Yesterday, the Town of Collingwood sent out an email trying to rationalize the town’s budget and tax increase. That release underscores in so many ways why townhall desperately needs both a person and a plan to oversee and guide its communications. And this is coming from someone who also believes
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Scripturient: Council’s Affordable Housing Con
A recent story in CollingwoodToday has the headline, “Town considering increases to development charges.” Everyone knows that increasing the development charges (DCs) adds to the cost of a new home, making housing even more expensive and less affordable. Right now, it’s extremely difficult to find anything even close to “affordable”
Continue readingScripturient: The Affordable Housing Myth
Let me start with a few basic, uncomfortable truths about housing. It’s a myth that municipal politicians can, without a coordinated and regional approach that includes private developers and upper-tier levels as well as stakeholders and advocates, solve anything related to housing. And even then, it requires the involvement of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Sonia Sodha discusses how children will bear the brunt of COVID’s effects for years due to decision-makers have prioritized short-term profits and frivolities over their futures. And Clare Wilson reports on new research showing how investing in air filtration can limit the ongoing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Eric Reinhart discusses the importance of approaching public health from a collective perspective, rather than presuming health is simply a matter of individual-level choices. And Michael Hiltzik highlights the usual combination of dishonesty and ignorance behind yet another set of talking points
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: #Elxn44 Roundup
The latest from Canada’s federal election campaign. – PressProgress takes a look at the housing plans on offer – finding the NDP’s plan to be the best of the major parties, but still falling short of ensuring the right to housing is met. Jonas Goldman, Anna Jessop and Aline Coutinho
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Relentless
The Libs’ choice of themes to start off a needless federal election campaign is telling mostly in the contast it presents between their self-image, and the obvious realities facing people living under their government. After all, there are plenty of issues which have been properly described as “relentless”. ‘Relentless’ climate
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Aaron D’Andrea reports on Dr. Theresa Tam’s recognition that most of Canada is now firmly trapped in a fourth wave of COVID. Alexander Quon reports on research confirming that the people avoiding vaccines are also the least likely to take other protective measures.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Armine Yalnizyan highlights how our failure to put adequate resources into the caring sector stands in the way of both a COVID recovery and sustainable longer-term economic development. – Jessica Wildfire writes that our economy has been set up to be unaffordable
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On diverging paths
Tonight’s Saskatchewan leadership debate will include plenty of back-and-forth as to whether we should vote for a better government, or settle for staying the course. And in answering that question, it’s worth taking a look at exactly what the status quo involves. Back when Scott Moe was threatening a spring
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Annie Lowrey writes about the affordability crisis which has left most Americans in dire financial straits even as aggregate economic numbers look reasonably strong: (B)eyond the headline economic numbers, a multifarious and strangely invisible economic crisis metastasized: Let’s call it the Great Affordability
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Laurie Macfarlane writes about the interconnected economic, democratic and environmental crises facing the UK – and the opportunity voters have to address all three in today’s election. And a group of political and thought leaders from around the globe lends its support
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – As affordability takes a central place in most Canadian election campaigns, Kofi Hope and Katrina Miller propose a definition based on public health: Health is the great equalizer. No matter where we’re from, what our values are, what our age or our political
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Suzanne Moore is encouraged that Greta Thunberg is challenging – and upsetting – a privileged male ruling class. Jennifer Ellen Good picks up on Thurberg’s theme that an obsession with growth at the expense of sustainability can only lead to disaster. And
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – CBC News highlights how cost-of-living issues look to play a key role in Canada’s federal election. And Jerry-Lynn Scofield points out that current asset valuations and economic assumptions are based on an entirely unsustainable combination of public, private and corporate debt loads.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Lana Payne points out the options to make life genuinely affordable for Canadians – while noting that the Cons’ usual tax baubles don’t make the list. And PressProgress both reveals Doug Ford’s plans to slash Ontario’s already-insufficient housing supports, and lists Brian Pallister’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Rick Smith and Ken Neumann write about the importance of developing a Green New Deal that includes participation from (and protection for) the workers affected by an economic transition. – Meanwhile, Aditya Chakrabortty notes that the oil-backed right’s personal attacks on Greta
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Robert Borosage discusses why we shouldn’t let conveniently one-sided calls for civility silence debate over progressive possibilities. And Alex Ballingall reports on the affordability anxiety which demands an effective political response rather than a contemptuous dismissal: In a memo outlining the results,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Matt Bruenig offers up a set of proposals to help American families toward economic security. And Andrew Jackson has some suggestions to boost Canada’s middle class: (T)op-line statistics suggest that ordinary middle-class households are seeing little or no increase in their incomes
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jonathan Amos and Victoria Gill report on Antarctica’s alarming rate of melting – with three trillion tons of ice lost in the past 25 years. Peter Erickson reminds us that the avoidable greenhouse gas emissions from subsidized oil sands development will only
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