A week ago, I appeared before the BC Legislature’s Standing Committee on Children and Youth. The committee, to its credit, had decided to spend a day hearing witnesses on the subject of child poverty, and what BC could do to make a difference. Among the points I raised with the committee: too often this issue [...]
Entries from May 29th, 2010
Child poverty: How does BC stack up against those provinces with a plan?
May 29th, 2010 · Seth Klein · 1 Comment · Children & youth, Poverty, inequality & welfare
Tags: child poverty·poverty
Early indicators of how the recession has hit BC’s poor
May 29th, 2010 · Seth Klein · 1 Comment · Employment & labour, Poverty, inequality & welfare
Just wanted to draw readers’ attention to a great op-ed piece in The Province newspaper this past Thursday: “Recession slammed BC’s poor; and it’s not over,” by Chandra Pasma. Chandra is a policy analyst with Citizens for Public Justice (a faith-based social justice group), and author of a recent report entitled Bearing the Brunt: How [...]
Tags: child poverty·poverty·recession
Buying off industry
May 27th, 2010 · Marvin Shaffer · 3 Comments · Energy
At first glance, the response of the forest sector and other large energy users to the province’s Clean Energy Act was surprising. Here is an Act that will force BC Hydro to waste literally billions of dollars to create an artificial demand for private power. It will without question drive up BC Hydro’s rates far more [...]
Tags: BC Hydro·Clean Energy Act·IPPs
Privacy, Facebook and a New Information and Privacy Commissioner
May 24th, 2010 · Keith Reynolds · 2 Comments · Law & legal issues
Sometimes personal and policy issues collide or at least slide in side-by-side. That happened for me when the BC Legislature appointed Elizabeth Denham as the province’s new Information and Privacy Commissioner on May 6th. Denham’s biography shows she has a strong background in privacy issues. From 2003 to 2007 she worked on private sector privacy [...]
Tags: Elizabeth Denham·Facebook·Information and Privacy Commissioner·Privacy
Summer reading: two experts on privatization
May 20th, 2010 · Keith Reynolds · 3 Comments · Privatization, P3s & public services, Recommended reading, Transparency & accountability
Policy Note has asked CCPA Research Associates who contribute to the blog to suggest some ideas for summer reading. I am going to cheat a bit by suggesting two books. I am going to cheat even more by admitting I haven’t read one of them. I spend a lot of my time reading and writing [...]
Tags: Summer Reading
The job market may be recovering but some jobs are not coming back
May 18th, 2010 · Iglika Ivanova · 2 Comments · Economy, Employment & labour
A recent article in The New York Times illustrates this point with the story of an unemployed administrative assistant in her 50s, who has not been able to find a job for over two years after being laid off. As the journalist explains, her difficulties are likely not the result of age discrimination, the weak [...]
Tags: Economy·employment·recovery
Problems for the South Fraser Perimeter Road P3?
May 12th, 2010 · Keith Reynolds · 2 Comments · Environment, resources & sustainability, Privatization, P3s & public services, Transparency & accountability
There are some interesting recent developments on the South Fraser Perimeter Road (SFPR) public private partnership project. A press release issued Friday afternoon announced the successful bidder in response to a Requests for Proposal. The results may not be what we were led to expect. The SFPR project is part of the Province’s Gateway project [...]
Tags: Gateway·Ministry of Transportation·P3·Partnerships BC·South Fraser Perimeter Road
Living Wage 2010
May 4th, 2010 · Seth Klein · 3 Comments · Employment & labour
This morning CCPA-BC released a new study with First Call: BC Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition, and the Metro Vancouver Living Wage for Families Campaign. Working for a Living Wage 2010: Making Paid Work Meet Basic Family Needs in Metro Vancouver updates the first Metro Vancouver calculation published in 2008. The living wage calculation includes [...]
Tags: living wage
BC opens door to private jails
May 2nd, 2010 · Keith Reynolds · 2 Comments · Human rights, Law & legal issues, Privatization, P3s & public services, Transparency & accountability
The BC government has taken the next step down the privatization road by opening the door to private prisons. On April 28th Partnerships BC posted a request for qualification on the BC Bid web site for a public private partnership (P3) for the Surrey Pretrial Centre. You need to register with Bid BC to see [...]
