Archive
A revenue negative carbon tax?
Sep 22, 2010
BC’s carbon tax was supposed to be “revenue neutral”, meaning all carbon tax revenue would be “recycled” to British Columbians through personal income tax cuts, corporate income tax cuts and a low-income credit. When the 2008 budget launched the carbon tax, we were provided with a forecast that had revenues precisely match recycling through tax… View Article
Pat Bell’s YouTube Foray – Sowing Seeds of Misinformation
Sep 21, 2010
Unlikely as it is to garner a huge following on YouTube, one suspects a recently uploaded video message by B.C. Forests Minister Pat Bell may soon have more than a few forest industry workers, commercial tree nursery owners and members of Bell’s own ministry shaking their heads in disbelief. Under the pretext of kicking off… View Article
Burns Lake looks to wood pellets
Sep 20, 2010
BC became prosperous on the basis of its resource industries. But today further development of resources is running into wall of climate policy. Good climate policies increasingly in conflict with old industrial policies. In spite of some small moves on the climate front from Victoria, a resource extraction mindset still dominates the corridors of power…. View Article
Save The Earth – Vote!
Sep 19, 2010
Global warming is “a socialist plot” to steal from the rich – according to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. However, it’s not just Harper. The federal government, under both Liberals and Conservatives, has not only resisted environmental action in Canada, they have opposed international efforts to protect the Earth. Indeed, George Monbiot wrote that Canada is… View Article
Ministry of Environment Cuts: Will That be Oil With Your Water?
Sep 17, 2010
British Columbians already have scant information on the number of toxic oil and hazardous waste spills in the province. They may soon have a lot loss. This, at a time when provincial environmental personnel are stretched razor thin in responding to the nearly 4,000 such spills that occur each year in the province. This year,… View Article
Our priorities for BC Budget 2011
Sep 17, 2010
On September 15, I presented CCPA-BC’s recommendations for BC Budget 2011 at the Vancouver BC Budget Consultation public hearing. Take a look at my presentation slides for a brief overview of our take on BC’s current budget situation and economic outlook, and our advice for leading the province’s recovery…. View Article
The Globe’s Report on Private Schools
Sep 15, 2010
If there was truth in news reporting, the Globe’s “report” on private schools (Sept. 14) would be labeled a “special advertising supplement”. It is essentially a cheerleading exercise for private schools, funded by advertising from private schools, so you’ll find no news in this report. Which is too bad because the topic of private schools… View Article
Young university grads having a hard time in the Canadian labour market
Sep 13, 2010
An interesting chart from The Economist shows that over a third of young university graduates in Canada end up working in low skilled jobs. In fact, Canada is second only to Spain in the OECD when it comes to young grads employed in jobs that fail to take advantage of their skills. There is certainly… View Article
BC’s economic management brilliant says Premier
Sep 10, 2010
I’m sitting here today where most economists are saying we have the best economy in the country and we have opportunities not just for job growth but investment growth that are unmatched anywhere in the continent. (Gordon Campbell speaking to reporters this week) The Liberal government has always claimed its biggest virtue is economic competence…. View Article
With a thud on my door, it arrived …
Sep 8, 2010
… The Labour Day issue of the Vancouver Courier. It even had a story I was interested in, a lead article on local food, and another on the sustainability of fisheries. Good on small-scale independent journalism, I thought, until the moment I took off its rubber band to reveal an inch-thick pile of glossy inserts…. View Article
Your Brain on Capitalism
Sep 7, 2010
At least as far back as Sokrates, people have speculated on the relationship between psychology and politics. In the 20th century, Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm and members of the Frankfurt School (such as Herbert Marcuse) pioneered discussion about how individual dispositions affect one’s social and political ideologies. On the other hand, social psychologists like Stanley… View Article
Do we need a business case for poverty reduction?
Aug 25, 2010
I was reading up on poverty reduction policies and I came across a paragraph by Dalhousie University economics professor Lars Osberg that was just begging to be shared and discussed on PolicyNote:… View Article
The End of the H1N1 Pandemic
Aug 23, 2010
The world spent billions on medication and vaccine stockpiles because the World Health Organization cried wolf. If the WHO cannot cleanse its ties to the industrialists hungry for profits in exaggerating the severity of disease in order to sell treatments, why should we ever again listen to anything they say?… View Article
Reaction to the Tamil boat: curious comparisons
Aug 21, 2010
If the 492 Tamil asylum-seekers who recently arrived by boat on BC’s shores are “queue-jumpers”, then I guess my parents were too. See, they came as Vietnam War draft dodgers from the US in 1967. Like a couple of the Tamil women just arrived, my mom was pregnant with me. My parents did not seek… View Article
HST and the NDP
Aug 21, 2010
Let’s face it. You can’t blame the NDP or anyone else enjoying the drubbing the Liberals are getting from Bill Vander Zalm and co. It is incredibly fun to watch. There is no question that the drubbing is well deserved. Whatever one thinks of the merits of an HST versus the PST it replaced, it… View Article
Lack of water data a cause for public concern
Aug 19, 2010
In our high-speed digital world, there is no excuse for regulators failing to post and update information that is readily available to them and of evident public interest. This is especially true when the fate of vitally important, publicly owned assets such as water hangs in the balance. To have faith that water resources are… View Article
The impact of the recession on young people
Aug 13, 2010
The International Labour Organization published a report this week on world youth unemployment that seems to have some relevance here in British Columbia. The study, Global Employment Trends for Youth, outlines the devastating impact the recession has had on young people worldwide. More than 80 million people aged 15 to 24 were unemployed at the… View Article
Cholesterol drugs don’t help the healthy
Aug 12, 2010
I have said this before and this recent research begs me to say this again: Someday we will look back on society’s zeal for checking and chemically altering our blood cholesterol in the same way we now regard blood letting and purging: A medical barbarity that good science cannot support…. View Article
The Smart Tax Alliance. Non-Partisan? Really?
Aug 8, 2010
Last Thursday BC newspapers carried a large ad supporting implementation of the Harmonized Sales Tax. The advertisement was signed by the “Smart Taxation Alliance” a group of 30 or so employer organizations. The ad carried the usual dubious arguments that transferring the cost of taxes from corporations to consumers will create vast economic activity. What… View Article
12 year olds at work: cuts, strains, dislocations and fractures
Aug 4, 2010
Last month the Medical Officer of Health for the Sea to Sky Region published an article in a Squamish newspaper raising his concerns about child labour in British Columbia. In his column Dr. Paul Martiquet reports that in BC the minimum age for working a regular job is 12 – the lowest of any jurisdiction… View Article