Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Damien Cave writes about the lessons Australia's successful containment of COVID-19 offer to any other jurisdiction willing to listen and learn rather than recklessly endangering public health, while the Globe and Mail's editorial board questions why Canada doesn't fit that bill. And Tristin Hopper notes that mandatory quarantine has been one of the important factors in New Zealand's similar control over the coronavirus.

- Alex Nguyen highlights how the recognition of the risks workers face in coffee shops may be leading to a pattern of organizing and unionization. 

- Greg Rosalsky discusses how the poverty treated as the norm for so many service sector workers ultimately harms productivity at work as well as overall well-being. And Rosa Saba points out the needed movement to have the federal government avoid piling on CERB recipients in the midst of another pandemic wave.

- Zak Vescera reports on the danger homeless people in Saskatchewan are facing due to a combination of limited resources and extreme weather. 

- Duncan Cameron writes about the opportunity to reduce inequality and raise public revenue through taxes on financial transactions. And Kristy Koehler reports on the problems with using credit checks as a precondition to employment - particularly in public service work.

- Finally, Adam Serwer rebuts the theory that the Capitol insurrection (and the Trump movement generally) was the product of deprivation rather than an attempt to preserve unequal privilege.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Franklin Foer writes that young climate activists are right to be anxious about the future that's being imposed on them - and that it's long past time for earlier generations to stop being comfortable with leaving wreckage in our wake.

- Bill McKibben rightly points out that an energy system powered by solar energy would eliminate the need for conflict over fossil fuels. But Emily Pasuik reports on the Saskatchewan Party's decision to shut down SaskPower's net metering program even as - and indeed because - it was succeeding in generating public enthusiasm for renewable energy.

- Larry Elliott discusses the popularity of UK Labour's plans for a financial transaction tax. And Andy Beckett writes that even the UK's financial sector is beginning to prefer a well-thought-out plan for increased redistribution to the chaos of right-wing populism. 

- Eric Levitz highlights how organized labour is vital to a functioning democracy - both by modeling how people can be empowered to exercise democratic control over their lives, and by counterbalancing the authority of the wealthy and powerful few.

- Finally, David Baxter reports on the Canadian Rental Housing Index' research into housing costs, including the reality that nearly half of Saskatchewan renters face unaffordable prices compared to their level of income.

Monday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Martin Lukacs writes that the world should able to draw plenty of positive examples from Canada's politics - though not from the corporate-focused federal Libs:

As Donald Trump rips up the Paris climate accords, it may seem easy to despair. But these provincial victories show us there is a reason to hope: the huge potential in uniting urgent environmental action with an unapologetically left-wing agenda.

The agreement signed by the B.C. Greens and NDP — the boldest declaration of an incoming government in recent Canadian history — gives a taste of what this might look like.

Consider just a few of their plans. A ban on big money donations and the introduction of proportional voting: this alone would transform an enclave of corporate power into a more functional democracy. Honouring the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: this would start to heal the colonial wounds that tear apart the province. And “employing every tool” to block the Kinder Morgan tar sands pipeline: this would be a message that economic development need not torch our climate commitments, which would reverberate across the country.

It’s not quite a left-wing agenda: after all, the NDP has pledged only the most modest tax hikes to redistribute the obscene hoarded wealth in Canada’s most unequal province. But in its fusion of environmental and economic action, it is historic. In coalition, the fiscally-conservative Greens and environmentally-timid NDP have expressed the best of their platforms, and canceled out the worst.
...
For those who believe such ambition is impossible, look to those who fought for a $15 minimum wage in Ontario. They too were scoffed at for being “unrealistic.” They were ignored at first by major labour unions and the Ontario NDP. But grassroots campaigners, led by women of colour, built a campaign that forced the hand of a weakened Liberal government. They showed that, now more than ever, people are right to nurture higher expectations.
...
Quebec Solidaire comes closest to expressing this transformative vision. Its prospects in Quebec – a significant jump in the polls, an influx of thousands of new members — have now been boosted by Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois. Before he won a by-election this week by a record margin, he made his name working alongside movements forging common cause: by fighting for free university tuition and strengthened public services, as well as against the Energy East tar sands pipeline, he has helped to articulate the holistic core of a new progressive politics. With the Parti Quebecois faltering, there is every reason to believe that such politics can win a much greater share of Quebec’s electorate — and even to hold the balance of power.

- Meanwhile, Rick Salutin argues that we should draw our national identity from genuine achievements such as our national medicare system, rather than worrying unduly about symbols for their own sake. But Tom Parkin laments the fact that far too much of our political media is easily distracted by shiny baubles such as Justin Trudeau's socks, rather than paying any meaningful attention to the choices which affect Canadians' lives.

