models more progressive.
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My suggestion is that we could consider raising sales taxes by a few percentage points, but increasing the maximum income at which one can access a GST/HST rebate. And to ensure that very low-income Canadians are not unduly shocked by increased sales taxes, you can make the payouts larger and more frequent than the quarterly payments we have now.
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Seldom discussed today is the 1966 Carter Report on Taxation, which concluded that the government did not tax all forms of income equally; that you paid more tax on income earned through labour than income earned through capital gains. Carter’s suggestions—which were strongly supported by labour and the NDP at the time, and mused about by Brian Topp in recent years — was that all income be taxed on a buck-is-a-buck basis, meaning that if you made $50,000 selling stocks, you would pay the same tax as you would making $50,000 working. But despite the importance of this report, the buck-is-a-buck principle never became reality. As it stands, income made from investments and capital gains has an exemption level and, even after this, is taxed at only half the rate of labour-based income.

The Left should commit to the buck-is-a-buck principle, both ideologically, and because it is an effective tactic to shift a tax burden onto the sorts of people who typically make more than negligible incomes on investments and capital gains. Of course, some exemptions could still persist which protect selling a family home or dealing with small inheritances. And some potential pitfalls exist with this suggestion in our current tax code, as do some complications when we consider things like RRSP, RESP and TFSA accounts. Still, a system where flipping stocks for $100,000 nets you significantly lower taxes than working isn’t one conducive to progressive taxation, and could be addressed via a tax policy that has an effective populist edge that seeks a fair deal for Canadians who earn the vast majority of their income through work, unlike the “boys on Bay Street.”

- And Scott Santens notes that to the extent income gains are disproportionately being enjoyed by capital rather than labour, we should be particularly interested in pursuing opportunities to increase the public revenue taken in from that income.

- Martin Regg Cohn discusses the political hot potato that is health care funding - though we should expect the politics to be second to a commitment from all levels of government to the availability of effective care.

- Gordon Price writes about the "phantom affordability" of housing which places massive transportation burdens on commuters.

- Henry Fountain and John Schwartz discuss the latest evidence that global warming has taken hold to an extent exceeding the worst fears of climate scientists. And Kiley Kroh points out John Holdren's suggestions as to how subnational governments can lead the fight against climate change even as the likes of Donald Trump take power at the national level.

- Finally, Rick Smith argues that in addition to offering the promise of far more fair and democratic elections, proportional representation could also substantially improve our governance.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Cindy Blackstock offers a reminder of Canada's long and shameful history of discrimination against First Nations children. And Donna Ferreiro takes a look at some of the faces of the Sixties Scoop which saw Indigenous children separated from their families due solely to racial and cultural prejudice.

- Matt Apuzzo, Sheri Fink and James Risen document the mental scars left behind by the U.S.' torture program under the Bush administration. And Neil Strauss offers a contrast between the increasing use of the politics of fear, and the decreasing real-world justification for the political spin:

Around the globe, household wealth, longevity and education are on the rise, while violent crime and extreme poverty are down. In the U.S., life expectancy is higher than ever, our air is the cleanest it's been in a decade, and despite a slight uptick last year, violent crime has been trending down since 1991. As reported in The Atlantic, 2015 was "the best year in history for the average human being."

So how is it possible to be living in the safest time in human history, yet at the exact same time to be so scared?

Because, according to Glassner, "we are living in the most fearmongering time in human history. And the main reason for this is that there's a lot of power and money available to individuals and organizations who can perpetuate these fears."

For mass media, insurance companies, Big Pharma, advocacy groups, lawyers, politicians and so many more, your fear is worth billions. And fortunately for them, your fear is also very easy to manipulate. We're wired to respond to it above everything else. If we miss an opportunity for abundance, life goes on; if we miss an important fear cue, it doesn't.

"The more we learn about the brain, the more we learn it's not something that's supposed to make you happy all the time," says Andrew Huberman, a Stanford neurobiology professor who runs a lab studying fear. "It's mostly a stress-reactive machine. Its primary job is to keep us alive, which is why it's so easy to flip people into fear all the time."

