Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Bill McKibben rightly describes the Trump regime's attacks on the entire federal regulatory apparatus as vandalism with a plan (which includes making things more wasteful in ways that serve the profit motive of corporate donors). Georgina Gustin reports on its choice to facilitate toxic forever chemicals in the U.S.' water supply as a particularly egregious example. And Veronica Riccobene and Lucy Dean Stockton report on the Republicans' choice to validate the use of artificial intelligence to allow for rent collusion and insurance claim denials. 

- Michael Tomasky calls out the absolute lack of limits on the Trump regime's corruption and inclination to abuse power. But Brian Beutler notes that the Democrats' reluctance to call out corruption when it happens is both allowing it to continue unabated, and preventing the opposition party from being seen as offering any change for the better.

- Crawford Kilian reviews Carl Zimmer's Air-borne, pointing out the readily-available opportunities to keep people healthier by keeping our air cleaner.

- Erika Morris reports on a new study showing that investments in social housing produce massive returns in dollar value alone, while also providing jobs and (of course) helping people find homes.

- Finally, Gabriela Calugay-Casuga warns that the Carney Libs' prioritization of tax baubles risks starving the federal government of resources needed to support people's health and well-being.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Jessica Glenza reports on a new survey showing that the overwhelming majority of U.S. youth are (rightly) worried about the climate crisis. Pamela Swanigan argues that an imminent existential threat needs to be met with a campaign of courage, rather than a mere invocation of hope. And Adam Hanieh reminds us that any effort to mitigate the climate breakdown in progress will be met with the accumulated wealth and clout of one of the most powerful industries on the planet - which is determined to keep up carbon pollution as usual regardless of the human cost. 

- Carl Meyer reports that Canada's federal government is set to meet its schedule in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from its own assets - making it all the more damning that private action continues to keep the country as a whole far behind schedule. And Felicity Bradstock discusses the rightful outcry against the UCP's determination to stifle clean energy. 

- Drew Anderson takes a look at the Moe government's plans to pour money into a Lake Diefenbaker irrigation scheme based solely on wishful thinking about the value of corporate giveaways (coupled with absolute denial that clean water or a healthy environment matter at all). And Geoff Leo exposes how Jeremy Harrison and the Saskatchewan Party purged a Crown corporation of whistleblowers in order to allow cronies to take it over for their own profit while neglecting to mention their multiple conflicts of interest. 

- Sheila Regehr and Ben Earle highlight the ample data showing that a basic income helps improve people's health and well-being without reducing their efforts to find work. But Kenan Malik is rightly aghast that multiple UK governments have shown more interest in pumping drugs into unemployed people in the hope it'll push them back to work than in recognizing even an ounce of human dignity. 

- Finally, Gerry McGovern is justifiably frustrated with the proliferation of junk data, while Zachary Basu points out the deliberate spreading of disinformation from Elon Musk and the rest of the alt-right. And Julia Angwin decries the TikTokification of social media as people have lost the ability to see what they value rather than what tech giants want to serve up, while Geoffrey Fowler calls out Instagram and other platforms for stifling personal political messages. 

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Daron Acemoglu highlights the dangers of a new gilded age - particularly as increasingly large concentrations of wealth are taken for merit or wisdom. Amanda Marcotte writes that anybody who actually cared about the future would seek to rein in climate change - not deny its reality like JD Vance and the rest of the right. And Emile Torres calls out the highly selective "longtermism" being used by the uber-wealthy to justify sacrificing most of humanity in the foreseeable future. 

- Meanwhile, Andre Mayer reports on the corporate conglomerates who are breaking their already-insufficient climate promises even as the climate breaks down in front of our eyes. And Amanda Buckiewicz reports on Richard Thompson's recognition that we're not moving anywhere near quickly enough to address the known harms of microplastics.

- Sam Levine reports on the employees who died after a plastics manufacturer reportedly ordered them to stay on site in the midst of Hurricane Helene. And CBC News reports on the multiple employees injured by an explosion at an Alberta oil site.

- Rupendra Brahambhatt discusses how the hype surrounding AI seems to serve little purpose other than to excuse increased energy consumption and environmental degradation. 

- Finally, Gabriela Calugay-Casuga notes that full-time work is getting harder to find - making raw job numbers an incomplete indicator of income and security.

