“For groups to be scared to speak up about the government…or scared to know what they could and could not do, is really bad. It was not a good feeling.”

The idea that everyone should be able to speak freely and that citizens should have access to a broad range of viewpoints are two fundamental principles of a democracy — and never are they more important than during an election. Yet the words quoted above — from the leader of a respected local charitable organization — speak to a very different reality, one that many non-profit groups experienced in the lead-up to the 2009 provincial election.

How did this happen? The answer goes back to legislation enacted in 2008. Bill 42 introduced new rules governing third party election advertising – meaning advertising by individuals and groups other than political parties and candidates. The rules capped third party spending at $150,000 province-wide, and $3,000 within a single constituency.

According to then-Attorney General Wally Oppal, these rules were needed to create a more level election playing field, to prevent “the hijacking of the process by wealthy participants.” Bill 42 set off a storm of controversy, most of which focused on the implications for “big spenders” – those groups most likely to spend money on election ads, such as corporate interests and large unions.

In the lead-up to the election, however, we heard from several small charities and non-profits that they were struggling to figure out how the new rules would affect them, and in some cases were self-censoring as a result.

The problem is twofold. First, Bill 42’s definition of election advertising casts an extremely wide net. It captures all kinds of activities most people would not likely think of as advertising, such as free or low-cost tools like websites, social media, email, petitions or public forums.

The definition of advertising also includes public communication that takes a position on any issue associated with a political party or candidate. Which in practice means just about anything under the sun.

Second, there is no minimum threshold below which a third party need not register with Elections BC. Even if a group plans to engage only in free or very low-cost activities, it must first register and be publicly listed on Elections BC’s website as a third party advertiser.

“We met in each others’ homes, in our living rooms, and we do it all for free…it’s a completely inappropriate law for a group like us.”

In practice, this means that in the lead-up to a provincial election, a group of citizens concerned about any number of public policy issues is required to register with Elections BC before it starts a Facebook group or distributes leaflets to neighbours, for example. And for non-profits, charities, coalitions and social service agencies, it means information and analysis of government policies long posted on their websites is suddenly redefined as election advertising when an election draws near.

“There’s a fine line between advertising and promotion, and then education and information sharing. And that’s where our efforts as an organization are – trying to spread information so that voters can make educated decisions.”

In late 2009 and early 2010, we conducted research with 60 non-profits, charities, coalitions, unions and citizen’s groups to find out if the problems we heard about leading up the election were more widespread.

Of the organizations that took part, about one third self-censored during the election campaign directly as a result of the third party rules, and not because they’d spent anywhere near the limits.

In six cases, groups kept their heads down because they did not want to be labeled as “advertising sponsors,” which they felt posed a serious risk to their non-partisan reputations or charity status. In other cases, groups had difficulty interpreting the rules and decided to err on the side of caution.

“We did limit what we did because we were scared of the rules and screwing it up…People just go so overwhelmed by it they didn’t do anything.”

The activities these groups censored had little to do with commercial advertising. For example, nine groups did not post new materials on their websites during the campaign, and four went so far as to remove previously posted materials. Four refrained from issuing or endorsing a call for changes to government policy or legislation. Five avoided commenting in media stories. Four cancelled or decided not to proceed with public events (in two cases, these were all-candidates forums). The list goes on.

Other organizations did not self-censor, but diverted extensive time and energy to figuring out the new rules and second-guessing their actions. For groups with only one or two staff members, or no staff at all, this was a waste of precious resources.

The clearest indication that these rules missed the mark, however, comes from the 232 disclosure reports filed organizations registered as third party sponsors for the 2009 election. It turns out that more than half of them spent a paltry $500 or less during the campaign, and more than three quarters spent less than $2,000.

The citizens of British Columbia were deprived of the full range of voices that would normally be heard during an election as a result of the new third party rules. Yet the groups most impacted by them – the small spenders – are also the least able to mount a costly court challenge. We need the provincial government to fix the law, and soon.

– To find out more, check out Election Chill Effect here.

