Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- David Crane identifies the good news in the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report on climate change - which is that we can meet our greenhouse gas emissions targets through readily feasible policy choices as long as our federal government cares enough to make them. And Steven Staples points out that it's entirely possible pair efforts to fight climate change with good jobs, though we can't take the latter for granted:

(A) green job revolution will not happen by itself, no matter how well meaning the intentions.

The York University project, Adapting Canadian Work and Workplaces to Respond to Climate Change, recently noted an alarming gap in the government climate strategies between rhetoric and reality. A report for the project by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives found that while provincial governments frequently speak of “jobs and opportunities,” there are few tangible policies and programs in Canada to support job creation and professional development in the context of a green energy transition. Instead, most governments see the creation of green jobs as a consequence of transitioning to a cleaner economy rather than a policy target in and of itself.

It’s becoming apparent that workers need to get involved to ensure that government policies include job creation as a central tenet of Canada’s climate change strategies.
...
Now—with oil prices low, a new Paris agreement on emissions reductions, and a persistent employment problem—is exactly the right time for the government, employers and unions to achieve a just transition that brings about a green economy built on fairness and co-operation.

- Janine Jackson interviews Brendon DeMelle about Exxon's decades-long global warming denialism. And John Geddes rightly criticizes Justin Trudeau's attempt to edit climate change out of the causes of extreme weather events.

- Meanwhile, Ernest Scheyder and Terry Wade examine the wave of bankruptcies hitting the U.S. oil industry - signalling that the reality of radical change based on lower global prices is hitting far beyond Canada's producers. 

- Dan Roberts reports on the Obama administration's move to crack down on some forms of international tax evasion.

- PressProgress calls out the Fraser Institute's attempt to gloss over the lack of support for child care by counting upper-class giveaways aimed at future post-secondary education (among other things) as child care funding.

- Finally, Andrew Coyne offers an explanation of the Libs' incoherent changes to the Senate.