Monday, February 23, 2015

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on the work done by the Broadbent Institute and Mariana Mazzucato to highlight the importance of publicly-funded innovation:
According to a 2014 report by the International Monetary Fund, Canadian companies have been accumulating “dead money” at a faster rate than any other G7 country, rather than reinvesting profit into things like human capital or research capacity — suggesting that the rewards of innovative success are being captured by an increasingly narrow sliver of society, even when public money may well have been an early catalyst for achievement. 

But in taking a more active stake in innovative missions, the Institute suggests, the Canadian government could help better spread the benefits of success, by doing things like taking equity positions in companies it helps start, making loans contingent on local hiring, or asking for grants to be repaid when firms are successful.

“Government is always, in a sense, picking winners. It’s picking races,” says Sas. “And so the conversation we need to have is around making sure the public sees returns on those bets.”
- Steven Greenhouse reports on the damage done to service-sector workers by "flexible" employment arrangements which result in employers being to insist on harmful schedules. And BJ Sikeirski writes that the Cons are attacking pensions across the federal Crown sector with no regard for contracts or employees.

- Joyce Nelson discusses how the latest set of ever-more-extreme trade agreements results in a corporate coup d'etat. And Brent Patterson highlights how those agreement threaten Canada's universal public health care system.

- Finally, Chris Hall reminds us that CSIS has been sorely lacking for oversight even before the massive expansion of its powers planned under the Cons' terror bill. Wes Regan warns that C-51 likely represents a dangerous game of bait and switch. And Thomas Walkom notes that politics aside, C-51 is utterly unjustified in principle.

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