Archive
Our recommendations for the 2017 BC Budget
Oct 17, 2016
On September 22, we presented CCPA-BC research and recommendations for BC’s 2017 Budget at a public hearing as part of BC’s 2017 budget consultation process. Here’s what we told the Committee. At first glance, BC appears somewhat isolated from the economic challenges facing the rest of Canada. Headline economic indicators like GDP growth and job creation… View Article
Massey Bridge P3 borrowing costs yet another problem
Oct 14, 2016
As more information becomes available about the controversial $3.5-billion, 10-lane Massey Bridge project, concern about the project increases. Issues had already been raised about the cost and need for the project given questions about traffic growth, but the publication of two new documents raises concerns about the plan to build the bridge as a public private… View Article
CETA: A significant shift from democratic governance
Oct 13, 2016
Imagine a far-off dystopia when foreign corporations are given the same status as citizens in public hearings. When the overriding priority for government in issuing licenses for fracking, pipeline and other projects is to make the process simple for corporations. When, regardless of how much a project is opposed by the public, governments have to… View Article
For-profit care of seniors proven to be inferior
Oct 11, 2016
Vancouver Coastal Health recently announced it will close two publicly owned and operated residential care facilities in Sechelt. The creation of 600 new beds will be contracted to private for-profit facilities. The decision to go with private for-profit beds contradicts the scientific evidence about ownership and residential care quality. We reviewed the link between ownership… View Article
Why is the CEO of a big Canadian bank giving speeches about climate change and pipelines?
Oct 7, 2016
Royal Bank of Canada CEO David McKay made a few headlines last week when he offered his thoughts to the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce on the energy and climate challenges facing Canada. In his speech he called on the federal government to help get fossil fuel resources to market by approving new bitumen pipelines and… View Article
A reality check on a national carbon price
Oct 4, 2016
After years of waffling, Canada is finally moving forward on climate action, including the thorny issue of putting a price on carbon. Last December, Canada helped usher in the Paris Agreement, a new international framework to reduce the carbon pollution that is warming the planet. On the domestic front, federal and provincial first ministers agreed to the… View Article
Political leadership needed to revitalize BC’s forestry industry
Oct 4, 2016
During the last provincial election not a day seemed to go by that Premier Christy Clark wasn’t donning a hardhat and promising us a brighter economic future built around a new Liquefied Natural Gas industry. Thousands of new jobs, steadily increasing royalty payments and taxes, and a resurging rural, resource-based economy all awaited us, the… View Article
How employers of Temporary Foreign Workers get away with low pay and bad working conditions
Oct 3, 2016
Canada’s controversial Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) Program is once again under the microscope with the release of a Parliamentary Committee report last week. While the report recommends some much-needed improvements to the rights of migrant workers, its main focus is to give employers easier access to TFWs. Instead, we need a re-think of the Program so… View Article
Penticton’s peculiar policy on freedom of information
Sep 30, 2016
This is International Right to Know Week, a week in honour of the public’s right to information held by their governments. The week is being celebrated in different ways in the 105 countries around the world with right to information laws. Here in British Columbia the City of Penticton is celebrating it in a spectacularly disappointing… View Article
Fraser Institute, provincial government swing and miss again on education funding
Sep 29, 2016
My recent analysis of BC’s education funding crisis made some waves, travelling far and wide in the media and becoming one of our most-read papers of the year at CCPA-BC. Not surprisingly, it also drew critical responses that reflect some persistent myths about the funding crisis. (You can hear my conversation [at 1:41:20] with CBC’s… View Article
How Proportional Representation could help to decentralize power and strengthen Parliament
Sep 28, 2016
Submission to the House of Commons Special Committee on Electoral Reform The debate around electoral reform has largely neglected a central question: what would a change in the electoral system mean for Canada’s constitutional separation of powers? To state the matter briefly, our Westminster system has an inherent tendency toward the concentration of power (into… View Article
Independence or a bit more income: British Columbians with disabilities are forced to choose
Sep 27, 2016
On September 1st, British Columbians on disability assistance saw their monthly rates go up for the first time in nine years. Unfortunately, the BC government bundled a significant clawback in transportation benefits with the rate increase, making it a lot less generous as a result. While the provincial government increased financial support for people with… View Article
The abysmal economics of LNG
Sep 26, 2016
In the lead up to the last provincial election, British Columbians learned about an economic panacea named LNG – Liquefied Natural Gas. This new industrial sector would take vast amounts of fracked gas pipelined from Northeast BC, and convert it to liquid form for shipment to Asia, where high prices would justify multi-billion dollar investments. BC,… View Article
The New Climate Denialism: Time for an intervention
Sep 22, 2016
For decades, the urgent need for climate action was stymied by what came to be known as “climate denialism” (or its more mild cousin, “climate skepticism”). In an effort to create public confusion and stall political progress, the fossil fuel industry poured tens of millions of dollars into the pockets of foundations, think tanks, lobby… View Article
Previewing Canada’s climate action plan
Sep 21, 2016
It’s been six months since First Ministers unveiled the Vancouver Declaration on Clean Growth and Climate Change. At the time, the Declaration was somewhat of a disappointment: no new national greenhouse gas reduction target, no consensus on carbon pricing, and a parallel push for pipelines (for a review and analysis, see this post). Basically, Ministers agreed to… View Article
Investing in youth aging out of foster care
Sep 20, 2016
It should be enough to know that it is the right thing to do. We should support foster youth in their transition to adulthood—youth for whom we are collectively responsible—in the same way that families support their own children. But we don’t. Over 60% of 20-24 year olds in BC live in their family homes, benefitting not… View Article
An increase so small it keeps minimum wage workers in poverty
Sep 20, 2016
Today, BC’s lowest paid workers get a 40-cent raise. The latest increase of the provincial minimum wage—now $10.85 per hour for most workers isn’t much to celebrate. It works out to an extra $16 per week for someone working full-time – and that doesn’t stretch far in a province with such high cost of living…. View Article
Rising housing prices fuel the growing gap
Sep 19, 2016
Vancouver is now a “city of millionaires”, according to Environics’ 2016 Wealthscapes report: In B.C., the red-hot real estate market fueled a rise in average net worth, producing Canada’s first “city of millionaires”: Vancouver. In 2015, the average net worth of Vancouver households hit $1,036,202 – an impressive 7.1 percent increase over the previous year. You are forgiven if… View Article
The fifth annual Welfare Food Challenge is coming up
Sep 13, 2016
The 2016 Welfare Food Challenge—in which participants spend one week eating only what can be purchased with the money a welfare recipient receives—is coming up on October 16th. The organization behind the challenge, Raise the Rates, calculates the amount participants have to spend on food based on the expectation that welfare recipients will have to pay for rental housing,… View Article
Denham goes to Britain – and takes some BC freedom of information issues with her
Sep 9, 2016
Elizabeth Denham—British Columbia’s former Information and Privacy Commissioner, who aggressively pushed freedom of information and privacy issues here—is now doing a similar job in the United Kingdom. After approval from Queen Elizabeth, Denham was appointed UK Information Commissioner on July 15, 2016 – and in at least one important area she is going further than she… View Article