Monday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Richard Sandbrook makes the case for a Green New Deal as combining the ambition and the feasibility needed to halt climate change. And Stewart Elgie and Kathy Bardswick argue that we can still build a cleaner climate, rather than focusing solely on trying to hide from the effects of continued breakdown. 

- But then, Bill Hare rightly notes that Australia - like Canada and other fossil fuel exporters - is severely harming the cause of climate protection by subsidizing carbon pollution that's intended to be spewed without being counted as part of any global carbon budget.  

- James Faris discusses how a shortage of housing only figures to get worse as climate impacts make existing cities uninsurable and unliveable. Geoffrey Deihl observes that the harm we've already done our living environment is causing wildfires and other effects which cancel out our modest mitigation efforts. And Lou Robinson and Angela Dewan report on CarbonPlan's research showing that most of the world will be too hot to host an Olympic Games by 2050 if we don't change course. 

- Meanwhile, Troy Farah writes that the Olympics have become a painful reminder of collective denial around COVID-19, both through highly visible impacts on the athletic events themselves and on the mass infection which inevitably follows from large crowds doing nothing to mitigate spread. 

- Finally, A.R. Moxon points out the value of making a positive case for caring for other people as the only viable counter to the well-funded spread of fascism. David Moscrop discusses the absurdity of Pierre Poilievre's attempt to paint Justin Trudeau's neoliberalism as communism in order to bring conspicuous cruelty into the middle of Canada's Overton window. And Gerry McGovern notes that one of the main effects of artificial intelligence - and one of the ones which makes it particularly appealing to the techbro right - its role in outsourcing accumulated bigotry and prejudice to machines which can be treated as neutral. 

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Armine Yalnizyan offers a warning about the spread of the tapeworm economy in which corporate profiteers wriggle their way into public services and siphon off resources.  

- Julia Velkova discusses how reliance on tech monopolists undermines the capacity to decide and deliver on social priorities. And Allen Best points out the absurdity of subsidizing massive data centres which inevitably cause environmental harm and strain on public infrastructure. 

- Andrew Nikiforuk discusses the precarious state of Alberta's water supply - and the utter lack of any government response to avert disaster. And Dana Nuccitelli writes that the tar sands are singlehandedly preventing Canada from living up to its climate commitments - while also resulting in our oil sector generating far worse carbon pollution per capita than even the U.S.'.  

- Michael Haederle points out new research finding microplastics to be present in every new human placenta. And Sandee LaMotte writes about use of predigested slurries to keep people from having their hunger fulfilled. 

- Finally, Ethan Cox exposes how the federal government has lied and withheld information about its use of private spies who are actively monitoring journalists. And Bryan Carney reports on a special report from Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne on the RCMP's systematic violations of privacy through undisclosed online surveillance. 

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- David Michaels, Emily Spieler and Gregory Wagner examine how negligent pandemic policies (even when COVID-19 wasn't being treated as a matter of general denialism) resulted in tens of thousands of worker deaths in the US alone. Olivia Man et al. find that prenatal exposure to COVID may produce severe health effects, while Mary Kekatos points out how the continued spread of respiratory viruses increases the risk of heart problems. And Nate Bear discusses why it will never be accurate to treat COVID as "just a cold".

- Oliver Milman reports on new documents showing that the dirty oil industry has had - and suppressed - warning about the damage expected from climate change since at least 1954. And Robert Jones reports on just another oil round of deceit, as oil companies in New Brunswick have been falsely claiming they're subject to higher federal regulatory requirements in order to gouge consumers. 

- Joseph Keller, Manann Donoghoe and Andre Perry write about the climate impacts of AI and other tech industries which pretend there's no cost or environmental harm from consuming immense amounts of energy. Adrienne LaFrance writes about the rise of techno-authoritarianism as the dominant ideology of the tech giants. And Thomas Germain reports on research showing that search results are becoming demonstrably worse due to the combination of increased focus on advertising dollars, and the gaming of search algorithms by spammers.  

- Cory Doctorow writes about the decades-long slumber of regulators - and the hope that they're starting to regain consciousness. And Meghan Smith highlights a few stories which illustrate the value of a right to repair taking priority over corporate control over products. 

- Finally, Rachel Donald and Tim Parrique discuss how individual-level deprivation is entirely the result of grossly distorted distribution rather than a lack of overall output - meaning that the only means to ensure people's needs are met is to focus on redistribution rather than endless growth. 