- Campbell Clark discusses the elitism behind the Libs' push for a corporate trade agreement with China. And Robert Fife and Steven Chase report that the public doesn't share the Libs' blithe disregard for the security implications of handing technology firms to Chinese capital.  

- Carl Meyer exposes how the Libs reversed an evidence-based decision to ban
dangerous cosmetics based on corporate lobbying.

- Finally, Dean Baker examines the possible effects of a financial transactions tax - and notes that the elimination of extreme inequality based on top-end incomes linked to financial-sector rent-seeking is one of the major benefits.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Tom Parkin writes about the growing opposition to a Lib infrastructure bank designed to turn public needs into private profits at our expense:

Paying higher fares, fees and tolls because of a political decision to use more expensive private capital would be a “massive transfer of wealth to the wealthy,” says [Guy] Caron.

Now the chorus of think-tanks voicing concern includes the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Broadbent Institute, C.D. Howe Institute and the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy, which is headed by former Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page.

The idea for the Bank followed a curious path. The Liberal-appointed advisory council which recommended a private Infrastructure Bank included executives whose investment funds stand to profit from it. That process is now subject of a conflict of interest complaint by Democracy Watch.
...

As more Canadians see the Infrastructure Bank as an inside job to drain their wallets and enrich the rich, the sharpness of opposition attacks continues to grow.

Perhaps Trudeau thought an Infrastructure Bank would hitch his star to powerful people. Maybe he’s anchored himself to a sinking sack of cement.

- And Randall Bartlett asks why Trudeau is so eager to privatize profits while forcing the public to bear the risks and costs of projects. 

- Meanwhile, Don Braid examines how Rachel Notley's NDP is establishing desperately-needed consumer protections in areas ranging from payday lending to homebuilding - and being challenged every step of the way by businesses who had grown accustomed to being able to exploit the public. And Rachel Reeves argues that now is the time for the financial transactions tax on offer from the UK's Labour Party.

- Claire Cain Miller discusses how motherhood contributes to the persistent pay gap between women and men. And Jordan Press reports on the wealth-based gap in access to child care outside Quebec, while Andrea Gordon points out how Ontario students (particularly in rural areas) are losing access to music programs due to austerity budgeting.

- Finally, Ian Bremner warns against treating the defeat of a couple of far-right leaders as an indication that we can afford to accept business as usual.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Michael Wasser comments on the importance of unions - and the need to ensure that corporate-dominated politics don't stand in the way of worker organization. And Ben Sichel rightly argues that Ontario's widespread violations of employment standards demonstrate the need for unions to protect workers' rights even when there's some theoretical legal protection in place.

- Neil Irwin discusses how decades of neoliberal economics have left most of the developed world with stagnant development:

This slow growth is not some new phenomenon, but rather the way it has been for 15 years and counting. In the United States, per-person gross domestic product rose by an average of 2.2 percent a year from 1947 through 2000 — but starting in 2001 has averaged only 0.9 percent. The economies of Western Europe and Japan have done worse than that.

Over long periods, that shift implies a radically slower improvement in living standards. In the year 2000, per-person G.D.P. — which generally tracks with the average American’s income — was about $45,000. But if growth in the second half of the 20th century had been as weak as it has been since then, that number would have been only about $20,000.

To make matters worse, fewer and fewer people are seeing the spoils of what growth there is. According to a new analysis by the McKinsey Global Institute, 81 percent of the United States population is in an income bracket with flat or declining income over the last decade. That number was 97 percent in Italy, 70 percent in Britain, and 63 percent in France.

Like most things in economics, the slowdown boils down to supply and demand: the ability of the global economy to produce goods and services, and the desire of consumers and businesses to buy them. What’s worrisome is that weakness in global supply and demand seems to be pushing each other in a vicious circle.

It increasingly looks as if something fundamental is broken in the global growth machine — and that the usual menu of policies, like interest rate cuts and modest fiscal stimulus, aren’t up to the task of fixing it (though some well-devised policies could help).

- Meanwhile, Josh Bivens and Hunter Blair examine how a financial transactions tax would both redirect economic activity toward actual productivity, and provide significantly more funding for social benefits.

- Alison Brownlee discusses a thoughtful proposal to fix the twin problems of retiree isolation and unemployment by funding personal support for seniors by low-income individuals.

- Finally, Robin McKie reports on new climate data showing that we're already on the verge of exceeding the 1.5 degree Celsius target set at the Paris climate change talks.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Stephen Beer argues that the UK's Labour Party should take the lead in arguing for a financial transactions tax oriented toward reducing inequality:

The banking sector is incorrigible. It cannot alone reform itself or repair its relationship with the rest of society. For example, just before his retirement, Bank of England governor Mervyn King reported that banks were lobbying government ministers against action by regulators. It is almost as if the financial crisis never happened; banks are still lobbying for lighter touch regulation.

There has been little remorse from the sector during a time when living standards have been falling and the country has been stuck in an economic depression for more than half a decade.

