Back in December, during the Copenhagen negotiations, a group of environmentalists provided BC Premier Gordon Campbell with an award for climate leadership. Based primarily on the creation of a BC carbon tax two years ago, the Premier has gotten a lot of brownie points from the greens – in spite of the fact that there [...]
About that Copenhagen award
February 5th, 2010 · Marc Lee · Climate change, Energy, Environment, resources & sustainability, Taxes
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BC hearts Art. But only for the show off.
February 1st, 2010 · Iglika Ivanova · Provincial budget & finance
The pedestrian stretch of Granville Street downtown has been brightened lately by a colourful display of public art projects, complete with benches for pedestrians to sit for a moment and enjoy the view. What a great idea, I thought to myself as I stopped to look at one of the sculptures. I always found Vancouver [...]
→ 6 CommentsTags: arts and culture·arts funding·funding cuts
Corporations are people too
January 31st, 2010 · Blair Redlin · Electoral reform, Municipalities, Taxes
Advocates of democratic electoral reform are really out of step. Ideas like proportional representation and advertising spending limits are so retro, so 2004.
The fashionable electoral reform idea this year is to give corporations a real say. It’s time for individual citizens to share their electoral democracy with corporations to give meaning to those old legal [...]
→ 2 CommentsTags: accountability·B.C. government·corporations·democracy·Electoral reform·Municipalities·STV & electoral reform
BC’s Urban Housing (Un)affordability
January 25th, 2010 · Iglika Ivanova · Agriculture, Environment, resources & sustainability, Housing & homelessness, Poverty, inequality & welfare
A new study published today by the Frontier Institute for Public Policy finds that Vancouver has the most unaffordable urban housing market not just in Canada, but in all of Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.
This conclusion is based on a very simple, yet effective measure of housing affordability: the [...]
Loukidelis did good work for government accountability. Now it’s a legislative committee’s turn.
January 24th, 2010 · Keith Reynolds · Law & legal issues, Transparency & accountability
David Loukidelis, British Columbia’s Freedom of Information Commissioner has accepted the new role as the province’s deputy attorney general. Vaughn Palmer did a good column on the switch in jobs but I thought Loukidelis deserved more credit for his ten years on the job.
Personally, I think Loukidelis’s leadership was almost completely responsible for BC’s FOI legislation keeping [...]
A Modest Proposal
January 23rd, 2010 · Marjorie Griffin Cohen · Environment, resources & sustainability, Housing & homelessness
At some point before long, Haiti is going to be rebuilt. It occurs to me that we in BC have available wood to help in the effort. Most things are built of concrete there because there simply isn’t any wood. Rebuilding out of concrete will be massively expensive and massively polluting. [...]
Now for some disaster relief on the homefront
January 22nd, 2010 · Marc Lee · Climate change, Employment & labour, Poverty, inequality & welfare
I’ve been very pleasantly surprised at the public response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti. I’ve seen donations being collected through school bake sales, at the liquor store, and on Hockey Night in Canada, among the usual channels for such stuff. It’s nice to know that, collectively, we care, in spite of the neglect of [...]
Thinking about zero
January 21st, 2010 · Marc Lee · Climate change, Environment, resources & sustainability
I’m still coming out of my malaise following the Copenhagen climate conference in December. It’s easy to think that the stupid political brinksmanship is never going to end, and the focus of attention will shift to adaptive measures. But what is more likely is a few more Katrina scale disasters that will serve to spur [...]
Economic Impacts !?@#
January 20th, 2010 · Marvin Shaffer · Economy, Energy
There isn’t a reputable economist that I know, nor a student in my benefit-cost class at SFU (that wants to pass) that does not understand the difference between economic impacts and real economic benefits. Nevertheless, industry lobbyists and all-too-many government officials never cease to point to economic impacts — the number of jobs a project [...]
→ 2 CommentsTags: IPP·mining
Will CanWest’s bankruptcy lead to more media concentration or new opportunities?
January 18th, 2010 · Keith Reynolds · Media
There is an old political adage that you should never argue with someone who buys their ink by the barrel. Let’s ignore that good advice for a minute and talk about the CanWest bankruptcy.
CanWest, Canada’s largest media company, filed for bankruptcy protection for its assets which include all of CanWest’s newspaper publishing and associated digital [...]