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Colin Carlson discusses why we should be treating the climate crisis as a health emergency (while also recognizing that such a thing demands urgent action rather than enforced denial). Debra Werner discusses the progress being made on at least identifying methane emissions which have previously gone undetected, while Laurie Winkless writes about the severe underreporting of pollution from the tar sands. And NASA notes that Greenland's ice sheets are in worse shape than previously recognized. 

- Meanwhile, Juliana Marino reports on the call from scientists to start monitoring the presence and effects of plastic particles in water. 

- Cory Doctorow's McLuhan lecture takes a look at how Facebook serves as the poster child for enshittification, while Luis Berumen Castro examines its application to digital products generally. 

- Finally, Dom Byrne discusses Catherine Thomas' work demonstrating the effectiveness of cash transfers in alleviating poverty, while Lise Olsen highlights the work being done by counties in Texas to implement a basic income (at least until antisocial Republican state officials stymie them based on the principle that helping people is unconstitutional). But Brandie Weikle reports that the Libs' level of ambition is limited to slightly reducing the interest people can be required to repay when trapped in a cycle of payday loans. 

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Jon Henley reports on new research showing that adopting right-wing policies does nothing to help left-of-centre parties win votes (while producing disastrous effects in shifting the spectrum of political options). 

- Laura Weiss discusses why U.S. Democrats need to acknowledge and present a plan to deal with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic rather than buying into denialism. Eric Topol calls out the decision-makers who are living in a fantasy world rather than responding to an immediate and important crisis. And Lindsay Clark highlights how the limited information now being made available shows that many countries are on the precipice of another devastating COVID wave. 

- Joy Buolamwini writes about the need for regulation to protect biometric privacy - and the dangers that either insufficient or corporate-friendly rules will leave citizens vulnerable. And David Moscrop points out the need to dismantle Canada's telecom oligopoly which had left consumers in provinces without Crown-sector alternatives to face deteriorating services and soaring prices. 

- Moscrop also writes about the continued concentration of wealth and erosion of standards of living for Canadian workers - together with the need for a policy response to end the new gilded age.

- Finally, the Eurasia Group's grim set of top risks for 2024 starts with the danger of a sharp U.S. slide away from democratic governance. And lest anybody think the spread of reality-averse politics stops at the border, Luke LeBrun exposes how the Cons are actively helping to shape and propagate outlandish conspiracy theories. 

Tuesday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Ryan Meili discusses how a blinkered focus on austerian "efficiency" and exit strategies prevents the development of care systems capable of meeting long-term needs. And Dione Wearmouth reports on the fallout from the UCP's insistence on putting performative politics over even those restrictive policy goals. 

- David Climenhaga points out that Danielle Smith's reflexive Trudeau-bashing has reached the point of actively criticizing her own government's actions where they're approved of by a federal department. And Arno Kopecky offers a reminder that it's the greed of the Cons' corporate backers - not a carbon tax which is more than fully rebated for most people - that's made life ever less affordable for Canadians. But Alan Westwood, Manjulika Robertson and Samantha Chu discuss how the experts who could better inform the public about the urgency of the climate crisis and the viability of the available solutions are being muzzled. 

- Dan Zakreski reports that the Moe government's idea of investing in supportive housing is to take over and clear out a building with over a hundred tenants so it can be flipped (presumably for a friendly developer's profit).  

- A.R. Moxom discusses how fascists use denial and both-sidesing to play the victim while avoiding answering for their eliminationism. 

- Finally, Katie Baker rightly questions how a steady stream of prosecutions of previous crypto pitchmen has had little apparent effect on people's willingness to throw money at the concept. And Cory Doctorow notes that the key question in evaluating AI isn't whether it's a bubble at all, but what type of bubble it will prove to be. 

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Derek Lynch writes about the need to recognize that humanity isn't separate from the living environment it needs to survive. Eric Ralls points out how the climate breakdown and dwindling biodiversity are part of the same crisis. And Katie Surma highlights how climate change is driving conflict and human rights abuses around the globe. 

- Kathering Cheng reports on the effects of extreme wildfires on Canadian forests - including the destruction of the seeds and soil needed to allow for regrowth. And Zhi Li, Matthew England and Sjoerd Groeskamp study the distribution of heat absorption in the oceans, finding a trend of accelerating warming.  