… B.C.’s public accounts for the fiscal year 2009/2010 conclusively prove that the pre-election fiscal plan foisted on British Columbians by Premier Gordon Campbell and his BC Liberals on Feb 17, 2009 was the worst — the most egregious, the most deceptive — “Fudge-it Budget” in provincial history.

The public accounts show that the Campbell Liberals inflated revenues in Victoria’s main operating account, the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF), by a stunning $2.558 billion — yes, Billion — with taxation receipts alone overstated by $2.1 billion.

Even under the broader GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) presentation, the Campbell government exaggerated last year’s expected revenues by a whopping $1.3 billion.

The result: a gargantuan shortfall of $1.779 billion for fiscal 2009/10 — nearly four-times higher than Campbell’s oft-repeated, pre-election pledge of a deficit no bigger than $495 million.

Back in early 2009 before the Budget was released, we crunched some scenarios of the fiscal outlook, noting many concerns about the state of the provincial economy moving forward. We started with the rosy estimates of the Ministry of Finance, which bases its projections on the average private sector forecast coming from the MoF’s Economic Forecast Council (a long time ago, we used to be part of this autere group but got cut after the Liberals came to power in 2001).

Noting that the EFC figures were too rosy, we then modeled the impact of two recession scenarios. Preliminary GDP data for 2009 are still not available, but we used different estimates of GDP to project revenues, and in our pessimistic scenario, this resulted an estimated deficit of $1.6 billion.

So we were off a bit but not by much – and since the economics department over here is Iglika, unlike the army of number-crunchers over at the MoF, I think we did alarmingly well. In contrast, the 2009 Budget projected a deficit of only $495 million. At the time we commented:

… those deficits may be much larger before this is all over. Spending pressures for social assistance could rise much more than currently forecast. A challenge is in interpreting the government’s revenue forecasts. In years past, tax revenues have been grossly understated leading to large “surprise” surpluses at the end of the fiscal year compared to budget time. This year those revenue projections look to be more reasonable, although it will be interesting to see what the final tallies for 2008/09 will be to get a more accurate baseline (we will not know until summer). That said, given the recession, the budget projects an increase in some tax revenues predicated on growing personal income of 1.7% and growing consumer expenditures of 1.9% in 2009. This seems unlikely, and so we could easily see bigger deficits before this is all over. Added to this is the fact that there are no forecast allowances in this year’s budget, because that would make the deficits look larger (it was only OK to make surpluses look smaller).

But looking at the numbers, it was actually quite close: the BC Liberals got 45.7% of the popular vote, compared to 42.2% for the NDP. This slim margin validates the Angus Reid polling camp, which came closest on estimating the popular vote, compared to a handful of others that put the Liberals ahead by 9-10% (I was leaning towards the Angus Reid polls mostly because they had much larger sample sizes of over 1,000 compared to just over 600 for the others, even though according to theory the gap should not change that much).

The Greens had 8.2% of the vote, enough for them to split the vote in enough ridings to make the difference (although it is not obvious that the second choice of Green voters is the NDP). Unlike the federal election, there was no talk of strategic voting in BC, perhaps because the NDP made the carbon tax its wedge issue. That backfired on them badly, with big swaths of the BC Interior and suburbs of Vancouver (those most opposed to the carbon tax) sticking Liberal. Just as Campbell did not know that after announcing the carbon tax, gas prices would shoot up by 40 cents a litre, James and the NDP did not know that those prices would fall so much when they chose to vigorously oppose the carbon tax last summer.

The election, like all Canadian elections that produce majority governments, is a winner-take-all for the Liberals, even though more than half of British Columbians voted against his party. Within the Liberals it is a winner-take-all for Campbell, due to the overly centralized power in the Premier’s office Many of the smiling faces we saw elected will not be seen again except as a backbench backdrop for cameras in the Legislature.

All of which underlines the irony that another opportunity to change the electoral system (to the Single Transferable Vote) went down in flames. Unlike the 2005 referendum, which came close to the 60% approval required to pass, this time it was not even close with 60% supporting the existing system. As several commentators have pointed out, the new Legislature looks a whole lot like the old Legislature, BC basically went for the status quo.

