Posts by Alex Hemingway

About Alex Hemingway

Alex Hemingway is a Senior Economist and Public Finance Policy Analyst at the CCPA’s BC Office. His research focuses on tax fairness, public finances, public services, and economic inequality in BC and Canada.

Alex holds a PhD in political science from the University of British Columbia, where his research examined the relationship between economic class and political inequality in the advanced industrialized world. He holds two master’s degrees from the London School of Economics (MSc Social Policy and Planning; MSc Global Politics), as well as a BA in psychology from Simon Fraser University.
Follow Alex on Twitter

Lessons from the Squamish Nation’s ambitious new rental housing plan

Feb 6, 2020

By Alex Hemingway

As we face a severe housing crisis in Vancouver, the Squamish Nation is poised to add 6,000 new homes—mostly market rental housing—to its 11 acre reserve lands in Kitsilano. This will create a major new ongoing revenue stream for the Nation, while providing rental homes to help ease Vancouver’s ultra-low vacancy rates. The Sen̓áḵw project… View Article

A surplus at all costs? Balanced budget fixation hurts BC

Jan 20, 2020

By Alex Hemingway

Almost every year at budget time, BC governments of all stripes predict public coffers are going to be worse off than they’re likely truly expecting. This habit is usually portrayed as harmless or even prudent, but when the budget room available to us is systematically underestimated, it distorts the scope of public debate. Budget lowballing… View Article

Happy new year—no more MSP!

Jan 6, 2020

By Alex Hemingway

It’s a brand new year, and BC’s Medical Services Plan (MSP) premiums are no more. That’s great news because MSP premiums were a very unfair tax (or “regressive” as we economists like to say). In its first budget (in 2018), the current provincial government announced it would phase out MSP premiums by 2020 and has… View Article

Eliminate and replace it: A better way to reform the basic personal tax amount

Dec 10, 2019

By Alex Hemingway

The new federal Liberal minority government has signalled that a tax cut will be its first order of policy business. That’s a shame because this tax cut will do little for those with low incomes while providing the most benefit to higher income households—and there are better ways to benefit Canadians who need the help…. View Article

Property taxes in Vancouver are still too low, fueling inequality and speculation

Dec 2, 2019

By Alex Hemingway

We’ve heard a lot of griping recently about Vancouver’s proposed property tax increase for 2020, but missing from the debate is a reality check on the city’s extremely low tax rates. Vancouver’s property tax rate is, in fact, the lowest in North America, at just $2.56 per $1,000 in assessed value—or 0.26%. Why is Vancouver’s… View Article

BC should think twice before opening its doors to multinational ride-hailing corporations

Oct 7, 2019

By Alex Hemingway

Last year, the BC government introduced legislation expected to bring ride-hailing to the province, but many questions remain about what that will look like in practice. One of the bodies responsible for working out the policy details is BC’s Passenger Transportation Board (PTB), an independent tribunal that has been handling passenger transport license applications from… View Article

Who owns it? The democratic socialist debate Canada should be having this election

Aug 19, 2019

By Alex Hemingway

We live in an era of extreme inequality of wealth and power across much of the developed world, and Canada is no exception. Public confidence in political institutions and “political classes” in the West is in long-running decline. The failure of established institutions to grapple adequately with the crises we face is giving way to an… View Article

Why are we letting corporate medicine take hold in Vancouver’s new urgent care centres?

May 23, 2019

By Alex Hemingway

The BC government has rolled out a flurry of impressive measures to strengthen our public health care system over the past two years. Flying below the radar, though, is a new effort by for-profit corporations to push their way into BC’s health care system — and the Vancouver Coastal Health authority seems to be waving… View Article

Reality check: Only BC’s very richest paying higher tax rate

Mar 25, 2019

By Alex Hemingway

Under personal tax changes announced by the BC government over the past year and a half—including elimination of Medical Services Plan (MSP) premiums—the vast majority of households are seeing their tax bills fall, while the richest 1% are paying more. This is good news for tax fairness in BC. In a fair system, we pay… View Article

Nine things to know about BC Budget 2019

Feb 19, 2019

By Iglika Ivanova and Alex Hemingway

BC Budget 2019 delivers modest new investments in two key areas—poverty reduction and climate action—and maintains momentum on other files that implement the ambitious investments announced last year. Here are our highlights, fresh from the lockup. 1.   New BC Child Opportunity Benefit The flagship announcement of BC Budget 2019—and likely of the upcoming first-ever BC… View Article