Archive

‘Prosperity’ Mine

Jul 30, 2010
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So there I was in Durham near Newcastle, enjoying a pint in a very historic and charming little pub called the Dun Cow (where do the Brits come up with these names). I was looking at some old photos of hard working folks coming out of the mines and couldn’t help but think of B.C.’s… View Article

Western Climate Initiative: another baby step

Jul 29, 2010
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It has been a while but this week climate change is back in the news cycle. The front page of today’s Globe reports on the latest climate impacts tally: The report …  concluded 2000 to 2009 was the warmest decade ever, and the Earth has been growing warmer for 50 years. Each of the past… View Article

The U.K. having problems with its P3s

Jul 27, 2010
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Britain, which led the charge for public private partnerships under both Conservative and Labour governments over the past decades, is now seeing problems with the projects. This month the new coalition government cancelled the controversial Building Schools for the Future program.  Michael Gove, the Conservative Secretary of State for Education said the P3 school program… View Article

Marc’s Summer Reading

Jul 22, 2010
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With summer comes a lightening of my work load, so I’ve finally found some time to dive into a few interesting books. These are all related to my ongoing research interests (I do have some fiction sitting around waiting for a real holiday, with Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna at the top of the pile): The… View Article

The Census: Evidence based decisions better than decision based evidence

Jul 14, 2010
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There is beginning to be a lot of discussion about the decision by the Federal government two weeks ago to drop the compulsory long form census. Armine Yalnizyan, a senior economist with the CCPA was one of the first people to raise the issue in an open letter to the Minister of Industry who is… View Article

And now for the bill: the cost of the Olympics

Jul 12, 2010
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The BC government has released its final estimates of the cost of staging the 2010 Winter Games, highlighting the problems this government has with telling the truth (other examples include the 2009 pre-election fudge-it budget, and the HST). The Tyee reports: British Columbia’s government spent $325 million more on the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics… View Article

BC’s 2009 Super-Fudge-It Budget

Jul 12, 2010
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Under the “we told you so” category, I am filing the BC public accounts for 2009/10. The province closed the year with a deficit of $1.8 billion. As Will McMartin comments in The Tyee: … B.C.’s public accounts for the fiscal year 2009/2010 conclusively prove that the pre-election fiscal plan foisted on British Columbians by… View Article

Gas prices and consumption: BC vs Pacific Northwest

Jul 12, 2010
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On a weekend getaway to Washington state, I was alarmed at how much cheaper gas prices are south of the border. Typically, we paid $3 per gallon, whereas the price in Vancouver upon our return was $1.16 per litre, which is $4.39 per gallon (with the exchange rate roughly parity over the weekend). This is… View Article

Good news from the BC government – with a couple of caveats

Jul 10, 2010
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The BC government’s announcement July 9th that it had signed a deal on generic drugs with the province’s drug stores is good news.  As discussed in an earlier blog, British Columbians have been paying far more than consumers in other jurisdictions for generic drugs.  Alberta, Quebec and Ontario had already taken steps to correct this… View Article

Will the HST boost job growth and when?

Jul 6, 2010
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As BC and Ontario have now started paying the HST at the till, many people may be wondering when exactly can we expect to see those jobs postings opening up. This is a good question. According to analysis commissioned by the BC government from economist Jack Mintz, titled British Columbia’s Harmonized Sales Tax: A Giant… View Article

BC’s carbon tax turns two

Jul 5, 2010
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With all of the attention focused on the HST implementation on July 1, most people seemed to miss the next increment of that other much-hated tax, BC’s carbon tax. As of July 1, the carbon tax is now $20 per tonne of CO2, or about 4.6 cents on a litre of gasoline. And like any… View Article

On the economic impacts of the HST

Jul 5, 2010
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My previous HST post focused on the impact of the tax on households and I concluded that it’s likely that it will cost families and that some modest income families will be hurt by the tax. Is this sufficient reason to campaign for the tax to be repealed? Not necessarily. Public policy is about choices… View Article

British Medical Journal links social spending cuts to increased mortality

Jun 29, 2010
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An article and an editorial in this week’s British Medical Journal outline the very high cost of cutting social programs. The article’s authors look at social spending in the OECD and find changes in social spending directly related to changes in mortality.  Even more, they find the impact of social spending on health to be… View Article

The HST and BC family budgets

Jun 24, 2010
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That the HST will take a bite out of family budgets is clear to everyone. The main question right now is just how big of a bite. Two studies released earlier this week asked this exact question but came to very different conclusions. On Monday, the Fraser Institute released a paper arguing that lower and… View Article

If the Taxpayers Federation gets its way, we can be just like California

Jun 21, 2010
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The Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s Maureen Bader is inciting a tax revolt for municipal taxpayers.  If she gets her way, maybe we can be just like California. Last Friday the Globe and Mail published an article in their business section outlining how Los Angeles area apartment owners in the mid 1970s financed a campaign against municipal… View Article

New BC generic drug plan could save millions – but maybe not for everybody

Jun 18, 2010
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Very, very quietly, the BC provincial government is negotiating new arrangements for the purchase of generic drugs that could save the province hundreds of millions of dollars.  Done right, all BC taxpayers will win as more money becomes available for other health services.  Done wrong, much of the savings for the province’s PharmaCare program will… View Article

A new era for measuring poverty in Canada

Jun 18, 2010
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Last Thursday’s Statistics Canada release of individual and household income data for 2008 marks a new era in the study of poverty in Canada. Instead of reporting only on the Low Income Cut Offs (LICO), as they used to, Statistics Canada reported on three of the most common measures of low income in the same… View Article

Quebec Auditor General slams P3s in hospital project

Jun 11, 2010
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Quebec’s Auditor General has issued yet one more report slamming the use of public private partnerships (P3s).  With P3s, private corporations finance and operate public facilities and services.  The money they invest is more costly than money borrowed publicly.  It is paid back to them, along with profits for the corporation, by governments over multi-decade contracts…. View Article

Poverty reduction: What other provinces are doing

Jun 8, 2010
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BC has much to learn from other provinces when it comes to poverty reduction. Six provinces now have poverty reduction plans, although most are still fairly new, and therefore we don’t yet have data to tell us what kind of success they are meeting with, the exceptions being Quebec and Newfoundland. What their plans and… View Article

Off the Highway by Mette Bach: politics and memoir

Jun 8, 2010
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Another suggestion for summer reading: brand new from local publisher New Star Books: Off the Highway by Mette Bach, a short (about 80 pages) memoir of her childhood and adolescence in North Delta. Bach weaves together personal recollections, history and social commentary to create a quirky, funny, depressing picture of a little-known Vancouver suburb. Regular… View Article
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