Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Kevin Maimann discusses how Alberta's health care system is on the brink of collapse due to a complete COVID governance failure. Zak Vescera reports on the health care workers begging Scott Moe to make some effort to avoid the same in Saskatchewan, while Yasmine Ghania reports on the people trying to do their part by getting tested who are facing unconscionable delays due to the lack of testing capacity. And CBC News reports that public support for vaccine passports is soaring in both Saskatchewan and Alberta despite provincial governments taking the side of COVID. 

- Meanwhile, in case there was any thought that the Delta variant would be the last source of further COVID waves, Kenyon Wallace reports on the spread of the Mu variant in Ontario. And Katharine Wu discusses why people who may have given up on wearing masks while being told the pandemic was over should be rethinking that course of action. 

- Amy Westervelt calls out the oil industry's "discourses of delay" as a means of pushing for continued fossil fuel extraction and avoiding the action we need to avert a climate catastrophe. And Martin Lukacs discusses how the Trudeau Libs have eagerly served Canada's oil barons while attempting to greenwash themselves and the industry. 

- But Carbon Tracker points out how anybody looking past the short term will need to reckon with the inevitability of leaving fossil fuel assets unexploited. And Adam Hoverman and Melissa Lem weigh in on the increasing calls among health care professions to end our reliance on fossil fuels.

- Finally, as we plan pandemic and energy transitions, David Beers offers a reminder of the roads that were open to us after 9/11 - and the loss we've suffered by accepting violent imperialism rather than a more caring society. 

Sunday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Kate Aronoff writes about the need for a functional and representative democracy to ensure that public demand for climate action is actually represented in policy decisions. And Seth Klein rightly proposes that the NDP (or Bloc) should take the opportunity in a minority Parliament to push the Libs to add some far stronger and earlier action to their insufficient climate accountability bill.

- Meanwhile, Avery Shannon and Naia Lee note that Vancouver offers a model for other municipalities to follow at the municipal level.

- Veronica Penney reports on new data showing that electric vehicles may already have reached the point of being less expensive than combustion models even without accounting for the environmental damage caused by fossil fuels. 

- Reuters reports that even the IMF is now urging countries to increase spending in the midst of a pandemic which is suppressing economic activity - even as our tired right-wing politicians continue to demand that we sacrifice lives on the altar of deficit reductions.

- Finally, Monia Mazigh writes that as long as Canadian governments seek to maintain a "terrorist" designation as a basis for legal distinctions, we should push for it to be applied to the Proud Boys and other purveyors of right-wing violent extremism. And Amira Elghawaby argues that people opposing the white supremacism of Trumpists on both sides of the border should have no hesitation taking up the title of "anti-fascist".

Tuesday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Adam Miller writes that it's more important than ever to protect frontline workers as the prospect of a COVID-19 vaccine approaches. Pat Armstrong and Marcy Cohen discuss what the pandemic has exposed about the need for improved standards in long-term care facilities. And Keenan Sorokan reports on the growing calls to release people from incarceration rather than confining them in outbreak zones.

- Bruce Campbell discusses how the Libs' fiscal update falls far short of what we should expect in responding to inequality and climate change. And David McKie, Declan Keogh, Charlie Buckley and Robert Cribb write about the effect a climate breakdown in progress is having on the mental health of young people.

- Anne Casselman and Michelle Theodore make the case for a universal affordable child care system - particularly as a pandemic has exposed the consequences of failing to ensure care is available.

- James Wilt interviews Mike Bagamery about Brian Pallister's attack on Indigenous sovereignty by suppressing peaceful public action.

- And finally, Anna Silman points out that the defeat of Donald Trump can't be expected to produce a return to normalcy when countless Americans have become radicalized to hate their fellow citizens.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Ahmed Sati offers some important - if belated - recognition of the need to fight against exclusionary bigotry. Jessica Davis focuses on the particular urgency in addressing right-wing terrorism. Thomas Woodley comments on the importance of having our political leaders do their job in repudiating Islamophobia - though Scott Moe for one plainly isn't up to the task. And Branko Marcetic argues that we can defeat hatred with strong public resistance.

