Posts by Marc Lee

About Marc Lee

Marc Lee is a 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. Follow Marc on Twitter

Everything you wanted to know about the housing taxes and expenditures in BC Budget 2018

Feb 28, 2018

By Marc Lee

BC Budget 2018 was billed to have major investments in housing, and did not disappoint. Indeed, the surprise of the Budget was just how far the BC government went on the demand side through new tax measures to make the property tax system much more progressive, and to discourage out-of-province investors from parking capital in… View Article

Western Canada needs real climate action, not disingenuous arguments

Feb 26, 2018

By Marc Lee

In Western Canada’s slow lurch towards sane climate and energy policy, two prominent arguments have been advanced for the continuation of business-as-usual for the fossil fuel industry in BC and Alberta. Both are interesting because they invoke the need for climate action to justify the further growth of fossil fuel production. The first argument comes… View Article

Small steps on affordable housing: A look at the new federal and Vancouver plans

Jan 10, 2018

By Marc Lee

In November 2017 two important new efforts to address the crisis of affordable housing were delivered a day apart: a National Housing Strategy (NHS) tabled by the federal government; and the City of Vancouver’s Housing Vancouver Strategy (HVS). This piece reviews the details of these plans. Both represent forward progress, but also leave key ingredients… View Article

Canada is still a rogue state on climate change

Dec 11, 2017

By Marc Lee

It has now been two years since world leaders created the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. At those meetings, the Canadian delegation joined a broad coalition aiming to keep “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above… View Article

Where is BC headed on climate action?

Nov 30, 2017

By Marc Lee

Canadian politicians have a long-standing tradition of proclaiming targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then failing to meet them. After a wake-up call in the form of a record fire season this past summer, what are the prospects for climate leadership from BC’s new government? First, a look back November 29 marked ten years since… View Article

Rising housing costs in Vancouver: New evidence from the Census

Nov 27, 2017

By Marc Lee

Vancouver’s housing affordability crisis is full of jaw-dropping anecdotes about home prices and rents. But with almost a million households in Metro Vancouver, there are both winners and losers from the boom. A recent Statistics Canada release on housing affordability from the 2016 Census allows us to put some numbers to the crisis. Almost two-thirds… View Article