With much of the talk on taxes in BC about the HST, we issued a new report today that looks at the bigger context for BC’s tax system (Vancouver Sun oped here, CTV News story here). Iglika Ivanova, Seth Klein and I compare and contrast BC’s tax system after a decade where tax cuts were [...]
Entries from June 28th, 2011
BC’s Regressive Tax Shift
June 28th, 2011 · Marc Lee · 3 Comments · Poverty, inequality & welfare, Provincial budget & finance, Taxes
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Not allowed to talk about poverty
June 25th, 2011 · Marc Lee · 2 Comments · Poverty, inequality & welfare
BC Stats put out a release yesterday with the headline “Low Income Cut-Offs (LICOs) are a Poor Measure of Poverty” and author Dan Schrier gets in a dirty hit right in first paragraph: Despite protestations from Statistics Canada that LICOs are not meant to be used as a measure of poverty, there are many groups [...]
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Fossil fuel expansion as a crime against humanity
June 23rd, 2011 · Marc Lee · 2 Comments · Climate change, Energy, Environment, resources & sustainability, First Nations & Aboriginal
After at 2010 that was one of the warmest years on record, 2011 has shown us astonishing patterns of extreme weather worldwide. It would take a long time to make the full list, but you know what I mean: tornadoes, floods, drought, record cold in some parts, record heat in others, hailstorms (Al Gore does [...]
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Hiding $5 Billion
June 23rd, 2011 · Marvin Shaffer · Comments Off · Privatization, P3s & public services
A reporter from back East called me yesterday to ask about the B.C. Auditor General’s May report into a Vancouver Coastal Health Authority P3. As Keith Reynolds pointed out, the AG found that the actual costs of the P3 were much higher than what the Coastal Authority and Partnerships BC had said they would be. [...]
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To HST or Not to HST
June 19th, 2011 · Marvin Shaffer · 5 Comments · Economy, Taxes
The campaign to save the HST is rather shameless, not to mention bad public policy. We won’t, as HST spin masters would have it, pay less tax with the new and improved HST. The amount of tax we collectively pay depends on the amount of services and support government provides — total government spending– not [...]
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The Wild West? Come on! Put your emotions in check
June 17th, 2011 · Ben Parfitt · Comments Off · Climate change, Economy, Energy, Environment, resources & sustainability, First Nations & Aboriginal
The on-line newsmagazine, The Tyee, recently ran an opinion piece of mine under the headline “The Wild West and Dysfunctional BC Politics: Fracking and sour gas deserve debate, but get cartoon treatment from the Clark government.” My special thanks to Tyee editor David Beers or whoever it was who chose to run the image of [...]
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BC poverty rates highest in Canada, again
June 15th, 2011 · Sarah Leavitt · 2 Comments · Children & youth, Poverty, inequality & welfare
Statistics Canada released a report today on incomes across Canada in 2009. As First Call BC points out in their news release, key points for BC include: BC’s child poverty rate rose to 12 percent in 2009, the highest child poverty rate of any province for the eighth year in a row. The BC rate [...]
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The Wild West and dysfunctional B.C. politics
June 14th, 2011 · Ben Parfitt · 2 Comments · Climate change, Economy, Energy, Environment, resources & sustainability, First Nations & Aboriginal
Anyone wanting to see just how dysfunctional politics in B.C. has become should check out Bob Simpson’s recent Private Members’ statement in the provincial legislature. For seven minutes Simpson, Member of the Legislative Assembly for Cariboo North and one of two Independent MLAs, spoke about why he and fellow Independent Vicki Huntington (Delta South), had [...]
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Foreign trade issues playing out in BC
June 10th, 2011 · Keith Reynolds · 1 Comment · Education, Municipalities
Last week Premier Christy Clark took the unprecedented step of promising there would be public consultation regarding the Province’s position on the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union. If this really happens it would be an important opportunity. The current government has never allowed the public to have a [...]
Tags: CETA·Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement·Foreign Trade Zone
Social Determinants of Health
June 7th, 2011 · Peter Prontzos · Comments Off · Children & youth, Economy, Employment & labour, Health care, Housing & homelessness, Human rights, Poverty, inequality & welfare, Provincial budget & finance, Taxes, Women
It is now clear that economic, and social variables – more than individual behaviour – are the most salient factors in determining people’s well-being. Working and living conditions, the distribution of wealth, and where we live are some of , “the primary factors that shape the health of Canadians” (CCPA Monitor, June 2010). Almost everything [...]
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