Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Jessica Wildfire examines how employees are being illegally forced to put their health at risk by employers determined to impose policies which facilitate the spread of COVID-19. And Craig Ellingson and Chelan Skulski report on the Alberta Medical Association's warning that the province's health care system is on the verge of collapse, while Timm Bruch reports that the UCP is trying to spin naturopathy and other quackery-for-profit as a substitute for the availability of public health care. 

- Jake Bittle calls out the large number of fossil fuel lobbyists at COP28, while Nina Lakhani reveals that hundreds of the attendees charged with working out a global response to the climate crisis have a history of actively denying its existence. So it's no surprise that the output has been grossly insufficient - according to the International Energy Agency as well as other expert participants. And Oliver Milman reports on the continued establishment focus on magical future technology as a substitute for near-term cuts to carbon pollution. 

- Andrew Nikiforuk points out that Alberta bears the dubious distinction of having the world's single most harmful methane leak. And Bob Weber reports that Saskatchewan too continues to report fictitious figures while spewing far more methane than it's bothering to measure. 

- Ryan Hogg reports on new research by IPPR and Common Wealth showing that large companies predictably capitalized on messaging about inflation by extracting massive windfall profits far exceeding any increase in costs. And Trevor Tombe and Jennifer Winter discuss the Canadian twist on  the exploitation of inflation to further enrich the already-wealthy, as the Cons use a false narrative blaming carbon pricing rather than corporate greed to try to transfer even more wealth to the top. 

- Christopher Cheung examines how the non-profit industrial complex is a poor substitute for public programs with the resources to meaningfully address social needs.

- Finally, Ian Kreitzberg reports on the UAW's ambitions to organize every automaker in the U.S. to spur broad-based gains in wages and working conditions.