- Rebecca Solnit points out why white supremacists' hostility toward anybody other than themselves results in contempt for our planet as well as for most of its inhabitants.

- But there's reason for optimism that nihilism isn't winning out even in the U.S., Robinson Meyer reports on a jump in public concern about climate change along with political steps to combat it. And Warren Bell notes that a younger generation is responding to ongoing delays by pushing for more responsible decisions than we've seen to date. 

- Meanwhile, Leigh Thomas also reports on broad support across OECD countries for increased taxes on the wealthy. Canadians for Tax Fairness offers its list of loopholes which should be closed in the federal budget. And Amy Bemeikis reports on a widespread call for Australia to focus on improving wages as it approaches a general election.

- Finally, Micah Uetrecht discusses how today's precarious job market can be traced back to a historical strategy to diminish the value of women's work. And Katherine Scott offers some suggestions as to what could be included in the federal budget to start closing the persistent gender gap - including child care and progressive tax reform as crucial elements.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Matt Bruenig writes that the concentration of wealth and power which is largely being attributed to crony capitalism is a natural byproduct of laissez-faire economics as well:

An economy that distributes the national income based solely on the marginal productivity of each unit of capital and labor is an economy that will still feature massive levels of inequality and poverty. This is so for three reasons:

1. Around half of the population neither works nor owns a considerable amount of capital. Their true factor income is around $0.
2. There are considerable productivity differences between different kinds of jobs, and so wage differences would also remain very high even in the absence of rent.
3. Capital is distributed extremely unevenly and so capital payments would remain very unequal even without rents.

No amount of increasing competition, trimming intellectual property rights, or lowering barriers to entry would solve these problems. More specifically, eradicating rent-seeking would not solve these problems because these problems are not caused by rents. Instead, we need a big welfare state to fix problem one, strong (“rent-seeking”) labor organizations to fix problem two, and the redistribution and socialization of capital to fix problem three.

- Ed Pilkington explores the widespread poverty already present in the U.S. And Heather Keller and Leah Gramlich discuss the massive costs of malnutrition beyond its direct impacts on health care.

- PressProgress exposes how the Harper Cons suppressed the federal government's own research into the connection between mental health issues and terrorism in order to demonize minorities instead.

- Vito Pelici reports on the decrease in public information about Ontario's power system due to privatization. And Beatrice Britneff notes that the Trudeau Libs don't seem to have much interest in appointing a replacement for Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault as her retirement looms in two weeks.

- Finally, Seth Klein, Shannon Daub and Alex Hemingway offer their suggestions to shape British Columbia's referendum on electoral reform.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Damian Carrington reports on new research showing that the actual change in temperature caused by greenhouse gas emissions may be larger than anticipated in even the most cautious forecasts to date. And Chloe Farand highlights France's plan to rein in its contribution to climate change by banning all gasoline- and diesel-based vehicles by 2040.

- Meanwhile, D.C. Fraser reports on a study (with particular reference to the Sask Party's Boundary Dam project) finding that carbon capture and storage is an utter waste of money. And it's hardly a point in the Wall government's favour that updated numbers about the unit's operation make it only five to ten times more expensive than natural gas, rather than ten to twenty as found in the study.

- David Climenhaga comments on the need for Alberta's workers' compensation system - like its counterparts elsewhere - to focus on providing benefits for injured workers, rather than denying them in order to send money back to employers.

- Tabatha Southey observes that the "Proud Boys" incident in Halifax reflects a movement of bigots seeking to avoid responsibility for their actions through a facade of jocularity. And Scott Sinclair reviews John Judis' The Populist Explosion, including his warning that the rise of toxic populism generally represents a symptom of deeper political problems.