Attention will now turn back to the economy, with the Liberal narrative that they were the best managers through hard economic times. It is surprising that the NDP did not pick up on the string of economic bad news that flowed out of Statscan during the lead up and the campaign. They might have felt that doing so would only reinforce the Liberals’ economic manager frame.

Instead, the NDP ran an opposition campaign that offered no vision for the province other than ridding ourselves of Campbell. They hit the Liberals effectively by playing on a “crony capitalism” theme, manifested in the scandal over BC Rail privatization, and other privatization of new run-of-the-river electricity generation and certain public services. But ultimately their anti-Campbell yang lacked a yin that offered up some concrete changes that would improve the lives of British Columbians. Hopefully, this will provoke some soul searching within the party that leads to renewal.

Both parties were guilty of not being forthcoming about the impact of economic developments on the state of the BC budget. A small deficit tabled in February is surely much much larger, and it was not clear what either party would do if elected. So we will have to wait and see if the Liberals will let the deficit grow, or if they will attempt to cut spending to keep the lid on an ostensible half-billion dollar deficit. They seemed to leaning toward the latter during the election campaign but that was, well, the election campaign. If they wait until September before tabling a budget update, much of this will be easier to spin.

Another big question is where the Liberals now go on climate policy. They have received much praise for the first steps on climate action, including the carbon tax, but there was nothing in the platform that spoke of making the next steps. I seem to have been the only one in the campaign to have pointed out that the Liberals do not have a plan to meet their legislated 33% reduction in GHG emissions by 2020. So getting that done would be a good start, but I’m doubtful that we will see much, although more oil and gas extraction is definitely in the works and that will be a huge hurdle to meeting the legislated target.

Most of the attention on climate policy is likely to turn to the international stage in the lead up to Copenhagen in December, which will attempt to carve out a new global deal on climate change (with a helpful US government, we can only hope). And BC will not want to move ahead too much with a North American cap-and-trade system in the works.

So looking foward to the next four years, it is not obvious at all what we are going to get from the third Campbell administration.

In their February Budget the Liberals said they were going to have a $500 million deficit this year. Nobody believed them then. Marc Lee called the Budget figures fiction. Writing for the Tyee Will McMartin said:

Another fudge-it budget, you say? It’s worse than that. This fictional fairy-tale might better be described as Toxic Fudge.

BC’s Credit Union Central pooh poohed the Budget projections as wildly optimistic and said the deficit would probably be two or three times higher than the government was admitting.

Today even the Globe and Mail said:

It would seem a given now that the projected budget deficit of $495-million is wholly unrealistic. It could reach $1-billion.

None of this should be wildly surprising. The Budget projected a $200 million increase in income tax revenues, for example, at a time when incomes and the number of people working were falling. It predicted a minimal increase in welfare spending at a time when it is growing so quickly the government stalled release of information about it until after the election.

I’m no economist, but if I can figure this out on the back of an envelope, I’m pretty sure the smart guys in the Finance Ministry have figured it out as well. And I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have kept it a secret from the Premier and from the Minister of Finance.

So we can expect a financial statement in June expressing surprise, amazement and horror about how badly the financial situation has deteriorated since February.

What happens then? In an April 24 Vaughn Palmer column Premier Campbell said bluntly he would not let the deficit rise. He said:

“I can tell you this: the deficit for 2009-10 will be $495 million maximum.”

That gives him three options. First, he could cut services. Second, he could sell assets. Third, he could intervene legislatively to cut the cost of contracts for public employees. If this sounds familiar, it is because he did all three in his first term of office after manufacturing a huge deficit by the largest tax cut in BC history.

Now he doesn’t need to manufacture a deficit. He can use his promise to keep the deficit to $500 million to drive an ideological agenda. So here’s my prediction. More tax cuts which Campbell will say are necessary to boost the economy. And more cuts to government services for low and middle income people to reduce the deficit.

