Archive
Business dominated think tank winds up with report showing little progress in BC
Dec 19, 2011
The British Columbia Progress Board came out with its last report today. Gordon Campbell started the think tank in 2001 and now Christy Clark has ended it. The report shows progress, but often in the wrong direction. You can find the whole report here but it will take patience. It weighs in at a hefty… View Article
Just who should be putting who under trusteeship?
Dec 15, 2011
I am the first to admit that, lamentably, I know very little about the problems that face First Nations people. That did not stop me from having an opinion about the federal takeover at Attawapiskat. My first reaction was that the Chief and Council should have thrown the keys to the federal government and said,… View Article
Inequality and Climate Injustice: A Durban Post-Mortem
Dec 13, 2011
The United Nations climate change talks in Durban, South Africa, ended 2011 with a whimper. After a year in which climate disasters rolled across the globe, major polluting nations like Canada chose to ignore them, seeking instead to disrupt the Durban negotiations, then blew the world a raspberry, by officially pulling out of the Kyoto… View Article
Is it P3s or the 3 Stooges? A tale of two cities
Nov 30, 2011
For those of us not fond of the expensive and secretive public private partnerships (P3s) promoted by the BC and Canadian governments, the last few weeks have been entertaining. In one community voters rejected the use of a P3 water system. In another community the federal government refused a P3 after the city had spent… View Article
Growing support for cities to adopt living wage
Nov 16, 2011
New developments since my recent post calling on municipalities to lead the way on adopting living wage policies: First, over just over 100 candidates have responded to the Open Letter issued by the Living Wage for Families campaign, covering almost every Lower Mainland municipality. Almost all have expressed support for this proposal or at least… View Article
Time to give shale gas industry a closer look before we’re totally fracked
Nov 9, 2011
Despite the recent release by Canada’s natural gas industry of a set of guiding principles governing the controversial gas well “stimulation” method known as hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”, and despite the almost immediate endorsement of those principles by BC Premier and industry cheerleader Christy Clark, more and more British Columbians are justifiably worried about what… View Article
BC government claims new power over personal information. Public comment sidelined.
Nov 9, 2011
The BC government has a lot of personal information about you. Legislation passed last month means the government can do a lot more with it. The legislation passed without the public consultation demanded last year by the Information and Privacy Commissioner. In 2010 a legislative committee undertook a review of Freedom of Information and Protection… View Article
Living Wage Policy: Why Municipal Governments should lead the way
Oct 25, 2011
By Michael McCarthy Flynn and Seth Klein The Living Wage for Families Campaign, along with 54 organizations representing over 300,000 British Columbians, recently issued an Open Letter calling on all municipal election candidates to help low-income families in their cities by passing a Living Wage policy if they are elected (available here). Many families are… View Article
Occupy Canada: media pundits vs. reality
Oct 24, 2011
The Occupy Wall Street/Occupy Canada protests seem to be occupying – and perhaps unhinging – the minds of media pundits – at least, those who are mired in the dogma of “free market” fundamentalism. One recent example from CBC Television came in the form of a personal attack on author Chris Hedges. A well-known American… View Article
Occupation, democracy and coops
Oct 18, 2011
I hung out a while yesterday at the Vancouver Occupation, and was impressed with their efforts at radical democracy. Many in the mainstream press have been quick to pile on for how time-consuming decision-making can be under this model, but perhaps they have not spent enough time in legislatures and committee meetings and public consultations…. View Article
O’Leary breached CBC standards, Ombudsman rules
Oct 14, 2011
It took just a week following the airing of an “interview” on CBC television’s The Lang & O’Leary Exchange for the public broadcaster’s Ombudsman, Kirk LaPointe, to rule that the public broadcaster’s journalistic standards had been breached. For all those who saw the segment on the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations – either when it aired… View Article
Are Smart Meters Worth the Cost?
Oct 12, 2011
A notice in my mailbox last week told me that smart meters are going to be installed in my neighbourhood. I’ll admit that the geek in me would like to see real-time information about my energy usage, but as an economist I’m interested in costs and benefits of the program. So far we have seen… View Article
BC’s Top 1%: Doing fabulous, thank you
Oct 11, 2011
Occupy Wall Street has shone new light on the growing gap between the richest 1% and the rest of us (the 99 percenters). But that’s the U.S. right? Surely, our reality is different, eh? As the occupy movement comes to Canada in the coming week, we don’t really have reason to copy these American trouble-makers,… View Article
The Union of BC Municipalities Convention: a potpourri of policy
Oct 2, 2011
For people who follow local policy issues the annual meeting of the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) is always chock-a-block with material. Last week’s meeting in Vancouver, which saw hundreds of mayors and councilors along with most of the Cabinet, much of the BC opposition and dozens of groups selling both items and ideas, was… View Article
Fighting energy poverty
Sep 28, 2011
Today we released a new Climate Justice Project report, Fighting Energy Poverty in the Transition to Zero-Emission Housing: A Framework for BC, by yours truly, Eugene Kung (a lawyer with the BC Public Interest Advocacy Centre and a steering committee member of the CJP) and Jason Owen (who worked on this project as a student at UBC, now with… View Article
Will the “Jobs Plan” just add to the government trust deficit?
Sep 24, 2011
There has been some very good analysis written about the details of this week’s roll out of the BC Liberal government’s “Jobs Plan.” A number of pieces are on this site. Marc Lee and Iglika Ivanova had an excellent column in the Sun. Instead of commenting on the policy thrust, however, I would like to… View Article
A ‘Jobs for Jobs’ Strategy
Sep 23, 2011
It is ironic that within weeks of its much publicized report and stated concern about the upward pressures on BC Hydro rates, the government announces a job strategy that will drive up electricity rates more than anything else — more even than the self-sufficiency policy government has belatedly recognized must go. The plan for new… View Article
Are international students the key to jobs in BC
Sep 21, 2011
The second day of the roll out of the Premier’s jobs agenda was marked by a single announcement made at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops. The focus of this piece of the jobs puzzle was ramping up international education and regional skills training. The idea of leveraging education, especially post-secondary education, to boost the economy… View Article
“Climate change starts here: the BC dirty jobs plan”
Sep 19, 2011
We are still on Day One of the Jobs Plan, and the afternoon news is all about proposed liquid natural gas plants in Kitimat, which will take pipelined gas and send it by tanker to Asia. Quoth the Premier: Creating a new industry with the capacity to export B.C.’s natural gas to overseas markets for… View Article
Jobs and BC’s Resource Extraction Mindset
Sep 19, 2011
Day One of the week-long BC’s Jobs Plan: the Premier was in Prince Rupert to announce a commitment to making the port a “gateway” to Asia. Quoth Premier Clark: I am in Prince Rupert today because if you are looking at Canada from Asia, with an eye to investing in our country, Canada truly starts… View Article