- Finally, Thomas Walkom writes that the federal government's settlement with Omar Khadr (based on violations of his rights by Lib and Con governments alike) represents a particularly obvious example of the damage done by political fearmongering about terrorism.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- John Harris discusses the appeal of Jeremy Corbyn's tendency toward genuine conversation rather than soundbites. And Gary Younge notes that the pundit class' dismissal of Corbyn has proven to say a lot more about their faulty assumptions than about the prospects of progressive politics:

The economic crash and the austerity that followed caused a tectonic shift in our political culture; what people wanted from a centre-left party changed. But the received wisdom about electability did not. Its high priests kept insisting elections are won in the centre, without any apparent understanding that the centre can move and, in times of extreme polarisation, disappear. The pragmatists turned dogmatic; the modernisers became conservative.

But the principal problem with the notion of electability is that it is promoted on the premise that what has not been tried cannot possibly succeed. It suggests the way people see the world at any given moment cannot be changed through argument and activism and instead erects borders for what is permissible discussion and polices them determinedly. Those who dream outside those borders are utopian; those who speak outside them are fools.

The trouble is that in times of crisis, like this, the cost of thinking outside those borders becomes lower for many than the price of living within them. While received wisdom comes with no receipt, it’s always the same people who pick up the tab. A candidate who has connected domestic terrorism and foreign wars and argued for the redistribution of wealth to shore up public services has been surging. This, we were told, was not possible. It’s why, for the first time in a long time, a significant number of people are excited about an election.

We don’t know if his party will win. We will find that out on Thursday. The only way to truly know if something is electable is to fight for it and vote for it.

- Meanwhile, Steve Thrasher argues that if we face any real threat to free speech, it's the violent reaction of reactionary elements against the prospect that women and people of colour could seek to exercise it. And CBC reports on how Regina Mayor Michael Fougere and two City Councillors are seeking to stifle civil disobedience. 

- Crawford Kilian makes the case to put terrorism in perspective as an extremely small factor compared to many other causes of avoidable harm. Which makes for a needed contrast against John Ivison, who seems outraged that anybody would look behind "but terrorism!" as an excuse for an expansive and unaccountable security state.

- Finally, Jordan Press reveals how the Libs' infrastructure bank plan is intended to include having the public bear the risk of projects even as private financiers take any profits.

Tuesday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Martin Kenney comments on Canada's continuing role in "snow washing" offshore tax evasion. The Conference Board of Canada examines the massive gap between what Canada should receive in public revenues, and what's actually taken in to keep our society functioning. And Kamal Ahmed highlights how employers are avoiding their responsibilities by relabeling work relationships.

- Joe Romm points out that Donald Trump's obsession with coal power - like that of other right-wing politicians - is doomed due to the ready availability of more efficient energy sources. Andrew Nikiforuk points out the $30 billion liability for inactive wells which may be absorbed by Alberta's citizens due to the lack of any requirement for the oil sector to clean up its own messes. Carol Linnitt notes that the Libs' promised tanker ban on British Columbia's north coast is anything but. Zoe Todd reports on still more research showing the connection between fracking and earthquake activity. And Melissa Davey discusses new research showing that the impact human activity on our changing climate far outweighs any natural effects.

- Nicholas Kristof reminds us how the trumped-up threat of terrorism pales in comparison to risks we think nothing about facing every day.

- Evan Dyer reports on the Libs' plans to sacrifice national sovereignty along with travellers' privacy and security in the interest of appeasing the U.S.' irrational fears. And Stuart Trew examines the lamentable track record of cross-border deregulation which has harmed the public in Canada and the U.S. alike. So suffice it to say that Michael Harris' hope that Justin Trudeau would doing anything besides go along with Donald Trump to get along is sadly misplaced.

- Finally, Sam Wong points out that even monkeys and dogs judge humans based on how well they treat others - making it all the more bizarre that so many voter pools seem to have decided to do otherwise.

New column day

Here, on the forces competing to determine the scope and shape of Canada's security state - and why we shouldn't think it's good enough to settle for a status quo which includes needless intrusions into our civil liberties.