In other words, our biology and psychology are as flawed and susceptible to corruption as the systems and politicians we're so afraid of. In particular, when it comes to assessing future risks, there is a litany of cognitive distortions and emotional overreactions that we fall prey to.

- Meanwhile, Scott Santens argues that one of the most important functions of a basic income may be to turn down the amount of fear and stress people experience a a result of income insecurity.

- Cassie Werber highlights the World Economic Forum's conclusion that greenhouse gas emissions can be decoupled from growth, while Andrew Nikiforuk discusses Robyn Allan's study showing the Trudeau Libs are relying on flawed advice to the contrary. And Rick Smith offers a hopeful take that Canada may be turning the corner in acting to fight climate change - though I'd caution there's a difference between recognizing the right direction, and generating the necessary momentum to reach a destination.

- Finally, Margaret McGregor and Lisa Ronald question why Christy Clark's B.C. Liberal government is insisting on inferior, for-profit senior care rather than allowing for public facilities.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Owen Jones discusses the importance of the labour movement in ensuring that workers can get ahead in life, rather than drowning in debt:

Nights spent staring at the ceiling as worries dance manically around the brain. Taking a deep breath before opening the gas bill. Sacrificing a hot meal so your children don’t need to. Living with personal debt can be draining and emotionally exhausting, and it is the everyday experience of all too many Britons. According to a new TUC report, 3.2m British households face problem debt, meaning they spend more than a quarter of their overall income repaying unsecured borrowings (ie, excluding mortgages). For 1.6m households in extreme debt, the picture is even bleaker: more than 40% of their income goes to creditors.

This is the lived experience of Britain’s working poor, those who keep the country ticking with their hard graft and are rewarded with poverty and insecurity. British workers have suffered the longest fall in wages since Queen Victoria sat on the throne. Between 2007 and 2015, real wages fell by an astonishing 10.4% - the worst fall in any advanced nation other than Greece. Growing personal debt is the price many British workers have paid for the disastrous economic failure of George Osborne and his colleagues – one of whom is now the nation’s prime minister.
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In Nordic countries, it is the norm for workers to be unionised. Better living standards and more equality than we have in Britain are two of the byproducts. Jeremy Corbyn – near-certain to be re-elected Labour leader next month – has unveiled policies such as compulsory collective bargaining for companies with more than 250 workers. Such an approach would help lift the wages of workers, not only for their own good, but for the good of the British economy, too. But the positive case for trade unionism cannot just be left to politicians: it needs to be made by all of us. It needs to be put in a language that resonates with the millions of non-unionised workers, and particularly for younger people for whom the very notion of trade unionism seems culturally alien. Personal debt is a blight in modern Britain – and trade unionism is one of its cures.

- And PressProgress highlights how Canada's youth are also facing an unprecedented combination of large debt and minimal employment opportunities.

- Tom Parkin notes that under the Trudeau Libs, Canada's real economy isn't keeping up with the "like economy" - and that we need strong government action to improve matters at all. And the New York Times' editorial board highlights the role an affordable child care system can play in improving outcomes for parents and children alike.

- Scott Santens surveys a UK review as to how means-testing can create fatal holes in a social safety net. But Noah Zon raises some important questions as to whether a basic income represents the best way to strengthen our social supports.

- Johnny SanPhillippo points out that poverty and precarity are important factors shaping individual well-being even in the areas (mostly suburbs) which are all too often considered to be immune.

- Finally, Brooke Harrington discusses the utter futility of expecting any positive social or economic outcomes from tax haven status. 

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Alison Griswold points out how little systemic information we have about the growing gig economy. And both Scott Santens and Richard Reeves make the case for a basic income to provide financial security where an increasingly precarious labour market won't.

- Meanwhile, Branko Milanovic argues that we may be approaching a reversal of the trend toward inequality - but that if we don't get there through peaceful politics, it may take a major shock like wide-scale war:

The pro-inequality trends will be very hard to overturn during the next generation, but eventually they may be – through a combination of political change, pro-unskilled labour technological innovations (which will become more profitable as skilled labour’s price increases), dissipation of rents acquired during the current bout of technological efflorescence, and possibly greater attempts to equalise ownership of assets (through forms of ‘people’s capitalism’ and workers’ shareholding).  