Moreover...if we are going to talk about remorse, we should also look for repentance. Repentance is more than saying sorry. It is about turning away from the old way of doing things and going in a new direction.

- Uniglobal discusses a recognition strike by Amazon's employees in Germany.

- Chris Severson-Baker considers the Cold Lake blowout to be the first real test for Alberta's new industry-operated regulatory system. Needless to say, the results so far aren't encouraging.

- Meanwhile, having extracted as many profits as it could by operating unsafely, MMA has managed to cloak itself in court protection to avoid liability for blowing up much of Lac-Mégantic.

- Finally, Michael Geist comments on the U.S.' continued attempts to force ever more draconian copyright laws on Canada and other countries - primarily to preserve cash cows for Disney and other corporate conglomerates.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Paul Adams highlights how the Cons and their anti-social allies have spent decades trying to convince Canadians that it's not worth trying to pursue the goals we value - and how the main challenge for progressives is to make the case that a better future is possible:

This is a huge issue for progressives — perhaps the most important they face.

This lack of faith in government is partly the product of 30 years of increasingly conservative governments which have shed any social ambition in favour of tax cuts and austerity — and their cheerleaders in the media, academia and the polling industry. Conservatives have lost many ideological battles in this period, mostly on social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. However, they have succeeded in persuading many Canadians that governments are impotent when it comes to unemployment, the environment and First Nations.

Bricker and Ibbitson essentially ratify the trend to smaller, more austere and limited government and its companion ideology, which they think has created a Canadian society which is good — “not great”.

The challenge for progressives in Canada as elsewhere is to convince voters that the crises of climate change and inequality require us to shake off that complacent view of what we can collectively achieve.

- But an equally important step may be to ensure politicians have a better idea what the public actually believes. On that front, Ezra Klein discusses new research showing that U.S. politicians from both major parties tend to overestimate their constituents' level of conservatism, leading them to wrongly believe that right-wing policies reflect public demand. And the Alberta Federation of Labour unveils yet more polling data showing that even in the province whose political class serves as the main driver of corporatism in Canada, upwards of 70% of the general public opposes austerity and supports more progressive taxes.

- Meanwhile, Katrina vanden Heuvel makes the case for a financial transactions tax.

- Finally, Jim Stanford interrupts the Cons' admonition that nobody is allowed to discuss Dutch disease by pointing out that the vast majority of academic work on the subject finds it to be a significant problem for Canadian manufacturing.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Jeffrey Simpson rightly notes that Alberta (like other resource-heavy jurisdictions) should be trying to diversify its revenue sources and economic development instead of relying on the one-time sale of publicly-owned resources to pay the bills. And Robyn Allan points out why we shouldn't let oil barons pretend they need yet more concessions when it comes to pipeline construction:

U.S. consumers are not benefiting at our expense. A benefit from lower-priced Western Canadian crude oil at the refinery gate in the U.S. is not passed onto U.S. consumers in the form of lower prices for gasoline, jet fuel or diesel. U.S. consumers in the Midwest are price gouged.

It's the refining sector that sees the benefit of lower priced WCS in the form of windfall profits from low feedstock costs. To the extent U.S.-based refineries are owned by companies producing oil in Canada, there are no losses -- real or imaginary. Cenovus is one of those companies. After claiming a huge hit for the industry, and by implication, Cenovus, five minutes later Ferguson told his audience, "we are substantially benefiting (from the wide differentials) at our refinery in Wood River" where 130,000 barrels a day -- the majority of crude Cenovus produces -- is delivered.

So Ferguson's company is not suffering. And any other integrated oil company with refinery interests is not suffering.

- Michel Barnier, the EU's Internal Markets Commissioner, makes the case for a financial transactions tax as both a source of revenue and a check on rampant speculative trading:

"The financial crisis ... broke the back of growth and after all we helped out the financial sector, it's perfectly right and fair that it should give something back," he said.

The controversial tax on trading in stocks, bonds and derivatives came a step closer on Tuesday when European Union finance ministers allowed some member states to proceed with the plan, intended to reap billions of euros for struggling European nations.

Barnier said the tax was "perfectly bearable," and could be "applied fairly easily in technical terms."

Barnier acknowledged the fact the tax would be limited to Europe was a weakness.

"I would prefer it of course if this tax were a worldwide tax," he said. "I would prefer it if the UK and even the U.S. were on board."

- Mark Kennedy and Jason Fekete report that Stephen Harper doesn't consider Canada's First Nations to rate even a mention in his discussion with the Con caucus. But even the fact that's hardly the most hostile response the aboriginal movement has seen from Harper and his party just this week seems to fall short of capturing the Cons' wilful neglect of First Nations: instead, the Cons seem to have decided that they've heard more out of the Idle No More movement in the past few months than they expect to have to address in their entire stay in office, and are working to sever any remaining lines of communication so they can get back to their trained seal routine.