For further reading...
- Jim Bronskill reported here on Randall Garrison's plans to bring C-51 back before Parliament rather than letting the Libs keep delaying. And the bill establishing a closed-door parliamentary committee to review security matters (subject to full government control over both what it sees and what it reports) can be found here.
- CBC reported here on the outline of Aaron Driver's case, while Elizabeth Thompson highlighted how the system set up under C-51 failed utterly in managing an individual who was identified as a risk. And again, Murtada Hassain discussed Driver from the standpoint of the congregants of the mosque he attended.
- Finally, Bronskill also reports on the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police's resolution calling for people to be required to hand over electronic passwords. And Susana Mas reports on Ralph Goodale's response.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Paul Krugman rightly points out that it's to be expected that Republican establishment figures would line up behind Donald Trump since he shares their top priority of handing still more money to the richest few. And Emine Saner highlights how strong inheritance taxes would help connect children of privilege to the society around them.

- Meanwhile, Neil Gross comments on the decline of the U.S. union movement as a contributing factor to the rise of the xenophobic right.

- Kendall Worth makes his case for a basic income. And Ursula Huws discusses the need for our social safety to adapt to an economic where people are expected to get by without secure, full-time employment:

For workers hovering precariously on the edge of survival trying to patch together a livelihood from multiple jobs, never sure when the next piece of work or income will show up, a benefits system in which the only categories are “employed” or “seeking work” is of little help. At the same time, daytime television programmes such as Saints and Scroungers, Benefits Britain: Life on the Dole, and Benefits Street drive home the message that there is no middle ground: you are either a hardworking taxpayer, or a lazy scrounger. In times of austerity, when governments aim to save money wherever they can, this is a convenient message. But the reality is not so simple.
...
We should go back to the drawing board and develop a system that provides basic security and dignity for all while still allowing for work to be organised flexibly. One possible solution is to give everybody a basic income – a guaranteed minimum income for everyone, available as a right. This would raise the standard of living and reduce poverty among the most vulnerable, but would also allow workers to move flexibly in and out of paid work, education and care work without being subjected to the expensive, demeaning and dysfunctional inquisitorial procedures of the current benefits system that sees only the largely exclusionary categories of “work” and “claiming benefits”.

- Shaurya Taran points out a stark example of the costs of homelessness - and asks why we're absorbing both the health and human costs rather than providing needed housing.

- Finally, the Globe and Mail reminds us not to overreact to the barely-existent risk of harm from terrorism in Canada. And Murtaza Hussain points out that the example of Aaron Driver looks to have been based on a lack of psychiatric care and other social supports for a single individual, rather than any meaningful type of organization.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Hugh MacKenzie reminds us how quickly Canada's richest CEOs will exceed the income of the average Canadian worker on the year's first work day. And James Surowiecki takes a look at how the U.S.' corporate sector is fleeing any social obligations by sending profits offshore. 

- Stephen Kimber rightly slams the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies for demanding austerity which will only make a stagnant economy even worse.

- Roderick Benns suggests that Canada take the lead in developing a basic income to combat inequality at home and set an example for the rest of the world.

- Eric Doherty points out that any new infrastructure program will have significant consequences for our ability to rein in climate change - and there's reason to worry the Libs will focus on projects which make matters worse. And Evan Herrnstadt and Erich Muehlegger study (PDF) a connection between air pollution and violent crime.

- Finally, Scott Gilmore highlights the rarity of terrorist violence compared to far more significant risks:

In France, cervical cancer is seven times more lethal than terrorism, but Hollande would be ridiculed for convening a special session of parliament to address that threat. In the U.S., you are 28 times more likely to be shot by a policeman than by a terrorist. But that’s a problem the Republican primaries won’t be debating. And the murder rate in Edmonton is almost twice that in Paris. Although I suspect the pitiable school trustees lack the math skills required to decipher “homicides per 100,000 people per annum,” or the common sense to know what to do with that information.
...
In the New Year, learn to ignore the primal fears in your brain and relax. Remind yourself that you’re safe; safer than you were last year and every year before that. But remember that others, people in the Middle East and Africa, aren’t. And don’t let your politicians go on about how they’re going to protect us; demand to know what they’re doing to protect those less fortunate than us. Also, please check in with your doctor. Cancer is several thousand times more likely to kill you than a suicide bomber.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Karl Nerenberg weighs in on the Libs' choice to direct billions of dollars toward higher-income individuals, rather than working to help Canadians who need it:

The Liberals are now in power, and have just brought in a tax change that will give the most generous benefit to an elite, wealthy group.

