Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- David MacDonald discusses the need to start tackling some of Canada's most expensive and least justifiable tax handouts to the rich:

The richest 10 per cent of Canadians enjoy an average of $20,500 a year in tax exemptions, credits, and other loopholes. That’s $6,000 more than in 1992 and it costs the federal government $58 billion—double what it paid in tax expenditures in 1992.

The cost to the federal government for all preferential personal income tax treatments, not just for the rich, has ballooned from $90 billion in 1992 to a projected $152 billion in 2018. That’s a 69 per cent cost increase since 1992.
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This is about taking a clear-eyed look at how Ottawa has been prioritizing tax expenditures that disproportionately benefit a few at the expense of the many.

Meanwhile, government after government puts off making proper investments to ensure clean water and decent housing on Aboriginal reserves as well as delaying bold action on poverty reduction and homelessness.

In some Canadian cities, some working families are paying the equivalent of a second monthly mortgage just to get their children in child care.

Millennials are being asked to pay record-high tuition in order to get a university degree, only to graduate with record-high student debt and limited work opportunities.

The case for closing tax loopholes, shutting down tax credits and exemptions tilted heavily in favour of the rich and corporate Canada is really about diverting that money to pay for programs and services that benefit everyone—even the rich and corporations, because they benefit from a healthy, well-functioning society.

- Meanwhile, Benjamin Locke points out that Donald Trump's plan to favour the rich over the public includes his refusal to sign on to international efforts to combat tax evasion.

- Kathy Tomlinson exposes the widespread double-billing practices which make Canada's health care system far less universal than it's supposed to be. And Theresa Boyle reports on how medical care is influenced by secret payments from the big pharma to Canada's doctors.

- Ian Mulgrew points out that anti-SLAPP legislation is just one of the progressive steps forward British Columbia can expect once a Green-supported NDP government has a chance to get to work.

- Finally, Alex Boutilier reports on CSIS' illegal retention of all the metadata about people not under investigation which it collected without authority for a period of a decade.