Upcoming Municipal Elections: Business as Usual?

Mar 27, 2014
With municipal elections on the horizon in British Columbia, it is worth paying attention to the nature of political discourse in this province – and considering its implications and alternatives. Increasingly, business parlance is finding its way into what still holds the pretence of being a democratic institution.  As with our most recent provincial election,… View Article

How many will vote in the November 2014 local government elections?

Mar 16, 2014
In BC’s last local government elections in 2011 less than 30% of people bothered to vote.  CivicInfoBC has a handy list of turnout information for all of our local governments here. I was curious about how this compared to local election turnout in other provinces. I don’t have turnout information at a provincial level for… View Article

4 year municipal elections: are we trading long term planning for accountability?

Mar 2, 2014
The BC government has announced changes to the way local government elections will be run. One of the changes will be that when local government voters go to the polls in November they will be electing people to represent them to a four year term rather than the current three year term. I am in… View Article

LNG’s threat to water sustainability

Feb 27, 2014
By Ben Parfitt and David Hughes One glaring problem with the provincial government’s strategy to turn British Columbia into a liquefied natural gas exporting juggernaut is that it scuttles any chance B.C. has to be a climate change leader. But equally problematic is how our government’s economically dubious fixation with gas exports jeopardizes our irreplaceable… View Article

How Doctors are Paid in BC

Feb 22, 2014
  [A version of this piece was posted on the Tyee] Health care is the biggest, most expensive and most important thing that government does. Hospital care swallows up a large proportion of the health care budget, but primary care in the community takes care of most patient needs and keeps people out of hospital…. View Article

About that LNG Prosperity Fund

Feb 18, 2014
Budget 2014 contains some new information about how the province intends to pay for all of the ponies BC children have been promised from LNG riches. Alas, there is not much there – a three page text box that mostly restates the hype on LNG – and from what has been revealed it looks a… View Article

What you need to know about BC Budget 2014

Feb 18, 2014
Today’s 2014 BC budget contained very little news, as expected. Despite a significantly weaker economic picture for BC than what was projected in the June 2013 Budget Update, there are no new measures to help British Columbian families struggling with economic insecurity in the weak job market. Five years after the recession officially ended, BC… View Article

7 things that should be in this year’s BC Budget

Feb 17, 2014
In the fifth year of a slow and largely jobless economic recovery, the 2014 BC Budget should prioritize measures to set the foundation of a more just and sustainable economy, where prosperity is shared by all citizens. Here are 7 initiatives that will get us there. 1. A comprehensive poverty reduction plan Combating poverty is… View Article

When no news is not good news: what the uneventful BC throne speech means for you

Feb 15, 2014
Last week’s BC throne speech received little media coverage, partly because it fell in the middle of the Olympics and on the same day as the Canadian federal budget, but also because it was rather uneventful, repeating familiar themes and commitments. The absence of significant new announcements in the throne speech is not good news… View Article

Looking Back on the Vancouver-Whistler Winter Games

Feb 6, 2014
British Columbians no doubt feel thankful that the costs, security and other challenges facing the Sochi Winter Olympic Games far surpass what B.C. and Canada faced with the Vancouver-Whistler 2010 Games. But the 2010 Games were not without controversy and still raise the question of whether it was all worthwhile. Unfortunately, at least from a… View Article

Corporate rights under serious scrutiny in Europe. Canada fast asleep.

Feb 4, 2014
On Feb. 3rd, I made a presentation  in Vancouver to the House of Commons Standing Committee on International Trade on the proposed Canada/E.U. trade deal (C.E.T.A.). I was there on behalf of CUPE B.C. The Committee, chaired by Alberta Conservative M.P. Rob Merrifield, was in B.C. to review both C.E.T.A. and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (T.P.P.)… View Article

BC’s Big Favour?

Jan 30, 2014
The hype on LNG has grown to staggering proportions. I have not had much time to debunk all of the government’s grotesque exaggerations and outright falsehoods. But Christy Clark’s claim that BC is “doing the world a favour” by exporting LNG to Asia made me write this oped, which got picked up in today’s Vancouver… View Article

Spreading a fossilized view of the tar sands

Jan 24, 2014
It is lamentable that commentator Rex Murphy, who sometimes acts like a resident apologist for the fossil fuel industry, on January 17 devoted his weekly commentary on CBC television’s The National, to undermining rather than encouraging citizens working against massive vested interests, for a habitable planet for future generations. Specifically, Murphy tore into Neil Young’s… View Article

Anti-poverty movement, meet the culture of medicine.

Jan 23, 2014
The evidence for the burden of income inequality on health is plentiful and convincing, with inequity and its health impact both increasing in British Columbia in recent years. Many voices are calling for attention to poverty reduction and a living wage. But what happens when you add doctors into this conversation? Progress and challenges both. Some physicians are at the… View Article

Burning issues for Metro Vancouver

Jan 7, 2014
The front page story of today’s Vancouver Sun takes on Metro Vancouver’s waste incineration facility in Burnaby. The Fraser Valley Regional District has been strongly opposed to a new proposed incinerator planned by Metro, and likewise has expressed its concerns about air quality in regards to the Burnaby facility. Its operating permit is up for… View Article

The wrong question in the wrong forum

Dec 12, 2013
It didn’t take very much time at the joint federal-provincial environmental hearing into Site C, which started this week in Fort St. John, to realize that it is not the best forum to address the central issue underlying BC Hydro’s proposal to develop the $8 to $9 billion hydro project. The central issue is the… View Article

You always learn something when accountants feud

Dec 9, 2013
Every year in BC people who follow government get an early Christmas present in late November,  For the better part of a week BC’s Auditor General sits down with the legislature’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to talk about the Auditor General’s reports. This year’s encounter was quieter than some in the past.  Former Auditor General… View Article

BC hospital P3 ownership moves to tax haven

Nov 6, 2013
One more of British Columbia’s public private partnerships (P3s) has headed on down the road to ownership in a European tax haven.  Bilfinger Berger Global Infrastructure completed deals last summer to acquire equity and loans for the Kelowna Vernon Hospital.  It is also buying out equity and loans on Alberta’s North East Stoney Trail highway… View Article

Annotated Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy

Nov 4, 2013
BC recently signed on to a new Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy, which includes California, Oregon and Washington states. On the surface it seems like the province is recommitting to climate policy, but don’t believe the hype: it was just a few years ago that BC was in negotiations with those same… View Article

What’s the Canada-EU trade deal all about?

Nov 4, 2013
Chances are, you’ve heard about the Canada-EU trade deal. It’s hard to miss, what with the federal government hard at work staging photo-ops and events across the country, promoting the deal as a major win. The official sales pitch focuses on the trade aspects of the deal – lowering or eliminating tariffs between Canada and… View Article