You can call six-figure earners middle class if you like, but that would be stretching the definition. They are certainly not middle income. They are near the top. And they are definitely not the most in need.

A few, such as the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) and the now third party NDP, have called the Liberals on this choice.

The CCPA has even proposed alternatives. One is to use a tax credit, which can be more precisely targeted, rather than a tax cut for the middle bracket.

So far, its odd and unfair fiscal choice has not had much political impact on the honeymooning Trudeau government.

There is still time, however.

Let's see what happens around tax time when Canadians start to pay closer attention to how much they, and others, actually do or do not get from this much-touted middle class tax cut.

- CBC reports on Statistics Canada's latest figures showing the continued rise of personal debt compared to Canadian incomes. And Erika Shaker highlights the juggling act facing parents trying to bear the cost of child care.

- Chris Hedges writes that our exploitative economic system is effectively built on a foundation of human sacrifice.

- Denise Leduc criticizes the exclusion and marginalization of people with intellectual disabilities from the workplace. And Robert Scott counters the spin that reasonable wages are a barrier to a successful manufacturing industry.

- Finally, Neil MacDonald rightly comments that the appropriate response to terrorism is not to grant its perpetrators the fear they seek - but that it will take a concerted effort to avoid succumbing to it.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- George Monbiot discusses the inherent conflict between consumption and conservation:

We can persuade ourselves that we are living on thin air, floating through a weightless economy, as gullible futurologists predicted in the 1990s. But it’s an illusion, created by the irrational accounting of our environmental impacts. This illusion permits an apparent reconciliation of incompatible policies.

Governments urge us both to consume more and to conserve more. We must extract more fossil fuel from the ground, but burn less of it. We should reduce, reuse and recycle the stuff that enters our homes, and at the same time increase, discard and replace it. How else can the consumer economy grow? We should eat less meat to protect the living planet, and eat more meat to boost the farming industry. These policies are irreconcilable. The new analyses suggest that economic growth is the problem, regardless of whether the word sustainable is bolted to the front of it.

- And David Roberts argues that Alberta's new climate change plan is well-designed precisely because it includes measures to cut down on consumption rather than aspiring to right-wing notions of revenue neutrality.

- Adrienne Montani makes the case for a plan to reduce child poverty in British Columbia. And Leilani Farha writes that the anticipated arrival of a new group of refugees should serve as an opportunity to evaluate and improve the plight of people already living in poverty.

- Meanwhile, Thomas Walkom points out that the Libs' pattern of walking back their most immediate post-election promise to help Syrian refugees bodes poorly for the rest of their campaign commitments.

- Finally, Don Lenihan comments on the psychology of the politics of fear:

Terrorism is effective not because groups like ISIS are so powerful, but because they are so good at turning our own psychology against us. Suicide bombings fool the brain into believing an evil empire is invading our shores.
...
There is a vicious circle here that, ironically, turns us all into ISIS recruits, first, by getting us to agree to play the game by their rules; and then by drawing us deeper and deeper into its clutches. At the same time, talk of the need for ever-greater security and surveillance invades our public discourse. The politics of fear starts creeping in.

The moral is that the terrorist threat to our freedom and safety comes less from the thugs at ISIS than from ourselves. We hold ourselves hostage to a discourse of fear, then use it to sideline democracy in order to protect ourselves from the very threat we have manufactured.

On final choices

Following up on this post and some additional discussion, let's take a look at the question of what options would be available to Stephen Harper if he decided he wanted to escape a drubbing at the polls by cancelling the federal election. And fortunately, the answer looks to be "not much".