- Finally, the Star Phoenix weighs in on how Saskatchewan's new electoral boundaries finally bring us closer to nationally-recognized standards for communities of interest. But naturally, the Cons have laid the groundwork to preserve artificial divisions which serve their electoral purposes.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Stephen Kimber makes the case for a financial transactions tax in Atlantic Business:

(W)hat can supposedly sovereign nations do when individual governments seem powerless in the face of rampant globalization and footloose capital?

Well, they could get together to create an international public counter-balance to out-of-whack corporate power and – at the least – begin to mitigate some of the worst effects of unfettered globalization.

Agreeing to a locally adopted, globally implemented financial transactions tax would be a smart start.

The idea – popularly known as the Robin Hood tax – originated with Nobel prize-winning economist James Tobin, who pitched a variation of the tax following the 1990s Asian financial crisis. Not surprisingly, his proposal has only gained traction in the wake of the 2008 global meltdown.

The miniscule tax – averaging no more than 0.05 per cent – would be tacked on to the cost of buying and selling all stocks, bonds, mutual funds, currencies, derivatives, futures, options, etc… (but not ordinary consumer transactions like credit card purchases, deposits and withdrawals).

Besides serving as a (probably only slight) brake on speculative trading, such a tax would have the more important impact of raising up to $400 billion a year.

Some of the revenue raised through the tax could be used to, in effect, either force banks to fund their own future bailouts or help underwrite economic recoveries. The rest could be put to all sorts of public goods at home and abroad, like maintaining and improving public services, fighting climate change, reducing world hunger … or some combination of the above.

- Meanwhile, Tabatha Southey's take on the Republican convention is particularly apt in calling out the deception behind small-business rhetoric:

I plan on coupling that knowledge with what I learned at the rest of the Republican convention, which is that there’s no problem that cannot be solved by opening a small business.

Unemployed? Open a small business. Underpaid? Open a small business.

Can’t afford another baby? Open a small business. Have an autistic child? Open a small business.

In a convention markedly devoid of specifics, at least there was that. I came away so hopeful: If my car won’t start, I’ll open a small business. I‘m sure a dab of small business will arrest a run appearing in my tights. Overwhip that cream? Just add a splash of small business. Syria needs more small businesses.

And every successful person at that convention could give you the reason for their success – it was born of a small business. Even though that small business may have been started three generations ago, and might have been an oil well.

I have no objection to big business, but small business was put forward at the convention the same way people always show you the baby version of any ugly-ass species of animal they want you to love.

Never mind the fact that most people aren’t in the financial position to open a small business. Or aren’t suited to run their own businesses. Or that half of all small businesses fail in their first five years.

- Luisa D'Amato writes that for all the attention paid to micro-targeting and robo-calling as some parties' preferred means of delivering a message to voters, the NDP's by-election victory in Kitchener-Waterloo can be traced in no small part to personal contact with constituents.

- Finally, after of plenty of speculation as to who might run for the NDP in Calgary Centre, Brian Malkinson has thrown his hat into the ring. And it took no time at all for environmental lawyer Murray Rankin to step up in pursuit of the nomination to succeed Denise Savoie in Victoria.

On obstructionism

No, it shouldn't come as much surprise that the Cons plan to stand in the way of international agreement on a Tobin tax just as they have on greenhouse gas emissions. But it is noteworthy just how brazen they're being about their obstructionism this time out:

Canada will officially oppose international efforts to get the world’s major economies to impose a global bank tax, government sources tell the Financial Post.

This could potentially ignite a major divide among Group of 20 leaders at their summit meeting in Toronto this summer, and further thwart efforts to implement uniform financial regulations in the post-recession era.
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“Canada is going to oppose any tax on financial transactions,” said one source, adding the tax runs counter to the Conservative government’s reputation for lower taxes. “The government wants it known that a deal on a bank tax isn’t going to happen.”

That's right: when it comes to limiting the harmful effects of financial speculation, the Cons aren't even pretending to be willing to listen to what the world has to say. Instead, they plan to use Canada's seat at the table for the sole purpose of preventing the rest of the world from building any disincentives to reckless risk-taking into the global financial market. And they're even willing to say up front that their only reason for doing so has to do with political branding rather than the merits of the policy.

It remains to be seen how determined Gordon Brown is to seek out an international consensus on the issue. And in fact, if the issue manages to gain any sustained attention in Canada, I'd fully expect the Cons to pretend to open their minds on the issue once the audacity of their current stand becomes better known.

But based on the Cons' immediate response, there's little reason for the rest of the world to think Canada will be a good-faith negotiator on anything to do with financial regulation. And that could force the international community to work out the future rules of engagement in a forum where Harper can't stand in the way.