Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Simon Enoch studies how P3 projects result only in public money subsidizing private profits. And a new report from the Canadian Labour Congress warns about the dangerous consequences of privatizing public goods and services.

- Amanda Follett Hosgood examines how the authority of courts is being used to protect corporate interests at the expense of people's freedoms of speech and assembly. And Carol Linnitt exposes the predictable astroturfing behind the anti-environment Canada Action, which falsely claimed to be a "grassroots" organization while being funded by the oil industry.

- Richard Denniss and Matt Grudnoff study the effects of free child care as both a form of immediate stimulus, and a means for women to fully participate in a sustainable economy. But Bryce Covert highlights the risk that in its absence, women will be left behind in a transition to an environment of increased work from home.

- Robert Russo argues that a path to permanent residency is essential to protecting the rights of migrant farm workers.

- Finally, Seth Klein makes the case to ensure young people have opportunities to shape their future - including by being able to vote.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Asher Schecter interviews Emmanuel Saez about the realities of growing inequality - and the denialists looking to exacerbate it. And Chris Hayes talks to Gabriel Zucman about the benefits of a wealth tax.

- Laurie Monsebraaten reports on a new study showing how Canada could eradicate poverty with a basic income. And Alison McIntosh and Rebecca Graff McRae examine what a basic income could mean for Alberta.

- Meanwhile, Steven Greenhouse and Sharon Block each discuss a new study calling for a boost to the bargaining power of American workers, with an emphasis on sectoral bargaining which eliminate the race to the bottom between employers. And Jim Stanford writes that we shouldn't attribute to technology what's actually the result of choices in defining the power relationship between employers and workers:

Technology is neither our friend nor our enemy as the world of work changes. And workers face far more urgent problems than being made redundant by automation. Today they confront pervasive precarity, stagnant and unequal incomes, and an absence of voice in their work lives. These challenges cannot be fixed either by the automatic working of market forces or by the advances of digital technology. Instead, they demand quick and powerful responses from policy-makers and other labour market stakeholders.

By focusing on the demand side of the labour market, not just the supply of skilled workers, we can ensure there are fulfilling, productive jobs for future well-trained graduates to fill. By giving workers more protection and more say over technology and how it is managed (rather than leaving those decisions solely up to employers), we can attain a better balance between the goals of profitability and the goals of decent, secure work. By building more representative and participatory structures and processes to address both existing and future workplace challenges, we enhance our collective capacity to manage technological change more successfully and fairly.

- Zaid Noorsumar discusses how profit motives are distorting Ontario's home care system. And the Canadian Labour Congress is pushing for the new minority Parliament to finally implement a national pharmacare system to ensure cost isn't a barrier to the medication people need.

- Finally, Benjamin Perrin declares his recognition that supervised consumption sites are needed as a matter of basic compassion.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Andray Domise discusses both the U.S.' choice to be an intentionally unsafe destination for refugees, and Canada's complicity in validating that choice and other policies of dehumanization rather than speaking out against even such obvious abuses as the imprisonment of children. And the Canadian Labour Congress calls for Canada to live up to its responsibility to refugees by stopping the classification of the U.S. as a "safe third country".

- Alan Broadbent and Kevin Page write about the need to recognize and give effect to the right to housing as a step toward eliminating homelessness in Canada. And Geoff Dembicki reports on Gary McKenna's research showing the influence of developers in Vancouver as a prime example as to how the greed of the wealthy few has taken precedence over the needs of the many.

- Meanwhile, Catherine McIntyre exposes the continued presence of discriminatory ads for housing and other services on social media platforms.

- John Arlidge reviews Richard Brooks' Bean Counters as to the role of major accounting firms in consolidating corporate power.

- Finally, Andrew Jackson discusses the inevitable reality that Doug Ford's anti-social populism will only make matters worse for many of the voters who elected him.

[Edit: fixed wording.]

Friday Evening Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Wanda Wyporska discusses why we can't expect a group of cloistered elites to do anything to solve the changeable dimensions of inequality.

