Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Brian Owens' roundup includes reference to new research showing that excess deaths are the result of COVID-19 itself, not the lockdowns used to combat it. And Renju Jose and Byron Kaye report on Australia's soaring COVID rates, while Yasmine Ghania discusses how Saskatchewan is at risk of a fourth wave. 

- Angus Reid has unveiled new polling on vaccinations and other public health measures - including strong support for at least some form of vaccine requirement in every province/region. Blake Murdoch highlights how there are few rational arguments against vaccine passports. And Andrew Coyne writes that we may soon have little choice but to apply vaccine mandates to ensure we reach herd immunity before the Delta variant runs rampant. 

- Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on the close connection between workplace COVID outbreaks and the use of temporary and precarious labour. 

- PressProgress exposes how Doug Ford's government has actively treated the pandemic as an opportunity for private actors to extract money from the public education system. And Mike Crawley reports on Ford's immediate end to the enforcement of licensing requirements for workers in skilled trades - signaling that for all the talking points conservatives spout about respect for tradespeople, they're the ones who wrongly believe there's no need for tradespeople to have any skills or qualifications. 

- Finally, Gabriel Zucman and others warn (PDF) that a loophole in the current international joint statement on a global minimum corporate tax may not only render the minimum ineffective, but could actually create new incentives for tax havens and the businesses who seek to abuse them.  

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