Now, these are of course the benign factors that, I think, will ultimately set inequality in rich countries on its downward path. But history teaches us too that there are malign factors, notably wars, in turn caused by domestic maldistribution of income and power of the elites (as was the case in the World War I), that can also do the job of income levelling. But they do it at the cost of millions of human lives. One can hope that we have learned something from history and would avoid this destructive path to equality in poverty and death.

- PressProgress highlights the Libs' plans to break their promise to close a stock option loophole. And Steven Chase and Robert Fife report on the compelling evidence that any armoured vehicles Canada sells to Saudi Arabia - with the Libs' approval - will be used to attack civilian targets.

- Brent Patterson summarizes a new paper on how the Trans-Pacific Partnership could limit Canada's ability to preserve and manage its fresh water. And Marc Jaccard writes that a full plan to deal with environmental issues such as climate change needs to include regulation alongside "market" solutions.

- Finally, Simon Enoch exposes the Saskatchewan Party's complete failure to do their homework on the costs of privatizing liquor retailing.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Scott Santens discusses how a basic income could help to foster social cohesion. And Jared Bernstein confirms the seemingly obvious point that properly-funded social programs work wonders in reducing poverty.

- Bill Curry reports that activist groups are seeking answers about what their much-hyped "social infrastructure" will actually include. And Tom Parkin is rightly concerned that lower-income Canadians aren't on the Trudeau Libs' radar.

- Thomas Walkom writes about the danger that the Libs will severely harm Canada's public sector in response to economic stagnation. And Karl Nerenberg reminds us how much needs to be done just to reverse the damage done by the Cons - assuming Trudeau actually wants to change anything in substance.

- Thom Hartmann comments on the role corporate greed played in California's giant methane leak. And Sarah Lazare reminds us that even if we set aside the cartoon villainy of the likes of Martin Shkreli, price gouging is the norm within the pharmaceutical sector.

- Meanwhile, Yessenia Funes talks to Stephen Bezruchka about the health problems caused by inequality at all points on the income spectrum.

- Finally, Andrew Coyne provides a response to the first-past-the-post apologists who think there's nothing wrong with a political system designed to hand absolute power to parties supported by a minority of voters:

How about this: in a democracy, each person’s vote should count for as much as every other. This strikes me as one of the core promises of democracy. Universal adult suffrage — “one person, one vote” — is a foundational principle of every modern democratic state. And yet, while it is true that every adult citizen can vote in Canada, it is demonstrably not the case that every vote counts equally.
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The issue here is not fairness among the parties. Rather, it is the unequal treatment of different voters that represents a fundamental breach of the democratic promise.

Notice also the source of that inequity. The present system rewards parties that can bunch their votes geographically, compared to parties whose support is more evenly distributed, since only the party with the most votes in each riding is represented. So parties that take an aggressively regional approach to politics — as Reform and the Bloc did — benefit disproportionately, at the expense of parties with a broader national outlook.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Roderick Benns interviews Scott Santens about the effect of a basic income:

Benns: Why is the concept of a basic income guarantee so important at this point in our societal development?

Santens: We’re living in a paradox of absurdity, where we’ve created truly incredible levels of technology, growing at exponential rates, and yet we’re not using it to propel our civilization forward. Technology has from the moment the first tool was ever created, been intended to reduce human labour and enable us to do so much more than we ever would without it. And yet here we are working 47 hours a week instead of 40, and working nine hours a day at the office despite not actually working for four of them. We’re encouraging people to work in jobs they hate instead of doing work they love. We’ve increased the risks of failure, putting a counterproductive brake on innovation. We’re increasing inequality, hampering our economies. We’re reducing bargaining power by decreasing the ability to say no. And we’re replacing human workers with technologies that don’t buy anything. None of this makes any sense if our goal is for technology to work for us instead of against us. So let’s do that instead.

- Don Braid explains why it's taken an NDP government to provide Alberta's farm workers with protections they've lacked for a century. And Ben Spielberg and Jared Bernstein offer a fact check against the U.S. Republicans' hostility to a reasonable minimum wage.