- Jonathan Ford and Gill Plimmer write that the UK is beginning to learn its lesson about the dangers of privatizing public services. And PressProgress offers three reasons why Canada shouldn't follow down the road toward outsourcing,

- Ian Hussey debunks a few of the more tired arguments against a fair minimum wage. And Meagan Day discusses the psychological consequences of accepting the neoliberal view of atomized and constantly-competing individuals:

When identifying the root cause of this growing appetite for excellence, Curran and Hill don’t mince words: it’s neoliberalism. Neoliberal ideology reveres competition, discourages cooperation, promotes ambition, and tethers personal worth to professional achievement. Unsurprisingly, societies governed by these values make people very judgmental, and very anxious about being judged.

Psychologists used to talk about perfectionism as though it were unidimensional — only directed from the self to the self. That’s still the colloquial usage, what we usually mean when we say someone’s a perfectionist. But in the last few decades, researchers have found it productive to broaden the concept. Curran and Hall rely on a multidimensional definition, encompassing three types of perfectionism: self-oriented, other-oriented, socially prescribed.
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...(P)eople born in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada after 1989 scored much higher than previous generations for all three kinds of perfectionism, and that scores increased linearly over time. The dimension that saw the most dramatic change was socially prescribed perfectionism, which increased at twice the rate of the other two. In other words, young people’s feeling of being judged harshly by their peers and the broader culture is intensifying with each passing year.
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One consequence of this rise in perfectionism, Curran and Hall argue, has been a series of epidemics of serious mental illness. Perfectionism is highly correlated with anxiety, eating disorders, depression, and suicidal thoughts. The constant compulsion to be perfect, and the inevitable impossibility of the task, exacerbate mental-illness symptoms in people who are already vulnerable. Even young people without diagnosable mental illnesses tend to feel bad more often, since heightened other-oriented perfectionism creates a group climate of hostility, suspicion, and dismissiveness — in which the jury is always out on everyone, pending group appraisal — and socially prescribed perfectionism involves an acute recognition of that alienation. In short, the repercussions of rising perfectionism range from emotionally painful to literally deadly.

And there’s one other repercussion of rising perfectionism: it makes it hard to build solidarity, which is the very thing we need in order to resist the onslaught of neoliberalism. Without healthy self-perceptions we can’t have robust relationships, and without robust relationships we can’t come together in the numbers it would take to rattle, much less upend, the whole political-economic order.

- Finally, the Canadian Labour Congress is taking a stand against Justin Trudeau's choice to lock Canada into the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Mike Savage and John Hills write about the respective takes on the sources of inequality provided by Tony Atkinson, Thomas Piketty and Joseph Stiglitz. And Michael Spence discusses how economic development needs to be inclusive and based on trust in order to be sustainable:

First, as we concluded in our final report, non-inclusive growth patterns will always ultimately fail. Such patterns cannot produce the sustained high growth that is necessary for reducing poverty and fulfilling basic human aspirations for health, security, and the chance to contribute productively and creatively to society. They underutilize and misuse valuable human resources; and they often give rise to political or social turmoil, often marked by ideological or ethnic polarization, which then leads either to wide policy swings or to policy paralysis.

Our second broad conclusion was that sustained growth requires a coherent, adaptable strategy that is based on shared values and goals, trust, and some degree of consensus. Of course, achieving that is easier said than done.

Many developing countries have experienced extended periods of slow or no growth. In some cases, a country’s leaders are simply confused, and do not understand what needs to be done. In most cases, however, the ingredients of an effective “growth model” are well known, and the problem is a lack of political or social consensus about how to implement it.

Achieving a higher growth equilibrium is rarely a gradual or incremental transition. It requires a discontinuous leap in expectations and policies, and a fundamental shift in the political and social consensus. When these shifts occur, leadership plays a crucial role, by providing citizens with an alternative vision, based on common values, that all stakeholders can support. Such leadership can come from above, from below, or from a representative group. But as the persistence of low-growth equilibria in many countries shows, it often doesn’t come at all.