After all, as Public Eye Online reported:

The premier’s deputy minister Jessica McDonald has stated provincial civil service layoffs, if they do occur, will be under five percent of the workforce. But the Campbell administration is projecting demographic forces will reduce the number of bureaucrats by 30 to 57 percent over the next ten years.

How do you make cuts like that to the public service? Service cuts and privatization.

In the good times, under the Liberals BC became a bad place to be poor. In the bad times it is going to get worse.

The culprit this time is the Housing and Social Development Ministry, which typically provides welfare caseload statistics at the end of each month, but has so far failed to release its April report.

Indeed, when visiting the Ministry’s website today (March 12, 10:30am), it’s quite curious to see the regularity with which reports were posted on the last day of each month as this screenshot demonstrates:

According to this pattern, the welfare statistics for March 2009 should have been released on April 30 or shortly thereafter. MacLeod reports that his emails and calls to the Ministry inquiring about the apparent delay in the welfare data have not been returned.

Welfare data were showing large increases in previous months (as Marc pointed out here and the Tyee reported here) and political commentator David Schreck speculates that delaying the release of the latest welfare statistics may be a deliberate move to contain likely negative information before the election (as quoted in MacLeod’s article).

For reference, the previous provincial election was on May 17, 2005 and the welfare statistics release for March 2005 is dated May 11 (bottom right-hand-side of each page in the report). This was later than the usual last-day-of-the-month pattern, but it came a whole six days before the election date.

Whether or not this delay is deliberate or the result of oversight, it is nevertheless an affront on the democratic process. Transparency, which includes data being made publicly available promptly, is an essential mechanism that allows citizens to keep their government accountable. This is particularly important in the wake of a general election, which is our main tool to keep governments accountable in democratic societies.

Statistics Canada and the Bank of Canada, both of whom release information that can be politically sensitive, have processes to formally schedule and announce release dates well in advance to prevent any possibility that data be withheld for political purposes. The provincial government should be held to similar standards.

–

2009 release dates for all of Statistics Canada’s data products can be found here. The 2009 schedule of interest rates announcements from the Bank of Canada is here.

Bike to Work Week is an annual event organized by the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition, which aims to raise the profile of cycling as a feasible transportation option. Commuters are encouraged to register and track their distance cycled, and there are prizes to be won. This year, there is even a Bike to Vote event to encourage participation in tomorrow’s provincial elections (participants are entered for a draw to win a bike).

While I am not a cyclist myself, biking-related events make me think of the transportation culture in our cities. To state that North America is built around car culture is to state the obvious. Low-density communities are widespread in many cities and suburban expansion is entirely reliant on car ownership. Perhaps the most telling is the fact that the driver’s license is the default form of ID on this continent.

However, our love affair with the automobile has become increasingly problematic over time. First, it was the air pollution generated from motor vehicles, although that was somewhat abated with the introduction of catalytic converters and cleaner burning fuels. These days, the big issue is the greenhouse gas emissions generated from transportation and their contribution to climate change.

This is reflected in much of the discussion of transportation policy in this election, which has been framed around reducing emissions. On this blog, we have argued for increased government investment in a “greener” and more sustainable transportation network, including an expansion of public transit. This is an excellent plan for the short-run, considering that we are constrained by the urban planning decisions of the past, which favoured single-use neighbourhoods (commercial, residential or industrial), and by the governments’ decision to use physical infrastructure development to stimulate the economy and create jobs in the current recession.

In the long-run, however, a big part of our transportation policy should include rethinking the way we structure our cities, and creating more pedestrian-, bicycle- and transit-friendly communities (as argued in this recent post). Walking and biking are more environmentally friendly and considerably cheaper than taking the bus, and increasing our levels of physical activity offers many health benefits to boot.

The city of Vancouver has already taken some steps in becoming more bike-friendly, as outlined in this Vancouver Sun article. Their recent decision to convert one traffic lane of the Burrard bridge for bicycles (on a six-month trial basis) is another big step forward, but much more work is necessary. The provincial government we elect tomorrow should work closely with municipalities and provide them with sufficient funding to meet their transportation needs in a sustainable way.