- Steve Hanley reports on a new study suggesting that a shift to solar power has already reached an irreversible tipping point. But that isn't stopping Danielle Smith from declaring that Alberta will remain in denial about the existence of clean energy as long as she has any say in the matter, nor the fossil fuel sector from trying to silence anybody who dares to promote responsible resource management.  

- Joan Westerberg offers up a thorough look at what's wrong with the tech world in 2023. And Cory Doctorow discusses how the capital class has sought to divide creative workers from the rest of the working class in order to facilitate their continued exploitation. 

- Finally, Luke LeBrun exposes how the Con-supported conspiracy theorist convoy lied its way into a permanent base of operations. 

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- David Adams examines the evidence that COVID-19 remains infectious far longer than assumed by politicized public health messaging. And Ted Raymond reports that Ottawa has already seen more COVID deaths in 2022 than in 2021, confirming that the end of public health protections has been disastrous even by the painfully low bar of considering fatalities alone. 

- Zak Vescera reports on Dr. Ivar Mendez' warning that diverting public money to private surgical clinics will only exacerbate the staffing shortages caused by the Moe government's disinterest in a functional health care system. And Michael Gorman reports that Nova Scotia's PCs are following the usual right-wing playbook of rank patronage in the service of the destruction of public service capacity, with two personal friends of Premier Tim Houston having been appointed to oversee the gutting of Crown corporations. 

- Noah Smith contrasts China's strategic development of technology which actually serves useful purposes against the U.S.' focus on extracting wealth from people through hype and misdirection. 

- Finally, Umair Haque discusses the need for economies to evolve in order to survive the ecological shocks which are striking with increasing frequency and intensity. And Tom Green and Stephen Thomas highlight how Canada has immense potential to develop an economy powered by zero-emission renewables.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Michela Antonelli et al. study the disease profile of post-vaccination COVID, concluding that full vaccination helps to reduce both the number and duration of symptoms. But Elizabeth Yuko points out that the result is still a significant risk of debilitating long-term conditions. And Aaron Collins offers a reminder that more effective masks are needed to limit the spread of the dominant variants. 

- Megan Molteni reports on the scenarios anticipated from the more infectious Omicron strain - with the forecasts ranging from bad to worse, while Rong-Gong Lin, Luke Money, Adam Elmahrek and Marisa Gruber report on the spike in cases and hospitalizations in California. And Winnie Byanyima highlights how wealthy countries' choice to prioritize intellectual property monopolies over the distribution of COVID vaccines has led to a far worse pandemic than necessary. 

- Larry Elliott writes that the best way to create hope for an economic revival is to push for a post-pandemic New Deal - not to cater to the financial elites who have enriched themselves through COVID and before. Nicola Penslero studies the effect of computerization in the workplace - finding that it has made lower-ranking employees far more productive without their being compensated accordingly. And Paul Prescod discusses the importance of publicly-owned broadband to ensure people have affordable access to the basic information tools required to participate in the global information economy.  

- Paula Span writes that U.S. women face a disproportionate amount of economic hardship in their senior years. And Errol Louis points out the large number of people spending their senior years in prison despite the lack of any plausible public safety rationale for keeping them behind bars. 

- Finally, Les Perreaux discusses the need for disaster mitigation to be a core principle of government decision-making - observing in particular that an honest reckoning with the cost of allowing our climate to break down may be exactly the incentive we need to limit the carbon pollution we emit in the first place. 

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Bernie Sanders and Rashida Tlaib discuss Donald Trump's holiday menu of serving the rich and feasting on the poor, while Paul Krugman comments on the cruelty of a Trump Christmas. And Nick Purdon and Leonardo Palleja tell the stories of people facing the increasing depth and breadth of homelessness in Toronto.

- Margaret McGregor and Larry Barzelai write about the amount of fracking taking place in British Columbia - and the risk it poses both locally and globally - with relatively little public attention.  Michael Barnard notes the likelihood that Canada as a whole will end up paying for Alberta's refusal to make fossil fuel polluters clean up their own mess. And Tzeporah Berman highlights the absurdity of approving massive tar sands projects while the federal government dithers in the face of a climate crisis.

- Andrew Jacobs points out the disconnect between big pharma which is making obscene amounts of money from mass-produced drugs, and the lack of resources available for anybody more interested in research than short-term profiteering.

- Joseph Bernstein discusses how our relationship with technology has developed to make us more isolated and alienated.