- Meanwhile, Owen Jones points out that UK Labour is taking much-needed steps to empower members and activists to push for meaningful social change.

- John Milloy laments the demonization of taxes as a barrier to the discussion of important policy choices - though it's questionable whether the public buys that rhetoric to the same extent as the political class. And Linda McQuaig comments on the problems with a tax system which is designed to further privilege people with the most wealth and connections.

- The CCPA and the PBO (PDF) have each offered new studies showing that Canada would save billions of dollars each year (while improving public health) with a national pharmacare program. And the Canadian Labour Congress calls for immediate action to implement a universal prescription drug plan.

- Finally, Jim Bronskill reports on Fred Vallance-Jones' audit of Canada's dysfunctional access to information system - which is only getting worse under the Libs.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Labour Day reading.

- Ed Finn offers a reminder of the rights and benefits we now take for granted which were won only through labour organization:

Look back at Canada’s 150-year history, and you’ll find that many of the basic rights and benefits we all enjoy were originally fought for and won by unions. Unions were in the forefront of the struggles for public health care, for public education and pensions, for improvements in employment conditions and the minimum wage.

Most employees today work 40 hours or less a week instead of 50 or more, because in the 1950s the railroad unions went on strike for a shorter work week with the same pay. They won that historic battle, a labour victory that led in a few years to the adoption of the 40-hour work week as a standard schedule for all workers, unionized or not.

Later, the provision of year-long legislated paid parental leave was initiated at the bargaining table by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, which made it a priority in negotiations. This gain, too, soon became a universal benefit.

In both the private and public sectors, it was the unions, through collective bargaining, that also pioneered overtime pay, sick leave, paid vacations, jointly funded pension plans and other now-taken-for-granted employment benefits.

Without the unions, striving arduously over the years in so many ways, in cities and towns from coast to coast, the socioeconomic strands that hold our country together today would not be nearly so sturdy.

- Neil Irwin examines the career paths of janitorial workers a few decades ago compared to today as a prime example of how outsourcing and other precarious work arrangements limit the opportunity for workers to advance. David Well comments on the desperate need for public policy aimed at better protecting and accounting for the interests of workers caught in those traps. Lawrence Summers points out the role governments need to play in facilitating labour organization. And David Olive highlights the benefits of a more fair minimum wage.

- But Helaine Olen points out how the Trump administration is instead engaged in concerted attacks on the U.S. labour force. And Michael Paarlberg writes about the dishonesty in Trump's promises to protect workers.

- Suzanne Moore discusses the importance of  the UK McDonald's strike and other shows of solidarity within the precarious workforce. And Lana Payne offers a reminder that the labour movement needs to focus particularly on young workers.   

- Dennis Gruending points out that the benefits of union extend far beyond their membership or even workers generally, while Alejandra Bravo writes about the importance of worker organization as a means to spur social change. And Kira Lerner reports on the efforts of U.S. unions to do just that in the Midwest where standards have been deteriorating rapidly under corporatist governors, while Gregory Beatty highlights how Brad Wall's contempt for workers has tarnished his legacy.

- Finally, the Canadian Labour Congress discusses its push for a national pharmacare program as the latest major project to build a better Canada for everybody, while Hassan Yussuff makes the case for the plan in the Star.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Owen Jones interviews Ha-Joon Chang about the foreseeable harm caused by the UK's austerity, as well as the false claims used to push it.

- The Stoney Creek News rightly argues that Canada Post should move toward posting banking in large part due to the potential to improve the level of service available for vulnerable groups. But Dean Beeby notes that Employment Insurance administration is just one of the many areas where the idea of actually assisting the public has been lost in favour of automation and corporatization.

- The Canadian Labour Congress points out a few of the policies which could offer much-needed opportunities and security for younger workers. And Jared Bernstein writes that an improved minimum wage (one of the CLC's recommendations) has worked exactly as hoped in Seattle, increasing workers' pay and length of employment without any of the threatened side effects.