Some 1,500 jobs, by mayor Stephanie Killam’s estimate, have been lost in the community as sawmills, planer mills and pulp and paper mills closed. With hundreds of good paying mill jobs gone, jobs in related service industries have disappeared at an alarming rate too, leaving the town’s citizenry reeling.

Killam hasn’t seen anything like it, and she’s lived in Mackenzie since 1972.

During the current election campaign, the plight of forest industry towns was in the news. But the mud really started to fly in the past few weeks in response to an NDP proposal to revise the province’s forest tenure system (a proposal, by the way, that has been made off and on for decades by self-described free enterprisers and socialists alike).

At present, the bulk of the trees logged in B.C. are controlled by a relatively small number of large companies who hold long-term, renewable licences or tenures awarded by the provincial government. The licences grant exclusive access to trees on a non-competitive basis. The NDP propose to change all of that by moving to a system where half or more of all timber logged in the province is subject to competitive auctions rather than being the exclusive domain of any one company.

The presidents of three of the larger companies holding the big licences – Canfor’s Jim Shepard, Interfor’s Duncan Davies and West Fraser’s Hank Ketcham – have taken the unusual step of publicly and vocally entering the electoral fray to champion the ruling Liberals. They warn of black days ahead should the NDP form the next government. Changing the tenure system, they argue, would “jeopardize business investment” in the province. Additionally, Ketcham has personally visited Quesnel, home to NDP forest critic Bob Simpson, a former forest company executive himself, to denounce the NDP’s proposals.

On one level, Killam agrees that redrawing the forest tenure map could, if mishandled, have negative consequences for the provincial economy. She cites as an example events last December in Newfoundland. Danny Williams, populist Conservative premier, “expropriated” global newsprint giant AbitibiBowater’s Crown timber and hydro assets after the company announced plans to close its Grand Falls pulp and paper facility, which had operated in the same location for more than a century.

Williams justified his action on grounds that the company and its predecessors had gained access to Crown resources on the condition that they operate a mill. With the mill closed, the company had broken its end of the bargain. Williams was simply doing the same. Killam, while understanding Williams’ response, says she worries about the signal it may send: “We’re not open for business and therefore investment drops off.”

Music though this may be to the heads of the province’s major forest companies, it would be wrong to assume that Killam is unquestioningly behind them. In fact, some of the other songs in her repertoire would likely strike a more discordant note.

To understand how Killam’s thinking is shaped, it helps to know a bit about how her town’s economy really began to hum. In the late 1960s, the grand vision of former B.C. Premier W.A.C. Bennett came to fruition when the turbines below a massive earth-filled hydroelectric dam, which now bears his name, began spinning. The water impounded by the dam near the community of Hudson Hope created Williston Lake – then the largest reservoir in the world, and today BC’s biggest freshwater body.

The more than 2.4 million kilowatts of power generated at the dam, along with a million plus more kilowatts generated at another dam downstream, would go on to light many a Vancouver home, but also foster the development of the modern day forest industry in central B.C.

That included Mackenzie, north of Prince George, where before long two forest companies – BC Forest Products and Finlay Forest Industries – built pulp, paper and sawmills. They were helped by the Bennett government, which offered up vast tracts of timber on public forestlands in exchange for the companies building and operating mills in specific communities. This quid pro quo policy became known as appurtenancy and it would remain a central facet of forest tenure agreements long after W.A.C. Bennett exited the political stage, indeed pretty much up to the time his son, Bill, stepped aside as B.C.’s premier in 1986.

But by then, the face of B.C.’s forest industry was beginning to change and rapidly so. In 1987, New Zealand-headquartered multinational, Fletcher Challenge, bought out the assets of BC Forest Products, marking the beginning of several ownership changes at mills in Mackenzie and elsewhere. Fletcher’s foray would be mirrored by others, culminating with the disappearance of MacMillan Bloedel, a name synonymous not only with B.C.’s forest industry but its entire resource-driven economy, when US-based forestry giant, Weyerhaeuser Company, purchased it in 1999.

