Posts by Marc Lee

About Marc Lee

Marc Lee is a Senior Economist at the CCPA’s BC Office. In addition to tracking federal and provincial budgets and economic trends, Marc has published on a range of topics from poverty and inequality to globalization and international trade to public services and regulation. Marc is Co-Director of the Climate Justice Project, a research partnership with UBC's School of Community and Regional Planning that examines the links between climate change policies and social justice. Follow Marc on Twitter

A carbon budget framework for BC: Achieving accountability and oversight

May 22, 2018

By Marc Lee

When it comes to climate change Canada’s leaders have been great at setting targets for far into the future and then failing to meet them. Nationally, this pattern goes back to prime minister Brian Mulroney and has continued through prime ministers Jean Chrétien, Stephen Harper and now Prime Minister Trudeau. The Paris Agreement on climate… View Article

Mobility pricing in practice: A look at London, Stockholm and Singapore

Apr 30, 2018

By Marc Lee

An independent commission on mobility pricing (also called “road pricing” or “congestion charging”) will report to TransLink and the Mayors’ Council shortly. In a recent CCPA paper, I looked at the types of mobility pricing that could be considered for Metro Vancouver and the challenge of ensuring a new system is fair. Declining technology costs,… View Article

Kinder Morgan: Costs and benefits unbalanced, not in the national interest

Apr 23, 2018

By Marc Lee

The Alberta and federal governments claim that Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion (TMX) is in the national interest due to its economic benefits. But a closer look at TMX’s full range of benefits and costs shows the project to be extremely lopsided in its distribution. First, the economic gains accrue almost entirely to Alberta… View Article

In defence of BC’s new “speculation” tax

Mar 22, 2018

By Marc Lee and Alex Hemingway

Among the housing measures announced in BC Budget 2018, the new speculation tax has caused the most uproar. Some of this stems from a lack of clarity on how the tax will be applied. Details are being worked out by the Ministry of Finance and in their absence there’s been some confusion and alarm. The… View Article

Seven ways to grow BC’s co-op sector

Mar 6, 2018

By Elvy Del Bianco, John Kay, Mary Childs, Ben Hyman and Marc Lee

On May 17, 2017, some 36 representatives from British Columbia’s co-operative (or ‘co-op’) sector met to share ideas about how to grow the sector, to better understand challenges that co-ops are facing, and to explore next steps—both in terms of what the sector can accomplish itself, as well as what government support will be needed… View Article

Mobility pricing: An idea whose time has come?

Mar 1, 2018

By Marc Lee

Metro Vancouver is at a critical point where congestion-induced delays are the norm on the region’s roads and bridges. Congestion problems will only steadily worsen because of our growing population and with every additional car added to the region’s roads. Expansion of public transit is widely seen as essential to ensure accessible mobility, but progress… View Article

Everything you wanted to know about the housing taxes and expenditures in BC Budget 2018

Feb 28, 2018

By Marc Lee

BC Budget 2018 was billed to have major investments in housing, and did not disappoint. Indeed, the surprise of the Budget was just how far the BC government went on the demand side through new tax measures to make the property tax system much more progressive, and to discourage out-of-province investors from parking capital in… View Article

Western Canada needs real climate action, not disingenuous arguments

Feb 26, 2018

By Marc Lee

In Western Canada’s slow lurch towards sane climate and energy policy, two prominent arguments have been advanced for the continuation of business-as-usual for the fossil fuel industry in BC and Alberta. Both are interesting because they invoke the need for climate action to justify the further growth of fossil fuel production. The first argument comes… View Article

Small steps on affordable housing: A look at the new federal and Vancouver plans

Jan 10, 2018

By Marc Lee

In November 2017 two important new efforts to address the crisis of affordable housing were delivered a day apart: a National Housing Strategy (NHS) tabled by the federal government; and the City of Vancouver’s Housing Vancouver Strategy (HVS). This piece reviews the details of these plans. Both represent forward progress, but also leave key ingredients… View Article

Canada is still a rogue state on climate change

Dec 11, 2017

By Marc Lee

It has now been two years since world leaders created the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. At those meetings, the Canadian delegation joined a broad coalition aiming to keep “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above… View Article