- Mound of Sound highlights how Justin Trudeau has chosen to make Stephen Harper's industry-dominated National Energy Board his own, while Kai Nagata points out Trudeau's broken promises to put a credible review system in place before ramming through more project approvals. And Christopher Adams examines CAUT's investigation into the dubiously cozy relationship between the University of Calgary and oil-sector funders. 

- Finally, Murray Brewster exposes a Canadian-owned firm's sale of troop carriers for use in the ongoing war in South Sudan. And Don Pittis rightly notes that we should be less concerned with the nationality of a corporation's official ownership than with its actual behaviour.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Murray Dobbin is hopeful that we may be seeing corporate globalization based on unquestioned neoliberal ideology come to an end:

There is no definitive way to identify when an ideology begins to lose its grip on the public discourse but could this clear resistance (it is even more developed and vociferous in EU countries) be the beginning of the end of corporate globalization? I am not suggesting that developed countries' governments are going to suddenly return to the good old days of the post-war social contract. But what has allowed them to proceed for three decades with political impunity has been the power of ideology to overwhelm evidence and reason. Neoliberalism has enjoyed hegemonic status for so long it has been almost impossible for ordinary citizens to imagine anything different. But now they can -- not just because of political outliers Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders but because of Hillary Clinton, who has been a steadfast supporter of neoliberal policies, including free trade, throughout her political career.

Once members of the political elite begin to question the high priests of free trade, the spell is broken, and all sorts of alternative political narratives present themselves. It takes an accumulation of unlikely suspects breaking with the consensus before that happens and we have already seen some high-profile defectors from the TPP -- including Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, economist Jeffrey Sachs and in Canada RIM co-founder Jim Balsillie. At first the Teflon seemed to hold, but there is always a time lag when it comes to cultural change and their interventions are still playing out.

- Meanwhile, Jordan Weissmann discusses the IMF's new report finding that neoliberal policies have delivered nothing close to what was promised - though Alexander Kentikelenis, Thomas Stubbs and Lawrence King note that the IMF itself has failed even in enforcing even its own insufficient commitments to social protection.

- Laura Benson points out that there's a direct connection between donations to the B.C. Libs and policies allowing mining corporations to avoid liability for environmental damage (along with other political perks). And Jordan Press reports on the conclusion by federal auditors that corporate contractors have been overpaid by over $100 million over the past three years, mostly in "excessive profits", while Trevor Zimmerman (for Friends of Medicare) highlights how private clinics are siphoning off public money while undermining our universal health care system. 

- Tom Cooper and Trish Hennessy discuss the promising growth of the living wage movement. And David Bush writes about the importance of a fair minimum wage for all workers.

- Finally, Dominique Mosbergen reports on the passage of "right to disconnect" legislation in France allowing for employees to have their off-work time to themselves. And the Canadian Labour Congress has launched a new campaign to allow Canadian workers to retire with a secure and sufficient CPP pension.

Wednesday Evening Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Vineeth Sekharan debunks the myth that a job represents a reliable path out of poverty, while reminding us that there's one policy choice which could eradicate poverty altogether:

A job alone does not guarantee freedom from poverty. In fact, in 2012, at least one member of the household was employed in a staggering 44% of all poor households. Even in situations where an individual is employed, there may still be the need for income supplements, as well as educational and employment supports.

This is partially because of the monumental changes that have occurred in the Canadian marketplace. The growing trend that continues to emerge is precarious employment: a decline in the number of well-paid jobs, and an increase in both lower-paying jobs and temporary employment. The infographic provides an example of how an individual working part-time, at minimum wage, falls below the poverty line. Temporary employment, by its very nature, often results in incomes that are unpredictable, making households more prone to suffering from fluctuations in income. In households where families and individuals are living paycheque to paycheque, these trends are direct contributors to family poverty.