With a few companies holding a monopolistic position, mill closures were certain. Rather than putting dollars into mills in each community, companies made investments in a select few. Older, less efficient mills closed as newer mills with their larger, more efficient outputs, survived for another day.

The idea of appurtenancy was dealt a second blow by the interminable lumber wars between Canada and the United States. During Premier Gordon Campbell’s first mandate (2001-2005), the provincial Liberals formally scrapped appurtenancy on grounds that it was considered a form of subsidy by the powerful US lumber lobby. The truth be told, however, appurtenancy was already dying a slow death in the years of Social Credit and later NDP rule that preceded the Liberal administrations of much of the past decade.

For Killam and other mayors struggling with big job losses in their communities, the question arises: What will replace appurtenancy? If the historic quid pro quo no longer exists between large corporations, the province and resource communities, must communities simply accept that companies get unfettered access to Crown resources to do with what they wish?

Killam thinks not.

Fittingly, AbitibiBowater, the same company that raised Danny Williams’ ire, also controls a large forest tenure in Mackenzie. The global newsprint giant arrived on the scene in northern B.C. only a few years ago. Nevertheless, it closed its sawmills and paper mill shortly thereafter, and has recently filed for bankruptcy protection as it struggles to deal with a nearly US$9 billion debt load. Should a bankrupt company that has neither the ability or, seemingly, the intention, of continuing to operate in the Mackenzie area now be free to simply sell “its” forest assets to someone else? Or, should the province intervene in some way, perhaps signaling that it intends to place some conditions on the transfer of what remains a publicly owned asset to another party?

Killam’s biggest fear is that the company may try to sell its Crown-granted timber holdings to a competitor, perhaps one of the larger forest companies in the province, and that a new buyer would simply treat the forests around Mackenzie as a “fibre basket” to be emptied to feed mills in some distant community.

In response, she has embarked on a series of intitiatives to help her community thrive once again. A new, community-held forest tenure is in the final stages of being negotiated with the provincial Forests Ministry, which would give Mackenzie and a local First Nation approximately 30,000 cubic metres of timber per year. Compared to the close to one million cubic metres per year controlled by AbitibiBowater, the new licence would be small, Killam admits. But it would represent the start of a much-needed transition, she says.

The embattled mayor has also told the provincial government and local MLA and Forests Minister Pat Bell that she wants the province to consider transferring AbitibiBowater’s tenure, in its entirety, to her community and local First Nations. In partnership, the communities could then directly manage local forests and, hopefully, use some of those resources to create new arrangements with companies interested in doing business in Mackenzie and area.

And she has told the government that she thinks changes must be made to a program administered by the province whereby limited amounts of timber are auctioned, rather than turned over to the exclusive control of individual companies.

The objective of a revised auction system should be to promote the interests of small, community-based businesses, Killam says, not as an additional source of wood fibre for the large companies that dominate the province’s forest industry.

Killam and her fellow council members are also doing what they can to work with the larger companies to get something – anything – going in town, and have agreed to tax breaks to encourage one of them – Canfor – to reopen a local mill on a one-shift basis later this year.

But all in all, the objective is to strive for something new: a revised forest tenure system that does not exclude large companies but that allows for substantial community participation. Such a system, Killam says, would mark a new beginning. It would give communities something tangible to build on and, hopefully, encourage new entrants into the industry.

After nearly 40 years residency in a town dominated by big companies who came to be there because of a grand industrial vision, Killam says the time has come to try something new. Getting there means change, and change is something the big companies that have pulled up stakes in Mackenzie and elsewhere have resisted with ferocity this election campaign.

It awaits a new government to determine which perspective will prevail: that of an industry that has closed mills across the province and displaced thousands of workers or that of the shell-shocked communities that are being forced to deal with the fallout.

It’s time to put the planet before politics

May 9, 2009

In April, scientists reported that another piece of the Antarctic ice shelf, this one six times the size of Vancouver, collapsed. According to David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey, “There is little doubt that these changes are the result of atmospheric warming.”