- Murray Dobbin considers the Trans-Pacific Partnership to be a test of Justin Trudeau's willingness to offer meaningful change from the Harper Cons. But PressProgress points out that there's a real question as to whether the Libs are even willing to allow for the public debate they've promised. And Duncan Cameron notes that we don't seem to be getting much but conservative economic philosophy from the Libs.

- Laura Best explains why Canada should have little trouble meeting its commitments to assist Syrian refugees. And Remzi Cej discusses how he'd describe Canada to newcomers looking to escape war and poverty - offering a standard we should absolutely work to meet.

- Finally, David McGrane recaps a conference honouring the memory and work of Allan Blakeney by setting out a few of the challenges we need to meet in order to be able to claim a functioning democratic political system.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Scott Santens rightly notes that even if every single person without a job was willing to accept absolutely anything, we have no reason to expect job markets to make enough work available to support a livelihood for everybody:

(T)here are more unemployed people than jobs available across each sector of the job market, even including health care, and that one's considered practically a slam dunk at this point in terms of finding employment.

There are simply not enough jobs for everyone to have a job all at the same time.

Doesn't this sound kind of familiar? This idea that we walk around and around looking for something along with others looking for the same thing, only to find that some, and possibly even us, must in the end be excluded from what we seek?

It sounds like a game we all played as kids...

The job market is actually a game of musical chairs.

There is however a key difference between a game of musical chairs and the way our job market works, and that's that when the music stops in musical chairs, the winner is sitting while the loser is just left standing. But because the only way to gain access to the resources we need to survive is through the earning of income, those unable to earn an income aren't just left standing. They are left in poverty. And poverty hurts.

So now let's imagine a game of musical chairs played on a hot bed of coals. There are 10 people and 5 chairs, the same ratio as exists right now in 2015. Everyone is hopping around trying not to get burned, when the music stops. Five people are rewarded with security from pain, and five people begin to burn.

- Ella Bedard examines the demographic shifts within the union movement over the past few decades. And Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig describes the massive benefits the workers who form part of the movement earn through collective bargaining.

- Meanwhile, Nicole Charky discusses how just-in-time scheduling places massive burdens on workers to serve the sole purpose of expanding corporate profit margins. And Ethel Tungohan looks at human rights abuses by an Ontario employer as yet another example of the dire need for change in Canada's use of temporary foreign workers.
 
- Josh Hoxie points out that calls for austerian belt-tightening invariably seem to leave plenty of money to be showered on those who already have the most. And LOLGOP comments on the grossly outsized influence the wealthy few exert on U.S. politics.

- Finally, Leehi Yona calls out the Cons' continued climate negligence going into the U.N.'s next set of climate change negotiations, while Scott Vrooman suggests we should stop being so polite about the issue. Crawford Kilian reports on the scientific case to stop new tar sands developments. And Andrew Nikiforuk observes that Alberta is now among the many jurisdictions facing an increased danger of earthquakes due to fracking.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Lana Payne writes that the great Canadian revenue debate is well underway, with far more leaders willing to push for needed taxes than in recent years:

There is new political space to talk corporate taxes again, to talk about raising them. Rachel Notley, the new NDP premier of Alberta, won on a platform that promised fair taxation, raising corporate taxes, and getting a fair share of resources for citizens.

Newfoundland and Labrador must have the same conversation and review of resource royalties.

Even the federal Liberals have realized that the tide is turning and have been forced to talk tax fairness — or their version of it. They recently released their so-called middle class tax cut coupled with a promise to cancel some of the Harper government’s tax breaks to the wealthiest. The federal NDP has also been firmly on record about tax reform and tax fairness.

The conversation is started. Let’s keep it going. The kind of Canada we want for our kids depends on it.

- Scott Santens looks at the trucking industry as a prime example of how there's plenty more automation yet to come in our economy - and how we need to ensure people can make ends meet without menial jobs which can be shed in favour of machines.

