Posts by Marvin Shaffer

Marvin Shaffer

About Marvin Shaffer

Marvin Shaffer is a consulting economist and adjunct professor in the Public Policy Program at Simon Fraser University. He has a PhD in Economics from the University of British Columbia and received his BA, Honours in Economics, from McGill University. Marvin has managed his own consulting firm specializing in energy, transportation and natural resource economics for over thirty years.

Marvin previously held senior positions with the Government of British Columbia (head of the Crown Corporations Secretariat and Chief Executive Officer of the British Columbia Transportation Financing Authority). As well, he lectured in economics at the University of British Columbia, and at the University of Queensland and University of Tasmania in Australia. Follow Marvin on Twitter

Transit referendum: if no vote wins, what is Plan B?

Mar 20, 2015
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I got my plebiscite ballot today and of course voted yes. Whatever you think of TransLink management, its governance, the rough and largely undefined edges of the mayor’s plan, and the politically expedient but otherwise not particularly appropriate sales tax source of revenues, the simple fact remains that I and most residents of Greater Vancouver… View Article

The early and fatal undermining of TransLink

Feb 25, 2015
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Pete McMartin wrote an excellent column in the Vancouver Sun documenting the many ways that the provincial government has undermined TransLink. The upcoming referendum isn’t the first but rather the culmination of a two decade, tragically effective, bipartisan effort to prevent TransLink from doing what it was originally set up to do and what the region… View Article

Site C

Dec 18, 2014
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I was a bit surprised by Minister Bennett’s statement that I was 100% wrong when I suggested in a CBC radio interview that BC Hydro didn’t need to start on Site C right away.  He emphatically disputed the suggestion that the decision and start of construction on Site C  could be deferred three to five… View Article

Time for a Different Approach

Nov 8, 2014
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It may be the heat here in Baja, and certainly the tequila could be taking its toll on clear, or at least correct thinking, but it seems to me that there is a better policy answer to Kinder Morgan than outright rejection of its pipeline and terminal expansion proposal, and a far better policy approach… View Article

Let’s Not Go There Again

Oct 17, 2014
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You would think that the fiasco of the government forcing BC Hydro in recent years to buy run-of-river and other IPP supply that it didn’t need, resulting in losses of hundreds of millions of dollars per year, would have put that unfortunate policy on the back burner for a long time. Not so. Clean Energy… View Article

Debt Free BC

Jul 17, 2014
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One can only presume that the promise of a debt-free B.C. was never meant to be taken seriously. Christy Clark’s very cynical, albeit effective election slogan was based on two highly qualified guesstimates of the potential taxes that could be generated in the most optimistic possible circumstances from an industry that does not yet exist. Thus… View Article

What are the Net Benefits of Northern Gateway?

Jun 18, 2014
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  One of the more disheartening features of the political and media commentary on the economic benefits offered by major resource projects is the general failure to properly assess what those benefits in fact are. We are inundated with reports on economic impacts — the amount of investment and jobs a project might generate —… View Article

Cheap Power for Jobs (Except it Ain’t Cheap)

May 23, 2014
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It has a nice political ring to it — “power for jobs”. That is what Glen Clark wanted to do with the Columbia River Treaty power that was returned to the province in the late 1990’s. And that is what Vaughn Palmer argues B.C. should do today with the hydro power we have or could… View Article

Looking Back on the Vancouver-Whistler Winter Games

Feb 6, 2014
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British Columbians no doubt feel thankful that the costs, security and other challenges facing the Sochi Winter Olympic Games far surpass what B.C. and Canada faced with the Vancouver-Whistler 2010 Games. But the 2010 Games were not without controversy and still raise the question of whether it was all worthwhile. Unfortunately, at least from a… View Article

The wrong question in the wrong forum

Dec 12, 2013
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It didn’t take very much time at the joint federal-provincial environmental hearing into Site C, which started this week in Fort St. John, to realize that it is not the best forum to address the central issue underlying BC Hydro’s proposal to develop the $8 to $9 billion hydro project. The central issue is the… View Article