Economy

Strengthening the CPP: Maybe the Americans are on to something

Oct 31, 2009
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As we emerge from the financial crisis, a new and welcome debate is beginning about how we stabilize and strengthen our pension system. The financial crisis provided a rude (and in some cases surprising) reminder to many retirees (and near retirees) that their private pensions are far from secure. Many took a beating on their… View Article

Fun and Games

Oct 18, 2009
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I don’t really get the Olympics resistance stuff — the Games are coming and we may as well make the best of them. Admittedly I’ll be in Baja — traffic avoidance knows no bounds in our household. But I still think B.C. cannot be any better off by making the  Olympics more disruptive than they… View Article

HST: Why do the Feds want it so bad?

Oct 7, 2009
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As the debate rages in BC about the Harmonized Sales Tax, one curious dimension I’ve been puzzling over is this––why do the Feds want the HST implemented so badly that they are willing to fork over $1.6 billion to the province as an enticement? And it isn’t just the federal Conservatives. Ever since the introduction… View Article

James at the UBCM: A welcome move off revenue-neutrality

Oct 6, 2009
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In her  speech last Thursday to the annual meeting of the Union of BC Municipalities, NDP leader Carole James declared: “I am calling on the provincial government to cancel the corporate tax cuts that are scheduled to come in over the next two years related to the carbon tax. And let’s put that money into… View Article

Will job creation solve our poverty problems?

Sep 28, 2009
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You may recall that during the leaders’ debate prior to last May’s election, Gordon Campbell argued that creating jobs is the best poverty reduction strategy out there. Since his re-election, the government’s attention has been focused on the economy, while social policy has taken a back seat. But is this the best approach? A recent… View Article

The recent secretive, haphazard spending cuts should be repealed

Sep 23, 2009
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Almost daily we wake up to news of yet another important program or initiative whose funding has been cut by the BC government. Literacy initiatives, high school sports, programs that protect women and children from violence, arts and culture: hardly an area of social service provision has been spared. These cuts have been devastating to… View Article

What should our government be spending money on?

Sep 16, 2009
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One question that is missing from the public debate on deficits and debt is whether we’re getting the best bang for the stimulus buck. Even if we accept that it’s appropriate for governments to borrow and engage in deficit-financing during a recession, as I have argued here, we need to have a discussion about the… View Article

Should we be afraid of the government debt?

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Governments around the world are running large deficits in order to prop up their economies and dampen the hit of the global recession. For almost a year now, economists abandoned their usual anti-deficit arguments and seemed to agree that increasing government spending to stimulate the economy is the best way forward. We were all Keynesians… View Article

Teeny Budget factoid

Sep 3, 2009
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It appears when it comes to the heavy lifting of cutting spending in BC, not all public agencies are equal. The February Budget documents stated that: To ensure that health services are protected in the current economic environment, the Ministry of Health Services and health authorities will be required to achieve efficiencies and administrative savings… View Article