Posts by Iglika Ivanova

Iglika Ivanova

About Iglika Ivanova

Iglika Ivanova is a Senior Economist and the Public Interest Researcher at the CCPA’s BC Office. She researches and writes on key social and economic challenges facing BC and Canada, including poverty, economic insecurity and labour market shifts towards more precarious work. Iglika is Co-Director of the Understanding Precarity in BC Project (UP-BC).

Iglika also investigates issues of government finance, tax policy and privatization and how they relate to the accessibility and quality of public services. She is particularly interested in the potential for public policy to build a more just, inclusive and sustainable economy. Follow Iglika on Twitter

Are Canadians paying too much in taxes?

Apr 20, 2010
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It’s tax season and people are looking more closely at their incomes and the amount of taxes they pay. The Fraser Institute released their annual Consumer Tax Index report yesterday, claiming that the total tax bill of the average Canadian family now takes up 41.7% of their income. This seems like a big number, which… View Article

Tax cuts don’t make up for BC’s low minimum wages

Apr 4, 2010
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Responding to news of Ontario’s latest minimum wage increase (to $10.25 per hour), BC’s labour minister Murray Coell held firm on his government’s commitment to leave BC’s $8 minimum wage unchanged. The Minister seems convinced that the tax cuts over the last decade were so beneficial to low wage workers in the province, that they… View Article

BC’s minimum wage is now 22% lower than Ontario’s

Mar 31, 2010
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Today, thousands of low wage workers in Ontario are getting a raise of 75 cent per hour, as the province’s minimum wage goes up to $10.25. This makes Ontario the first province to pass the $10 mark, but several other provinces are following closely. Newfoundland’s minimum wage will increase to $10 in July, as will… View Article

In defense of the stimulus

Mar 25, 2010
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Earlier this week, the Fraser Institute published a controversial report which argued that the government stimulus did not do much for economic growth in the last two quarters of 2009, suggesting that government spending on infrastructure was useless. While their analysis suffers from serious shortcomings, which I outlined in a previous blog post here, their… View Article

The role of stimulus spending in the recovery

Mar 24, 2010
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Yesterday, the Fraser Institute published a new report, which argues that the government stimulus did not drive Canadian economic growth in the last two quarters of 2009, suggesting that government spending on infrastructure was useless for the economy. The report earned the scorn of Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, who called it “poorly done and it’s… View Article

Women in the Canadian Economy

Mar 8, 2010
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Last weekend, I spoke at a community event celebrating International Women’s Day in Vancouver. It got me thinking about the status of women in the Canadian economy, reflecting both on the successes over the last half century and on the areas where work is still needed to achieve gender equality. As a young woman in… View Article

Is it time to stop worrying about the economy?

Feb 22, 2010
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If you read the papers in this province, you’d think BC had long forgotten about the recession. Every bit of economic good news is trumpeted enthusiastically, from small increases in employment to the latest growth forecast released by private sector economists. Yet economic forecasting is a notoriously difficult business. Just a year ago, we saw… View Article