The Canada Elections Act does allows for a writ to be withdrawn, but only with some important limitations (emphasis added):

59. (1) The Governor in Council may order the withdrawal of a writ for any electoral district for which the Chief Electoral Officer certifies that by reason of a flood, fire or other disaster it is impracticable to carry out the provisions of this Act.
(2) If the Governor in Council orders the withdrawal of a writ, the Chief Electoral Officer shall publish a notice of the withdrawal in the Canada Gazette and issue a new writ ordering an election within three months after publication of the notice.
(3) The day named in the new writ for polling day may not be later than three months after the issue of the new writ.

The key point in this section is that an order to withdraw a writ is available only based on the Chief Electoral Officer's determination that it's impracticable to proceed with an election. And the limitation by "electoral district" is also likely to be significant, as it reflects an intention to account for local disasters rather than a desire for a do-over across the country.

Now, Harper might try either to claim some inherent authority to stop an election in its tracks, or to bully the Chief Electoral Officer into interpreting the provision extremely broadly. But it's doubtful that either the Chief Electoral Officer or Governor General would go along with those types of moves in the face of what the law says (particularly in the absence of any statement that discretion is reserved).

The more real danger is then that rather than using a message of fear to avoid the election altogether, he'd instead try to lean on the last issue where he's had any success turning public opinion in his favour over the last couple of years.

But the example where that's worked may limit the possibility of a repeat performance. After all, the Cons (with the Libs' support) were able to impose their own choice of limitations on rights in the name of security by passing C-51. So an actual attack or threat would only serve as an indictment of the Cons' failure to accomplish what they promised.

Alternatively, the Cons could be planning for an announcement of arrests or C-51 "disruptions" as a means of claiming success. But that would only go so far in changing the subject, particularly if the public has already tuned Harper and his party out for other reasons.

In sum, while we need to watch out for fearmongering as the last arrow in Harper's quiver, it's not clear that it will serve either as an excuse to avoid the polls or a major factor in shifting votes.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- John Thornhill talks to Mariana Mazzucato about the importance of public investment in fostering economic growth - along with the need for the public to benefit as a result:

As Mazzucato explains it, the traditional way of framing the debate about wealth creation is to picture the private sector as a magnificent lion caged by the public sector. Remove the bars, and the lion roams and roars. In fact, she argues, private sector companies are rarely lions; far more often they are kittens. Managers tend to be more concerned with cutting costs, buying back their shares and maximising their share prices (and stock options) than they are in investing in research and development and boosting long-term growth.

“As soon as I started looking at these issues, I started realising how much language matters. If you just talk about the state as a facilitator, as a de-risker, as an incentiviser, as a fixer of market failures, it ends up structuring what you do,” she says. But the state plays a far more creative role, she insists, in terms of declaring grand missions (the US ambition to go to the moon, or the German goal of creating nuclear-free energy), and investing in the early-stage development of many industries, including semiconductors, the internet and fracking. “You always require the state to roar.”
...
There is a similar challenge with green technologies: how to create “systems of innovation” that provide a clear, publicly mandated direction and incentivise private-sector companies to jump on board. Mazzucato believes that Steve Jobs’ famous injunction to budding entrepreneurs — “Stay hungry, stay foolish” — should apply to the public sector, too. Why is failure worn as a badge of honour in Silicon Valley but viewed as a source of shame in government?

“We are living in a depressing era in which we no longer have courage. We no longer think governments should have missions. But the market never chooses anything. IT wasn’t chosen by the market. Biotech wasn’t chosen by the market. Nanotech wasn’t chosen by the market. So why should green technology be chosen by the market? It comes back to the austerity craziness that we’re in today where governments are not allowed to dream; and green is a dream.”

- Monia Mazigh slams Stephen Harper for his tiresome fearmongering. And Doug Saunders writes that governments more thoughtful than the Cons are realizing that the main risk lies in people looking for a set of beliefs as an excuse to put destructive tendencies into action - not in people who hold a particular set of beliefs to begin with.

- Amy Dempsey reports on the John Howard Society's findings as to how Ontario's justice system is doing nothing but harm by looking to punish people for mental health problems. And Bill Graveland reports on Kathleen Ganley's recognition that access to justice generally is a serious problem in Alberta (as it is elsewhere).