Income supplements are essential to lifting families above the poverty line. While the idea of implementing guaranteed annual incomes (GAIs) has been around for decades, it has recently resurged as a result of the rising costs associated with dealing with the symptoms of poverty rather than its causes. GAI refers to various proposals that look to implement a guaranteed minimum income for Canadians, related to the concept of a negative income tax. GAIs will provide struggling Canadians with some security from income shock.

- Meanwhile, Bryce Covert points out that there's no correlation between lavish CEO pay and business performance.

- The CLC makes the case for more paid vacation time (one of the areas where Saskatchewan can be proud to be ahead of Canada's other jurisdictions) - while pointing out that workers can often win that through collective bargaining even if governments can't be bothered:

If you think you don't get enough vacation, you're right. Canada is in the bottom three of the world’s richest countries for the minimum number of paid vacation days employees are entitled to receive under the law. Every major industrialized country in the world – Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, Norway, Denmark just to name a few – all have legislation giving workers at least four weeks paid vacation time. The International Labour Organization (ILO) recommends that the period of paid vacation shouldn't be less than three weeks for one year of service.

For unionized workers, negotiations have helped the majority achieve at least the ILO recommended minimum. The great majority of unionized workers get at least three weeks of paid vacation time, and 70% get four weeks after a longer period of service. One in three unionized workers gets five weeks of paid vacation but that is typically received only after 15 years of service.

- Mike de Souza reports on the Cons' attempt to suppress internal documentation showing the Canadian Environmental Network to be a valuable public resource before it was summarily axed by the Harper government - presumably for the crime of doing good work on environmental issues. And PressProgress discusses how the Cons worked to manipulate Canadians into accepting tax baubles they didn't otherwise want.

- Finally, Scott Sinclair highlights the problems with investor-state dispute settlement which takes trade dispute out of fair and transparent court systems, and argues that such mechanisms should be eliminated from trade agreements involving the EU.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Erika Shaker rightly questions why government policy toward business is based on a level of permissiveness which we'd recognize as utter madness in dealing with a child:

Sure, all parents make mistakes, and all kids have meltdowns (some of which might have, admittedly, been handled better).

But it seems to me that even the worst examples of permissive parenting pale in comparison to the way politicians and pundits coddle, make excuses, and encourage double standards for questionable (even deplorable) behaviour from corporations and their representatives.

And perhaps it’s the post-holiday sugar-and-excessive-consumerism hangover talking, but I’m tired of being held hostage by self-indulgent, narcissistic tyrants, whose endless “gimmes” and “I want that…or elses” seem so utterly pervasive that I feel as though I’m trapped at a Toys “R” Us outlet sale (whereupon, after my third coffee, I discover the washrooms are out of order).

These days it seems the capitulation-impulse is so hair-trigger that often the actual demands (“Cut your salaries in half or I’m running away to Indiana where they just approved Right-to-Work!”) aren’t even necessary. It’s the anticipation of the demands—or fear of the consequences to be suffered if the unvoiced demands aren’t met—that results in a smorgasbord of pre-emptive tax-cut-esque goodies in an attempt to avoid the surely inevitable breath-holding tantrum. (Or reneging on job commitments—am I right, U.S. Steel?)
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It’s the steadfast refusal to acknowledge that bad behaviour should have consequences; that corporations are required to negotiate fairly and should not expect governments—like doting helicopter parents—to constantly remove all obstacles in the path of profit; that ultimately by allowing rules to be bent or broken with near-impunity we are setting very dangerous precedents and ensuring that the cycle of toddler-like consequence-free behaviour will continue.

