CCPA Policy Note

Marc Lee’s Blog Posts

Marc Lee is the Senior Economist at the CCPA’s BC Office. In addition to tracking federal and provincial budgets and economic trends, Marc has published on a range of topics from poverty and inequality to globalization and international trade to public services and regulation. Marc is Co-Director of the Climate Justice Project, a research partnership with UBC's School of Community and Regional Planning that examines the links between climate change policies and social justice. Marc chairs the Progressive Economics Forum and contributes regularly to Relentlessly Progressive Economics (progressive-economics.ca/relentless).

Climate inaction and BC’s budget

March 3rd, 2010 · Marc Lee · No Comments · Climate change, Provincial budget & finance

The 2010 BC Budget was a disappointment on the climate action front. Even as Premier Campbell waxed poetic in the Globe about the impact of climate change on the 2010 Spring Games – with its sunny days, crocuses, daffodils and by the end, cherry blossoms making it fun for people on the street but a [...]

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BC Budget 2010 (notes from Iglika and Marc)

March 2nd, 2010 · Marc Lee · 5 Comments · Provincial budget & finance

For a document titled Building a Prosperous British Columbia, the 2010 BC Budget is underwhelming in its ambition. Budget 2010 shows a government talking a lot about the legacy of the Olympics but lacking any coherent vision of how to translate upbeat sentiments into real improvements in British Columbians’ standard of living.
This budget says “steady [...]

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About that Copenhagen award

February 5th, 2010 · Marc Lee · 1 Comment · Climate change, Energy, Environment, resources & sustainability, Taxes

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 [...]

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Now for some disaster relief on the homefront

January 22nd, 2010 · Marc Lee · 1 Comment · 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 [...]

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Thinking about zero

January 21st, 2010 · Marc Lee · 3 Comments · 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 [...]

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First the party, next the hangover

January 12th, 2010 · Marc Lee · 1 Comment · Climate change, Economy, Provincial budget & finance

It’s shocking to think that the 2010 Winter Games are now exactly one month away. Yes, the banners are dropping down the side of downtown buildings; huge tents are being erected anywhere there is open space; advertising from any but the Olympic sponsors has all but disappeared (I hereby challenge any Olympic athlete to eat [...]

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Copenhagen and carbon budgets

December 14th, 2009 · Marc Lee · No Comments · Climate change, Environment, resources & sustainability

As Copenhagen heads into week two, most of the talk has shifted to targets and timelines, typically something like X% of emissions by 2020 or 2050, relative to 1990 levels. This dating is a legacy of the German delegation in the lead-up to the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, who wanted a base year of 1990 [...]

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Poverty and BC’s high cost of housing

December 7th, 2009 · Marc Lee · 2 Comments · Housing & homelessness, Poverty, inequality & welfare

BC Stats put out a release on poverty lines as they relate to BC, with an important finding: BC’s dubious position as having the highest poverty rates in Canada may in fact be worse than the statistics show. This finding is buried in the piece and the title, “Low Income Cut-Offs a Poor Measure [...]

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Every revolution is about power

December 3rd, 2009 · Marc Lee · No Comments · Climate change, Environment, resources & sustainability

So what does a sustainable economy really look like, and how do we get there? Climate change essentially means a huge mitigation effort on greenhouse gases culminating in something close to zero emissions by mid-century at the latest. This means phasing out fossil fuels entirely; or minimally, if it comes out of the ground emissions [...]

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Technology and the future of public health care

December 2nd, 2009 · Marc Lee · 1 Comment · Health care, Provincial budget & finance

A couple years ago I put out a report for the CCPA that crunched the numbers on health care sustainability (BC version here). The main finding was that public health care was basically sustainable in that it could handle projected increases in population, aging and inflation as long as GDP continued to grow at a [...]

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