Miscellaneous material to end your week. – Lawrence Martin questions the media’s obsession with fabricating stories out of imagined motivations and insignificant shifts in poll numbers: In the year before an election, the media’s heavy focus on tiny political twists and turns is understandable. Here in Canada, a federal campaign
Continue readingTag: Chris Selley
Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Karl Flecker discusses how the Cons’ push to encourage employers to use temporary foreign workers will affect wages for everybody: In fact, what Kenney said was untrue. He has conveniently forgotten that his government significantly changed the wage rules for employers hiring
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Derrick O’Keefe calls for a mass movement to stop the Harper Cons in their tracks now, rather than waiting for 2015: Thoughts of ousting Harper in 2015 are well and good, but not nearly sufficient at this perilous moment for democracy and social
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Lana Payne weighs in on the Cons’ goal of reducing wages for Canadian workers: As an economist, Stephen Harper must know what his government’s changes to employment insurance (EI), the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), the elimination of the Fair Wage Act
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – Doug Saunders points out that we have a relatively simple choice between seeking to exact revenge on criminal offenders and actually reducing crime: We know exactly why Norway has such lower recidivism numbers. Prisoners, being under constant observation, are very easy to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading. – Lana Payne tears into the Cons for being interested solely in developing a junk labour market where both work safety and income security are sorely lacking. And Chris Selley offers his own rebuttal to the “no such thing as a bad job” mentality:
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Erin points out that there’s a relatively simple cure for Dutch disease – just as long as provincial governments are willing to put citizens ahead of resource extractors: (S)ince resources are priced in American dollars, the higher exchange rate further reduces provincial resource
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Thomas Walkom points out that the McGuinty Libs’ choice to emphasize austerity rather than stabilizing Ontario’s economy may lead down exactly the same destructive path travelled by Greece and other countries: (T)he crises in Spain, Portugal and Greece occurred because government spending cuts
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Leadership 2012 Roundup
Thanks to an end-of-week conference it’s been a few days since I’ve done a general roundup on the NDP leadership race. And based on the pace of activity, it looks like we’re into the home stretch as candidates enter the last couple of weeks in which to sign up new
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Leadership 2012 Roundup
Yes, we’re at the point in the campaign where we can’t go a couple of days without plenty of developments – even in the absence of formal debates or other major events. So let’s take a look at how the week ended on the campaign trail. – Niki Ashton received
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to end your weekend. – Chris Selley rightly points out that for all the damage the Cons can do in a term of majority government, we shouldn’t overstate how much of it is irreversible. And more importantly, while it’s well worth putting time and effort into defending the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – pogge points out the Cons’ suppression of news that a lack of running water on First Nations reserves facilitated the spread of H1N1 – offering a case in point as to both how neglect of social needs can carry widespread ramifications, and how
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Yes, it’s absolutely asinine that the Cons’ attacks on Muslim women have been extended to denying citizenship based on a particular type of clothing. But after the Cons’ repeated efforts to suppress veiled voting, we shouldn’t expect anything less from them. And
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Evening Links
Assorted content for your evening reading. – Alex Himelfarb finds a few positives in the Cons’ ramming their dumb-on-crime bill through the House of Commons: Thankfully many are not willing to “get over it”. How heartening, for example, to hear Leadnow.ca announce that they were simply regrouping for the next
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Chris Selley points out the absurdity of Ontario’s Libs and PCs both running away from the idea of a coalition just as needlessly as their federal counterparts. But let’s remember that since the NDP spoke up for…
Continue readingthe reeves report: Toronto mulls deep service cuts to begin meeting $774M budget shortfall
In the effort to reduce a budget shortfall of $774M in the City of Toronto, we may find that the city our forebears worked so hard to create will be drained of its essence. After promising in the 2010 mayoral election that taxes would be cut and services would be left alone – that tired … Continue reading »
Continue readingChris Selley brings some much-needed respectability to the National Post
In an almost heroic effort, Selley waxes almost poetical in his description of Jack Layton’s funeral and the role of the press in the days preceding it.I’m not above rolling my eyes at excessive displays of grief, or of anything else. Since Monday mo…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading.
– Chris Selley nicely summarizes Jack Layton’s celebration of life today:
I can just hear people kvetching: Was this a funeral for a great man, or a rally for his party?
But again, this is surely to mi…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: More Layton Links
Another day, another set of commentaries on the life of a great Canadian leader.
– Chantal Hebert notes Layton’s contribution to Canada’s broader political scene:
(Layton) taught Canada’s jaded chattering class that retail politics and the attending a…
Accidental Deliberations: Layton Announcement Roundup
Not much to add on this end to the news that Jack Layton is taking a temporary leave of absence to deal with a new form of cancer. But let’s note a few of the pieces which stand out in the day’s coverage. – The CP reviewed the outpouring of best wishes…
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