- Finally, Andre Picard argues that a strong civil service is necessary to building a healthy society. And Ryan Meili offers his take on what we've lost as a result of a decade of the Cons' government by wilful ignorance:

(I)n order to guide policy in ways that will improve our lives the most –that improvement being best measured by improvements in our health and wellbeing – we need to understand what is happening in a wide variety of fields. We need to be gathering new data, interpreting that information, and communicating its implications to decision-makers and the public.

In the last ten years decisions have instead been made to keep Canadians ignorant of the reality of our circumstances. The most obvious and egregious of these has been the cancellation of the long-form census, which has left a glaring gap in our ability to collect the data needed to make smart decisions. Even if a future government should reinstate a proper census, there has already been an irreplaceable loss of essential knowledge.

Dozens of agencies that interpret data and perform original research have been eliminated or deeply cut. These have been in varied fields, including women’s health, Aboriginal health, environmental surveillance and many more, prompting protests from the typically politically reticent scientific community, including the grim Death of Evidence funeral march on parliament, and the birth of organizations like Evidence for Democracy dedicated to highlighting how important scientific information is if citizens are to make well-informed decisions.
...
Along with the decrease in information being gathered or analyzed have come deliberate barriers to communicating what we do know. From muzzling of government scientists to deep cuts to the CBC, the story of science and knowledge is being increasingly silenced. The strategy is simple, and sinister: if there is no data, there is no way to be held accountable. If people don’t see the way in which decisions being made are worsening the quality of their lives, they can be convinced to continue to vote in favour of policies that hurt them.

The war on knowledge is a war on the health of Canadians. We need a government that will embrace the information age and use evidence to improve our lives. We need a government that has the health of Canadians as its greatest priority. Ten years in, it’s clear that that government is not Stephen Harper’s.

On fear merchants

Shorter Stephen Harper:

It's not paranoid fearmongering if somebody's really out to get you. So here's to four more years of a government who's really out to get you.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Greg Keenan exposes how corporations are demanding perpetually more from municipalities while refusing to contribute their fair share of taxes to fund the services needed by any community. And Sean McElwee points out how big-money donations are translating into a warped U.S. political system:

Available data reveals that donors not only have disproportionate influence over politics, but that influence is wielded largely to keep issues that would benefit the working and middle classes off of the table.

Do donors really rule the world? Recent research suggests that indeed they do. Three political scientists recently discovered that a 1 percent increase in donor support for a policy leads to a 1 percent increase in the probability the president supports the policy, if the president and donor are in the same party. On the other hand, they find no similar effect from general public opinion on presidential policies. In another study, Brian Schaffner and Jesse Rhodes find, “the roll call voting of members of Congress may be more strongly associated with the views of their donors (including outside donors) than with those of their voting constituents.”
...
The solution to big money is two-fold. First, we need mass voter participation. The path is simple: Eliminate unnecessary barriers to voting, shift the burden of registration off of people and onto the government and expand nonpartisan mobilization efforts. But that won’t be enough as long as donors rule democracy. So we should broaden the donor pool with a vibrant public financing system. Evidence from New York suggests that a donor-matching system could increase the diversity of the donor pool, further bolstering democracy. Demos has profiled a number of candidates that fight for working class and non-white Americans but were massively out-raised by their opponents, and showed how small donor democracy would boost their chances of winning. Candidate Eric Adams, when commenting on the New York public matching system noted that, “a large number of people who contribute to my campaign have never contributed to a campaign before.” A world in which big donors are less powerful is a world where average Americans have more of a say in politics.

- Ole Hendrickson writes about the absurdity of austerity as a philosophical foundation for public policy. And Bruce Johnstone notes that the Cons' austerian economic plan is failing by all standards - including the Cons' own arbitrary measures of fiscal management. 

- Shawn Fraser discusses Regina's first count of its homeless residents, while summarizing a few of the policies needed to ensure that they can find the housing they need. And Justin Miller offers an abominable example of how social support systems are set up to punish the poor, as a Michigan mother was cut off welfare due to her daughter's brain cancer which kept her out of school.