- Finally, Joe Sousek makes the case for UK Labour to make a decisive push for proportional representation following an election in which a party with far less than majority support will be inflicting years of suffering on the voters who opposed it.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Ernest Canning writes about the importance of treating corporatism as a specific and extreme position, rather than allowing it to define the political centre. And Norm McKee rightly argues that Canada's federal election campaign needs to include a focus on ensuring the rich pay their fair share - though he inexplicably fails to mention the NDP's plan to do just that.

- Christopher Leonard reports on Koch Industries' alarming track record of worker injuries and deaths at Georgia Pacific as it has sought to wring ever more production out of fewer and fewer exhausted employees - and the Koch brothers' determination to keep extracting immediate and unsustainable profits at the expense of workers.

- Julie Lalonde discusses the importance of working on improving our health care system to ensure Canadians receive the care we need, rather than merely being satisfied with it being less costly and dysfunctional than the U.S.'. And Eric Topal highlights the role organizing within the medical profession can play in pushing for policies which improve social health.

- The Rocky Mountain Outlook writes that the UCP's reckless combination of immediate corporate slashing and calculated uncertainty for all public services is only making life worse for Alberta's most vulnerable residents. And Tahirih Foroozan and Sarah Rieger examine Jason Kenney's choice to leave libraries in particular with doubts about their ability to operate.

- Finally, Brian Feldman observes that the apparent death of the headphone jack represents another worrisome step toward technology being proprietary rather than connected.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Daniel Drenzer reviews Joseph Stiglitz' People, Power and Profits, while noting the importance of pairing progressive policy ideas with a plan for implementation. And Laura Davison points out how Donald Trump's massive tax losses which kept him from contributing to the U.S.' public coffers involved some of the same loopholes now being exploited by the likes of Amazon.

- Melanie Marquis reports on the NDP's plans to ensure that tech giants pay their fair share. And the Canadian Press points out the reality that online monopolists are currently thumbing their noses at Canadian laws intended to protect privacy and election integrity.

- Robin Levinson-King weighs in on the use of Vancouver's real estate market for large-scale money-laundering, while Mike Smyth writes about the need for a public inquiry. And Mike Crawley reports that Doug Ford's war on facts includes concealing information about foreign buyers which would enable the public to know about similar issues in Ontario. 

- Meanwhile, Heather Boushey argues that we need to better measure income and wealth across a full population, rather than counting on top-heavy GDP and stock market indicators as a full answer to how an economy is performing.

- Finally, Lizzy Buchan reports that a strong majority of UK voters want to see sharp decreases in greenhouse gas emissions to reach zero net emissions by 2050. And Shawn McCarthy points out that two-thirds of Canadians are opposed to the right-wing provincial governments who are both refusing to implement any substantial climate policies in their provinces, and trying to prevent any action to pick up the slack at the federal level.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- David Ball reports on the movement forming in support of a Canadian Green New Deal. Kyla Tienhaara discusses how it fits into the global push for a just transition away from dirty energy and carbon pollution. And Chris Packham points out the need to put well-developed environmental ideas into action.

- Kyle Bakx discusses how the fossil fuel sector is getting away with refusing to pay its bills. And Robyn Allan highlights how the Libs' Trans Mountain bailout is handing windfall profits to the oil sector at the public's expense, while Charis Kamphuis calls out Justin Trudeau for his general tendency to do the bidding of the corporate sector.

- Bruce MacLellan writes about the need to earn and build trust in Canadian institutions which are currently seen as credible on a partisan basis if at all.

- The Guardian's editorial board weighs in on the value of education in the humanities and the dangers of a government which seeks to undermine anything of the sort. And needless to say, Doug Ford is attempting to make Ontario into an anti-academic backwater by tying funding to profit motives and dubious metrics.

- Finally, Loenid Bershidsky points out how the Czech Republic's new system of digital taxes is ensuring that tech giants contribute to the society they mine for profits.

[Edit: fixed typo, wording.]

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Sigal Samuel reports on Gary Bloch's work in prescribing secure incomes to address health problems arising out of poverty. And Murtada Haizer and Stephen Moranis point out the massive social and economic returns on investments in community housing.

- D.C. Fraser reports on the disproportionate amount of money the Saskatchewan Party is spending on maintenance for brand-new P3 schools, leaving far less funding available for publicly-owned schools which actually need it.