- Meanwhile, the CLC highlights the temporary foreign worker program as a prime example of that tendency to grease the skids toward higher profits. Mitchell Anderson contrasts Norway's strategy of saving resource wealth for the benefit of its citizens against Alberta's willingness to pile up debt to hand money to oil barons. And Alex Andreou discusses the broken promises underlying trickle-down economics:

If one subscribes to the charitable view that neoliberal philosophy was simply naive or misguided in thinking that "trickle down" would work infinitely, then evidence that it doesn't, should be cause for concern. It is a fundamental building block of supply-side economic theory – the tool of choice these past few decades for those in charge to make adjustments. The realisation that governments have been pulling at economic levers which, for some time, have been attached to nothing, should be a wake-up call to the deepest sleepers.
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It is not so much that the supply-side principle "if you build it, they will come" is no longer true. It is more that we appear to have passed a tipping point, where so much wealth has been concentrated at the top, they no longer need bother to "build" anything. In short, it has become more economically efficient to buy countries' economic policy than to create value in order to sell it on. If one can control government to favour the richest, while raising barriers for new entrants, thus increasing their share of the pie exponentially, what is the incentive to grow the pie?
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We have come to measure, to an increasing extent, individuals' success by their wealth, spending power and other assorted trappings. We do the same with the economic success of governments; measure it by an aggregated data set that fails to take into account wealth distribution, educational achievement, innovation, or even the welfare and health of the population they claim to represent. We must shift this perspective. It will be the hardest, simplest thing we have ever had to do as a species.

- Justin Ling offers his ideas to reform Canada's political system in response to Kevin Page's previous op-ed. But I'd argue that Ling's second and third points can be readily improved: I'd rather see the reinstatement of general funding for parties than Ling's proposed support only for specific activities, and would think it's possible to be far more ambitious about the expansion of information and privacy laws to include both government (including ministers' offices) and political parties alike.

- Finally, the WoodGreen Community Services' skewering of celebrity culture is well worth a look (and a share):

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- The Canadian Labour Congress calls out Jim Flaherty for stalling on his promise to work on boosting the Canada Pension Plan. Meanwhile, in attempting to keep profits flowing to the financial sector, several Fraser Institute drones find that increased CPP contributions...substantially increase the total amount saved for retirement by the middle class notwithstanding any substitutional effects. (Which leaves them stammering "ummm...choice!" "er....markets!" "aaah....FREEDOM!" in a desperate attempt to pretend workers are somehow better off with less of a secure public pension.)

- Alison is compiling a list of Harper Con fakery. I only worry that it'll take until past the 2015 election to assemble all of the examples known to date.

- Health Care Transformation offers an infographic on what makes Canadians sick - highlighting the importance of social determinants of health:

- And CBC reports on Saskatchewan's appalling performance on one indicator, with a rate of family violence over twice the Canadian average.

- But then, as Murray Mandryk notes, the Wall government is predictably selective in the issues it chooses to address and the speed with which it addresses them:

So what does it tell us when a government ignores "serious problems" with the freedom of information and privacy law the FOIP commissioner has advocated changing for a decade while bulldozing ahead with any manner of labour law changes - including its omnibus labour bill that will now house the old essential services act - without really much fear of repercussions?

Well, it would seem to suggest this government's view of due diligence is being dictated by its political agenda and its need to marginalize even valid criticism.

Simply ignoring criticism is never a great way to govern. It eventually catches up with you.

And so while Erin Weir's work in providing accurate employment trend numbers was met with an immediate backlash, we can expect little to be done to help people actually in need of public support.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- The CCPA looks at Statistics Canada's latest income data and finds that inequality has been growing steadily across the country over the past few decades. The Canadian Labour Congress notes that corporate tax cuts have led to cash hoarding rather than increased jobs or productivity. Needless to say, the Village requests in all seriousness that observers not draw a connection between the two or any associated economic theory.

- Meanwhile, George Monbiot comments on how the removal of a privileged class from society at large serves to explain the disconnect between the wealthy and mere ordinary citizens:

In the Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt explains that the nobles of pre-revolutionary France "did not regard themselves as representative of the nation, but as a separate ruling caste which might have much more in common with a foreign people of the same society and condition than with its compatriots".