- Natasha Geiling reports on the continued effect of Enbridge's Kalamazoo River spill five years after the fact. And Andrew Nikiforuk comments that British Columbia (like so many other places) is seeing a dramatic increase in earthquake activity as a result of fracking.

- Frances Woolley highlights how the "sharing" economy may only serve to perpetuate prejudice and inequality.

- Finally, Alison presents the Harper Cons' new advisory system for fearmongering about terrorism.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Brendan O'Neill writes that the UK Cons are following in Stephen Harper's footsteps by pushing the concept of thought policing. And George Monbiot rightly criticizes the gross inflation of supposed terror threats and simultaneous neglect of far more serious risks:

A global survey published last week by the Pew Research Centre found that while the people of North America, Britain, Australia, Japan, France and Germany see Isis as the greatest threat they face, most of the countries surveyed in poorer parts of the world – Africa, Latin America and Asia – place climate change at the top of the list. Even in Turkey (where, as the bombing on Monday suggests, the terrorist group is a real threat), more people said they were “very concerned” about climate change than they did about Islamic State. The nations least threatened by Isis rank this risk the highest. This is media-driven madness, an epidemic of transcontinental paranoia that governments are happy to foment and exploit.

Men such as Cameron, Tony Abbott in Australia and Stephen Harper in Canada won’t engage in generational struggles with real existential threats – climate breakdown first among them – for fear of alienating their sponsors. They have learned all the wrong lessons from Churchill’s legacy, seeking to invest themselves with belligerent glory while forgetting his ability at crucial moments to place the interests of the nation above the interests of his class.

So, as Hitler is reborn with a thousand faces, a new “struggle of our generation” emerges every six months, and all around us existential crises are ignored.

- Meanwhile, Jennifer Chevalier exposes the Cons' direct orders to the civil service to fabricate terrorism-related news for their political use, while Azeezah Kanji notes that even from the standpoint of addressing terrorism the Cons are deliberately avoiding naming the more plausible threats which come from their base. And the Star lauds the much-needed court challenge to C-51 while lamenting the fact that it's become law in the first place.

- Robyn Benson weighs in on the Cons' use of public money to bribe voters as an election approaches. And Anita Khanna and Sid Frankel write that we should expect all parties to be making clear how they'll fight child poverty, rather than limiting their focus to temporary goodies for swing voters.

- Susan Wright offers her take on the contrast between Rachel Notley and Brad Wall by pointing out what happened to the last premier who matched Wall's condescension.

- And finally, Henry Farrell sets out a useful general theory of Very Serious People.

Senate Wars V: The Harper Empire Strikes Back

"But surely," said the Senate apologist, "even if an undemocratic upper chamber is utterly useless in actually reviewing legislation, we can still pretend it has value based on its willingness to study issues on something less than a wholly partisan basis."

Then this happened. And the Senate apologist was once again reduced to complaining that change couldn't be done.

Thursday Evening Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Daniel Marans reports on Bernie Sanders' push for international action against austerity in Greece and elsewhere. And Binoy Kampmark documents the anti-democratic and antisocial ideology on the other side of the austerity debate.

- Noah Smith writes that while there's no discernible connection between massive pay for CEOs and actual corporate performance, there's a strong link between who an executive knows and how much the executive can extract.

- The CP reports on UNESCO's push to study the impact of the tar sands on Wood Buffalo National Park. And Tavia Grant breaks the news that Health Canada is just getting around the acknowledging the long-recognized dangers of asbestos.

- Stephen Maher comments on the Cons' manipulations of the Canada Elections Act to limit voting among poor Canadians. And Michelle Ghoussoub reports on the Council of Canadians' fight to reverse the restrictions.

-Finally, John Baglow notes that the Cons' especially villainous run of recent actions looks to reflect the death throes of Stephen Harper's government. Steve Sullivan calls out the Cons for seeking to terrorize Canada's electorate. And Michael Harris argues that Harper is a tyrant in the true sense of the word, while Andrew Coyne writes that Harper is truly alone as the federal election campaign approaches.