- The Leader-Post and Star Phoenix editorial boards rightly argue that Saskatchewan needs to treat its youth mental health crisis as an emergency rather than a minor inconvenience.

- Celine McNicholas and Lynn Rhinehart point out the efforts by U.S. Democrats to give workers a somewhat more fair change to organize to change their workplaces for the better.

- Pete Evans reports on the reality that Canada's digital economy is already larger than most industries based on exploiting natural resources.

- And finally, Andrew Stevens highlights how immigration-bashing and prejudice against minority groups threaten Saskatchewan's future.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Yves Engler writes that the Libs' SNC-Lavalin scandal represents a fully expected consequence of a foreign policy based on acquiescing in corruption:

...Trudeau went to bat for SNC after the firm had either been found guilty or was alleged to have greased palms in Libya, Bangladesh, Algeria, India, Kazakhstan, Tunisia, Angola, Nigeria, Mozambique, Ghana, Malawi, Uganda, Cambodia and Zambia (as well as Québec). A 2013 CBC/Globe & Mail investigation of a small Oakville, Ontario-based division of SNC uncovered suspicious payments to government officials in connection with 13 international development projects. In each case between five and 10 per cent of costs were recorded as “‘project consultancy cost,’ sometimes ‘project commercial cost,’ but [the] real fact is the intention is [a] bribe,” a former SNC engineer, Mohammad Ismail, told the CBC.

While the media has covered the company’s corruption and lobbying for a deferred prosecution agreement, they have barely mentioned SNC’s global importance or influence over Canadian foreign policy. Canada’s preeminent “disaster capitalist” corporation, SNC has worked on projects in most countries around the world. From constructing Canada’s Embassy in Haiti to Chinese nuclear centres, to military camps in Afghanistan and pharmaceutical factories in Belgium, the sun never sets on SNC.
...
SNC has been one of the largest corporate recipients of Canadian “aid.” The company has had entire departments dedicated to applying for Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), UN and World Bank funded projects. SNC’s first international contract, in 1963 in India, was financed by Canadian aid and led to further work in that country. In the late 1960s the firm was hired to manage CIDA offices in African countries where Canada had no diplomatic representation. In the late 1980s CIDA contracted SNC to produce a feasibility study for the Three Gorges Dam, which displaced more than a million Chinese. During the occupation of Afghanistan CIDA contracted SNC to carry out its $50 million “signature project” to repair the Dahla dam on the Arghandab River in Kandahar province ($10 million was spent on private security for the dam).
...
Even SNC’s use of bribery has a made-in-Ottawa tint. For years Canada lagged behind the rest of the G7 countries in criminalizing foreign bribery. For example, into the early 1990s, Canadian companies were at liberty to deduct bribes paid to foreign officials from their taxes, affording them an “advantage over the Americans”, according to Bernard Lamarre former head of Lavalin (now SNC Lavalin). In 1991, Bernard, the older brother to SNC Lavalin’s subsequent head Jacques Lamarre, told Maclean’s that he always demanded a receipt when paying international bribes. “I make sure we get a signed invoice,” he said. “And payment is always in the form of a cheque, not cash, so we can claim it on our income tax!”
...
As the recent scandal demonstrates — and the Financial Post noted years ago — SNC has “considerable lobbying power in Ottawa.” Placing its CEO among the 50 “Top People Influencing Canadian Foreign Policy”, Embassy magazine described SNC as “one of the country’s most active companies internationally”, which “works closely with the government.” The now-defunct weekly concluded, “whoever is heading it is a major player” in shaping Canadian foreign policy.

And, as it turns out, in shaping the way things are now done at home in Ottawa.

- Brett Christophers points out the UK's massive selloff of public land, while recognizing that the result is the loss not only of common wealth but also of uses tied to public stewardship.

- Vaughn Palmer comments on the finding of a B.C. scientific panel that the province has failed to collect even basic information about the risks posed by an environmentally-destructive and poorly-regulated fracking industry. And Robyn Allan points out why whoever wins power in Alberta's provincial election needs to come to grips with the fact that the tar sands are a declining economic sector.

- Don Pittis writes about the prospect that small communities can serve as centres for technological development in order to avoid the further congestion of urban areas.

