Frontpage-feature

The Great Log Export Drain: BC government pursues elusive LNG dreams as more than 3,600 forest industry jobs lost to raw log exports

Feb 27, 2017
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First of Two Parts Its members include the most powerful players in the province’s forest industry, companies that do the vast majority of all logging on British Columbia’s coast. Its website boasts of “innovative, high-tech” companies whose workers turn out “a growing array of forest and wood products.” But in truth, members of the Coast Forest… View Article

Highlights from BC Budget 2017

Feb 21, 2017
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The 2017 BC Budget was just released; here’s our analysis so far: MSP goes down for families with income under $120,000 MSP premiums are going to be cut in half for families with incomes under $120,000 as of January 2018. Essentially, BC Budget 2017 reverses the MSP increases this government implemented over the last 15… View Article

Tax fairness in BC? Hardly

Feb 16, 2017
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Tax cuts disproportionately benefitted the richest 1% of British Columbians, write @IglikaIvanova & @1alexhemingway: https://t.co/iZbcztdPem pic.twitter.com/BavNnT2WWp — The CCPA–BC (@CCPA_BC) February 16, 2017 As we wait to hear more about the tax cuts coming in BC Budget 2017, it is important to remember what has happened to our provincial tax system over the past 16… View Article

BC’s natural gas giveaway: Production soars, revenues plummet

Feb 9, 2017
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Not long ago, BC received huge annual royalty revenues from its growing natural gas sector. The revenues were often billed as paying for essential public services like health care and education, and were appealing politically as they meant governments did not have to raise taxes to do so. The provincial government claimed that new production… View Article

Canada cannot have it both ways on climate and fossil fuel expansion

Jan 25, 2017
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With great fanfare and a claim that “Canada is back,” Prime Minister Trudeau helped usher in the Paris Agreement on climate change in December 2015. Since then, however, the federal government has pushed to expand fossil fuel production through new bitumen pipelines and LNG terminals. This contradiction points to a loophole in the Paris Agreement,… View Article

A bleak jobs picture outside BC’s big cities

Jan 8, 2017
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We hear a lot about BC’s strong jobs performance – it’s mentioned in every speech and media appearance by our Premier and members of her government. On the surface, it sounds like a good news story with over 73,000 new jobs created in 2016 while many provinces actually lost jobs. But what the Premier doesn’t… View Article

Four planks for a bold and progressive BC jobs agenda

Nov 17, 2016
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BC needs a revitalized jobs plan. The provincial government’s narrow focus on Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) hasn’t worked. The government hitched BC’s economic wagon to the elusive investment decisions of foreign transnational corporations, and to the ups and downs of international commodity prices, and the hoped-for investment simply didn’t materialize. And for all the talk… View Article

Our recommendations for the 2017 BC Budget

Oct 17, 2016
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On September 22, we presented CCPA-BC research and recommendations for BC’s 2017 Budget at a public hearing as part of BC’s 2017 budget consultation process. Here’s what we told the Committee. At first glance, BC appears somewhat isolated from the economic challenges facing the rest of Canada. Headline economic indicators like GDP growth and job creation… View Article