Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Jacob Levy highlights the importance of “identity politics” – or more specifically, the willingness to fight against systematic inequality of all kinds – as part of an effective progressive movement. And George Monbiot writes that we should be returning to first principles when
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Accidental Deliberations: Monday Evening Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Brent Patterson criticizes the Libs’ short-sighted plans to privatize public services in lieu of any coherent economic policy. And Tom Parkin calls out their bait-and-switch approach to infrastructure. – Robin McKie reports on Nicholas Stern’s recognition that his much-cited work on the impacts
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Terry Pedwell reports that young workers who were apparently expected to provide Justin Trudeau with a public relations backdrop instead delivered an important dose of reality by protesting his appearance. And Angella MacEwen points out that contrary to the Libs’ spin, there’s in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Jake Kivanc points out that what little job growth Canada can claim primarily involves precarious work. And Nora Loreto discusses the crucial link between labour and social change: (T)o confront climate change, we must imagine the role of workers in the transition
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
This and that for your weekend reading.
– Naomi Klein discusses how Canada’s longstanding – if far from inevitable – identity as a resource economy is standing in the way of both needed action on climate change and reconciliation with First Nations:
In Canada, cultivation and industrialization were secondary. First and foremost, this country was built on voraciously devouring wildness. Canada was an extractive company – the Hudson’s Bay Company – before it was a country. And that has shaped us in ways we have yet to begin to confront.Because such enormous fortunes have been built purely on the extraction of wild animals, intact forest and interred metals and fossil fuels, our economic elites have grown accustomed to seeing the natural world as their God-given larder.When someone or something – like climate science – comes along and says: Actually, there are limits, we have to take less from the Earth and keep more profit for the public good, it doesn’t feel like a difficult truth. It feels like an existential attack.…The trouble isn’t just the commodity roller coaster. It’s that the stakes grow larger with each boom-bust cycle. The frenzy for cod crashed a species; the frenzy for bitumen and fracked gas is helping to crash the planet.…Today, we have federal and provincial governments that talk a lot about reconciliation. But this will remain a cruel joke if non-Indigenous Canadians do not confront the why behind those human-rights abuses. And the why, as the Truth and Reconciliation report states, is simple enough: “The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wished to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to Aboriginal people and gain control over their land and resources.”The goal, in other words, was to remove all barriers to unrestrained resource extraction. This is not ancient history. Across the country, Indigenous land rights remain the single greatest barrier to planet-destabilizing resource extraction, from pipelines to clear-cut logging.
– Meanwhile, Marc Lee signals what we might expect from a federal climate change action plan based on the working groups currently reviewing the options.
– Laurie Monsebraaten reports on a needed push to ensure that child care funding is used to create not-for-profit spaces. And Ashifa Kassam points to Wellington’s loss of water rights to Nestle as a prime example of what happens when corporate dollars trump public needs.
– Finally, Alon Weinberg discusses why now is the time to implement a proportional electoral system in Canada. And Craig Scott makes the case for mixed-member proportional over the other options under consideration.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- Caroline Plante reports on Quebec’s scourge of medical extra-billing and user fees (as identified by its own Auditor General). And Aaron Derfel notes that the federal government has done nothing to app…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Susan Delacourt writes that the Libs’ federal budget is best seen as requiring an overriding “to be continued”. And Don Martin flags a few points which may prove important later – including what might be an unexplain…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- David MacDonald argues that the federal budget should focus on desperately-needed public investments – with any revenue issues dealt with by raising taxes where past cuts have produced nothing of value. And Lead…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading.- Nicholas Kristof points out how important a stable and effective public service looks from the standpoint of a country which doesn’t benefit from one. And Chi Onwurah discusses how the UK Cons – like their right…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On purposes
There are plenty of questions which the NDP is rightly asking in the wake of this fall’s federal election results. But Susan Delacourt is uncharacteristically far off base in her view as to what the main question is. By way of contrast, the question of…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Paul Theroux comments on the gall of corporations who move jobs to the cheapest, least-safe jurisdictions possible while trumpeting their own supposed contributions to the countries they leave behind. And Wilma Liebman sees more progressive labour legislation as one of the keys to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – PressProgress highlights just a few of the Cons’ obviously-flawed claims about corporate tax rates. And Ethan Cox discusses why we should be talking about the CETA and TPP during the campaign both due to their own importance, and the potential to tap into
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Andrew Jackson discusses how increased development of the oil sands fits into Canada’s economic future – and how it’s foolhardy to assume that one necessarily equates to the other: A new and effective global climate agreement to avoid hitting the 2 degree increase
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On trust issues
Susan Delacourt’s take on what we should expect to see happen if there’s a minority Parliament following this fall’s election covers most of the bases. But it’s worth expanding on one point: It’s true that Harper, by constitutional convention, would have first shot at forming a government if the Conservatives
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Jeff Spross argues that in addition to ensuring that employees are fairly paid for the overtime hours they work, we should also be pushing to ensure people aren’t required to work as much to begin with. And Angella MacEwen points out that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Barrie McKenna takes a look at how the Cons are pushing serious liabilities onto future generations in order to hand out short-term tax baubles within a supposedly-balanced budget, while Jennifer Robson highlights the complete lack of policy merit behind those giveaways. And Ian
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Joe Gunn argues that it’s long past time for Canada to live up to its climate commitments. And Carol Linnitt writes that further delay will do nothing but damage to our economy and our democracy as well as our planet: Taking meaningful
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Ryan Meili reminds us of the harmful health impacts of inequality. And Susan Perry discusses the effect of inequality on health in the workplace in particular: The rise in income inequality over the past three decades or so is taking a major
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – For those looking for information about today’s day of action against C-51, Leadnow and Rabble both have details. – Meanwhile, CBC reports that a professor merely taking pictures on public land near a proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline site is already being harassed by
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – John Hood discusses how the privilege of the political class makes it difficult for elected representatives to understand, let alone address, the problems of the precariat. And Lawrence Mishel and Will Kimball document the continued connection between the erosion of unions and income
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