We know that global warming is caused largely by a build-up of heat-trapping fossil-fuel emissions in the Earth’s atmosphere, but the emissions continue to increase. This past week, our nation received dubious international recognition for having the worst record among G8 countries when it comes to reducing global warming emissions. The costs of climate change are being felt worldwide and are mounting in terms of damage from extreme weather events.

In British Columbia, we are in the midst of an election that pundits predicted would be all about the economy. But climate change and the environment have dominated the debate. As is clear from news headlines, the issue has become incredibly polarized. We implore all parties to refrain from the divisive and polarized politics of the past and help us restore the planet to its natural function.

Scientists alone can’t solve global warming. We need political will and we need action from all citizens. For the sake of the environment and the economy, it’s time to come together on this issue with clear solutions.

Climate change affects us all and is one of the most pressing problems of our time. That’s why we, as leaders from diverse sectors of B.C. society, are joining to call on all B.C. political parties to adopt a fast-track climate action plan for British Columbia.

We believe B.C. already has a model that shows promise and that can set an example for the rest of the country. The latter point is crucial, as measures to combat climate change must be national in scope to be truly effective. But we must keep moving forward.

We pledge to all political parties that we are willing to work together to make B.C. a leader in climate change solutions — including new green jobs and investment — in a way that’s fair, cooperative and positive. Specifically, we’re calling on the next B.C. government, regardless of party stripe, to implement a number of key solutions.

We know we can build healthy communities through investing in green infrastructure. This investment can create thousands of new jobs today and improve our quality of life by reducing traffic, establishing more green spaces and parks, and creating more pedestrian-, bicycle- and transit-friendly communities.

Today, transportation accounts for 36 per cent of B.C.’s greenhouse gas emissions. Most B.C. communities rely on cars for transportation. This leads to more congestion and air pollution and negatively affects our health.

We need a sustainable transportation network, including faster, more frequent and more efficient transit service across the province.

We’d like to see the B.C. government invest on average $650-million a year between now and 2020 in new provincial funding for public transit to improve service with more energy-efficient buses and rapid bus and rail lines across the province.

Give us a B.C. government that will provide B.C.’s cash-strapped municipalities with the money or tools to deal with their transit-funding shortfalls. For example, B.C.’s 21 Metro Vancouver municipalities need to address the existing funding gap of $150-million now and to ramp up quickly to $450-million per year by 2011.

B.C. should also provide funds to complement U.S. President Barack Obama’s $8-billion high-speed passenger rail plan, which includes a Pacific Northwest section joining B.C. to the U.S. The funds would be used to build the Canadian portion of the network.

B.C. should invest at least $100-million a year in bicycle infrastructure such as bike paths, bike lanes and traffic calming to improve cyclist safety, and increase funding for pedestrian infrastructure.

Give us a government that will offer zero-interest-rate loans to B.C. communities through the Municipal Finance Authority so that municipalities can invest in green infrastructure, such as community energy systems that will reduce emissions and improve the quality of life in our communities.

We want to see more new and affordable clean-energy solutions available to B.C. households, including energy-efficiency retrofits and innovative measures such as solar roofs and more fuel-efficient vehicles. At the same time, we want our businesses and industries to be competitive in the economy of the future by being more clean and energy-efficient. In B.C., industry accounts for about 35 per cent of our greenhouse gas emissions.

We’d like to see an increase in funding for home and business energy-efficiency retrofits to $100-million yearly. This level of provincial funding, combined with an increased investment from the federal government, will green more than 400,000 homes in B.C. by 2020 — half of all B.C.’s homes.

Let us improve B.C.’s climate plan by using both the carbon tax and the cap-and-trade system to spur innovation and development of clean-energy solutions. The carbon tax and cap-and-trade system should cover all of B.C.’s greenhouse gas emissions and should be enhanced over time to enable B.C. to achieve or surpass its legislated emissions target.