- Scott Klinger discusses the tendency of U.S. conservatives - like their Canadian cousins - to hand out free money to the wealthy while simultaneously decrying the standard of living of people who are scraping to get by.

- Tavia Grant and Janet McFarland report on the problems with payday lenders - and the efforts some cities are making to at least reduce the damage they cause to citizens. And Gillian White points out the connection between underfunded transit in poorer areas and the inaccessibility of needed services. But on the brighter side, Jim Silver and Carolyn Young observe that Winnipeg's Lord Selkirk Park housing complex offers a needed example as to how to turn neglected buildings into an again-thriving community.

- Finally, APTN reports that Bernard Valcourt knows nothing about his responsibilities for First Nations, other than that he thinks he has none. And PressProgress provides the video evidence.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Lonnie Golden studies the harm done to workers by irregular schedules. And Matt Bruening comments on how Missouri, Kansas and other states are passing draconian restrictions on benefits by trying to get the middle class to envy the poor.

- Meanwhile, Scott Santens expands on the connection between increasing automation and a basic income which could ensure that people displaced from jobs by technological advancement aren't left without a livelihood. And Sara Mojtehedzadeh talks to Guy Standing about a basic income as a means of relieving against reliance on precarious work:

What is the “precariat”?

The precariat consists of a growing proportion of our total society. It is being habituated to accept a life of unstable labour and unstable living. Often they’re unable to say what their occupation is, because what they’re doing now might be quite different from what they were doing three months ago. (They) have to do a hell of a lot of work that doesn’t get counted (i.e. job training, travel time, job applications). People in the precariat find themselves in the situation where the level of their education and qualifications is almost always higher than the sort of labour that they’re going to be able to obtain. This is the first time in history when an emerging part of our citizens are losing rights. (With) many of the benefit cuts, there is no due process. I think that leaves scope for tremendous amounts of injustice.

You warn that the precariat is also very vulnerable to poverty traps.

People in the precariat rely very heavily on money wages. You cannot apply for benefits until two weeks after you’ve lost a job, for example.The gap between losing a job can be months, not weeks or days. Now, if you think about it, that means there’s very little incentive to take a low-paying job, especially as you could then subsequently be unemployed again.

For you, a big part of the answer is a guaranteed basic income for all. Why?

In terms of social justice you could say, look — everybody should receive a dividend from the investments of past generations to give us the security to develop our capabilities. But in addition, a basic income would be a modest way of redistributing income, because we’ve got chronically unequal societies. There is no other way in which the precariat could obtain basic security.

- But Sunny Freeman notes that the Cons are in fact likely to push more Canadians into debt and other poverty traps if their false balanced budget law has any substantive effect. And Seth Klein warns against following the path toward a zombie policy whose harms are well known.

- Mike Blanchfield reports that the Cons have turned Canada into one of the most miserly countries in the world when it comes to supporting international development. And Michael Harris writes that despite hundreds of millions of dollars in ad spending trying to convince us otherwise, the Cons don't rate any better on competence than they do on ethics or values.

- Finally, Lauren Dobson-Hughes argues that an election campaign is the wrong time for civil society groups to try to influence public policy, while offering an alternate suggestion as to how the spotlight of a campaign can benefit social causes:

An election campaign should be *the* place for civil society organizations to engage. To shape public opinion, to highlight the problems we face, to represent their members, and to push candidates to prove they’re worthy our votes. It says something about the state of democracy that election campaigns are essentially, a policy discussion vacuum.

So where is the value in elections campaigns, for civil society? I’d suggest elections are a much better tool for invigorating your base, educating them and providing them with an outlet for their passions. They can attend all-candidates debates, write letters to the editor, host policy discussions amongst themselves, and identify potential champions of their issues. This is democracy in action. Its impact on political decision-making is debatable, but as a means of empowering Canadians to engage politically, it can be very effective.

And perhaps therein lies the disconnect. Civil society wants to engage in elections. They feel they have (and should have) a crucial role to play. In many cases, they are deeply involved. And yet, their involvement appears entirely unconnected to any impact.

This sounds awfully cynical. And that’s not the intent. But if you’re going to engage as a civil society organisation, do it with your eyes open.