Last year the former Republican staffer Mike Lofgren wrote something very similar about the dominant classes of the US: "the rich elites of this country have far more in common with their counterparts in London, Paris, and Tokyo than with their fellow American citizens … the rich disconnect themselves from the civic life of the nation and from any concern about its well being except as a place to extract loot. Our plutocracy now lives like the British in colonial India: in the place and ruling it, but not of it."

Secession from the concerns and norms of the rest of society characterises any well established elite. Our own ruling caste, schooled separately, brought up to believe in justifying fairytales, lives in a world of its own, from which it can project power without understanding or even noticing the consequences. A removal from the life of the rest of the nation is no barrier to the desire to dominate it. In fact, it appears to be associated with a powerful sense of entitlement.

So if you have wondered how the current government can blithely engage in the wholesale transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, how its frontbench can rock with laughter as it truncates the livelihoods of the poorest people of this country, why it commits troops to ever more pointless post-colonial wars, here, I think, is part of the answer. Many of those who govern us do not in their hearts belong here. They belong to a different culture, a different world, which knows as little of its own acts as it knows of those who suffer them.

- Wendy Stueck reports that HD Mining is withdrawing some of its temporary foreign workers after having been required to provide information about the Canadian workers it rejected for the same jobs. But it remains to be seen whether that's an admission of guilt, or a threat not to bother pursuing profit if it has to pay fair wages in the process.

- Finally, Saskatchewan's federal electoral boundaries commission has released its final report - featuring some changes from the first set of proposed ridings, but not from the principle of urban communities of interest.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Yes, it's alarming that the Cons are eliminating environmental assessments on a huge number of projects. But even more worrisome is the complete lack of a connection between the basis for the exclusion and the possible environmental impacts:

Ottawa is also walking away from conducting assessments on various agricultural and municipal drainage works, log-handling facilities, small-craft harbour and marina development and expansion, the sinking of ex-warships as artificial reefs, the disposal of dredged material, and a 73-hectare mixed-use development on Tsawwassen First Nation lands.

Under the new legislation, BC Hydro also no longer requires a federal assessment for replacement of its John Hart Generating Station near Campbell River on Vancouver Island because the project won’t increase the generating capacity by more than 50 per cent or 200 megawatts. No provincial assessment applies, either.

Now, it would seem obvious enough that the number of megawatts added by a project won't necessarily correlate to its environmental impact. Which means that the Cons' move to limit assessment based on project size rather than actual need will only encourage the development of a large number of dirty, small-scale projects.

- Barbara Yaffe is right to note that the NDP is doing just fine consolidating its national strength under Tom Mulcair. But she's far too willing to buy the Cons' spin about Mulcair's environmental message - which is in fact far closer to the views of Canadians than the Cons' determination to put the oil industry's profits over public health and safety.

- The CLC highlights the positive effect of unions on wages in Saskatchewan:

On average, unionized workers earned $5.28 per hour more than non-union employees. That union advantage translated into more than $26 million more every week paid into the provincial economy to support businesses and community services.

- Meanwhile, Tom Graham notes that the Sask Party's focus on privatization and corporate development only looks to increase costs to the province.

- And finally, Erin Weir suggests expanding the Bank of Canada's mandate to maximize employment and bolster economic stability, rather than being limited solely to addressing inflation targets.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Dr. Dawg follows up on Stephen Harper's apology to residential school survivors, and rightly questions how sincere it can be when it's been followed up with repeated efforts to avoid either actual compensation or (more importantly) efforts to bring First Nations standards of living anywhere close to those available to most Canadians.

- Boris notes that Vancouver's recent excuse to shut down peaceful Occupy protests represents the first test for the movement. And unfortunately, Regina's Occupiers are being tested as well.

- But as Colby Cosh rightly points out, it's excessive resistance that allows a movement to build a long-term place in our political conversation. And so with the right response, a crackdown might only help to highlight how unreasonable the anti-Occupy forces are for the general public.

- And speaking of the right response to gratuitous threats, PIPSC has officially voted to join the Canadian Labour Congress. Which Tim Harper rightly sees as part of a wider labour effort to muscle up against the Cons' attacks.