- Finally, Corey Robin discusses the need for a challenge to neoliberalism in the economic discipline to address philosophical issues as well as policy choices.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Joe Vipond and Noel Keough highlight the gap between the global impetus to avoid climate breakdown and the narrow self-interest of the Alberta oil industry. Michael Bueckert discusses Jason Kenney's attempt to turn the government apparatus against the exercise of fundamental freedoms through boycotts. And Markham Hislop comments that violent rhetoric from Kenney and his supporters is entirely counterproductive. 

- Meanwhile, Janani Whitfield reports on the damage being done to Saskatchewan municipalities by oil and gas operators skipping their tax payments. Janis Searles Jones and Phillipe Cousteau write about the Taylor Energy oil spill which has been polluting the Gulf of Mexico for over 14 years. And Jennifer Ludden reports on the Trump administration's decision to let coal plants inflict mercury and other toxic emissions on unsuspecting citizens.

- Jennifer Keesmat argues that Canada's cities need to be designed for people rather than cars - particularly in light of the death toll piling up as vehicle traffic has been prioritized over pedestrian safety.

- Doug Cuthand writes on the potentially wide-ranging effects of a recent Ontario court decision finding that Canada's treaty obligations should be interpreted to recognize shared ownership and account for modern developments.

- Finally, Taylor Owen opines that after a year of even more outrages than usual, it's time for governments to meaningfully regulate the online platforms which currently exercise massive and unchecked power.

Thursday Evening Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Alex Boutilier discusses the glaring gap between hype and reality when it comes to tech sector jobs. And Virgina Eubanks writes about the futility of expecting miracles from algorithms in allocating grossly insufficient funding for social programs.

- Meanwhile, Dean Baker argues that if anybody should face the prospect of workfare, it's the financial-sector profiteers who enrich themselves while offering poor service managing public assets such as pensions.

- Geoffrey Stevens warns Ontario voters not to once again saddle their province with the mindset which brought them Walkerton and other avoidable tragedies. And Vjosa Isai's report on toxic chemicals in Canadian baby products should instead confirm the need for far stronger protection of the public against corporate irresponsibility.

- And Rachel Cohen discusses the findings of Alex Taborrok, a libertarian economist who wanted to prove a connection between regulations and economic stagnation - but instead demonstrated that one has nothing to do with the other:

(F)or the first time, economists could more confidently measure federal regulations over time and by industry. In theory, that would make it easier to build the case that regulations were hurting the economy.

For his first paper using the database, Tabarrok decided to analyze the effect of federal regulation on “economic dynamism”—a catch-all term referring to the rate at which new businesses launch and grow, and at which people switch jobs, lose jobs, or migrate for work. There has been a notable and somewhat mysterious decline in dynamism over the last few decades. The rate at which start-ups form is half of what it was forty years ago, the fraction of workers who bounce from one job to another—a sign of competitive labor markets—has plunged, productivity has slowed, and adult employment remains well below its early-2000 peak.

Armed with RegData, Tabarrok and Goldschlag set out to show that regulations were at least partly to blame. But they couldn’t. There was simply no correlation, they found, between the degree of federal regulation and the decline of business dynamism. The decline was seen across many different industries, including those that are heavily regulated and those that are not. They tried two other independent tests that didn’t rely on RegData, and came to the same conclusion: an increase in federal regulation just could not explain what was going on.
...
Indeed, the new paper undermines one of the most deeply held convictions of the American right, one that unites libertarians like Tabarrok with mainstream conservatives: that regulations inevitably impose “deadweight loss” on the economy and are therefore an enemy of economic growth. This idea has been a mainstay of Republican politics since the Reagan era, and the Trump administration has taken to deregulation with missionary zeal. In fact, it’s probably the policy objective that the administration has pursued most successfully—rolling back the Clean Power Plan, repealing net neutrality, freezing the fiduciary rule, and on and on.

The premise that regulations come at the expense of economic activity—that we must always make trade-offs between safety and jobs—is so pervasive that even the American left tends to accept it, defending regulations as necessary evils to promote other social goods. Yet there has never been strong evidence that these trade-offs actually exist. To the contrary, federal regulations have often driven growth and innovation, whether it’s fuel standards spurring new electric cars and solar energy, or the Dodd-Frank law causing an entirely new industry—financial technology—to appear out of whole cloth.

- Finally, Marie Burge criticizes the P.E.I. Liberals' latest efforts to avoid a fair referendum on electoral reform.