We urge the government to increase the existing low-income carbon tax credit at the same rate as price increases on greenhouse gas emissions. We also believe a portion of carbon tax revenues should fund public transit, energy-efficiency and renewable-energy projects.

B.C. should adopt world-leading energy-efficiency standards on an on-going basis for cars, light and heavy trucks, appliances and buildings.

B.C. can provide a model for an effective nation-wide climate change plan that can show the rest of the world we’re serious about this problem. This would be good for both our economy and our environment — and for our children.

As citizens of this planet, it is our responsibility to put the planet before politics and urge the next B.C. government and federal politicians to do the same.

* Dawson Creek Mayor Mike Bernier
* Castlegar Mayor Lawrence Chernoff
* Whistler Mayor Ken Melamed
* North Vancouver Mayor Darrell Mussatto
* Prince George Mayor Dan Rogers
* Kelowna Mayor Sharon Shepherd
* Dr. Warren Bell, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment
* David Boyd, Co-chair of Vancouver’s Greenest City Action Team
* Ian Bruce, David Suzuki Foundation
* Naomi Devine, Common Energy co-founder, UVic.
* David Dranchuk, Coordinator for Societal Ministry, Diocese of New Westminster
* Guujaaw, President of the Haida Nation
* Mike Harcourt, former B.C. premier
* Marc Lee, Senior Economist, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
* David Suzuki
* Milton Wong, Chancellor Emeritus, Simon Fraser University and non-executive board chair, HSBC Investments (Canada) Ltd.

Towards an effective and fair carbon reduction strategy

By George Heyman and Dr. Colin Campbell, May 7, 2009

The latest science on global warming shows we must rapidly slash carbon emissions, or face catastrophic impacts on our civilization by the end of the century. We are already seeing the precursors with a 10-year drought in Australia, repeated flood events and the loss of interior forests here in B.C. Initiating the shift to a low-carbon economy and lifestyles is the responsibility of our generation. Eventually we will have to find a way to remove carbon from the atmosphere to ensure climatic stability ­ but first we must stop making the problem worse. A hard cap on carbon emissions, within an equitable and motivational framework, is required if British Columbia is to do our part to avoid global climate disaster.

How can we effectively eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions both fairly and effectively? ‘Cap and Dividend’ is a relatively simple and transparent model that uses existing mechanisms rather than inventing new administrative bodies. It is already in the works in the United States, where it is before Congress as the Cap and Dividend Act of 2009.

Clearly, we must have a cap on carbon emissions or we will not be able to limit global warming to the average two degrees Celsius that scientists say is necessary to avoid a climate calamity. A cap will cover 100 per cent of emissions, either directly or by flow-through pricing, unlike BC’s current carbon tax which covers about 70 per cent. Once the cap is applied, carbon permits are sold at the four points of entry of carbon into the economy: oil wells, gas wells, coal mines and the border ­ protecting our industries from unfair, uncapped competition. The collected revenue is then distributed fairly to all citizens.

The ‘Cap and Dividend’ model protects low-income earners from price increases and rewards the carbon-thrifty with additional income. It takes money from carbon polluters and users, and redistributes it equitably for climate-friendly initiatives such as home retrofits, consumption of locally-produced food and low-impact and public transportation choices. The structure also brings certainty to emission levels in a way we could never count on taxes to accomplish.

British Columbia has chosen taxing carbon as its method to stimulate behavioural changes necessary to slice greenhouse gas emissions. The tax is modest, such that recent price fluctuations in gasoline have exceeded its value by a factor of 20. Even at the projected maximum of $30/tonne we cannot expect the kind of results that are needed to meet legislated goals of a 33 per cent emissions reduction by 2020 and an 80 per cent cut by 2050 — much less the critical goal of reaching zero emissions by the end of the century. Taxes beyond the $30 mark would be politically thorny, increasingly inequitable and therefore unlikely.

While the very presence of the carbon tax raises consumer awareness and promotes some positive change in energy usage, a speedy transformation to a low-carbon economy must be multi-pronged and include infrastructure renewal, a comprehensive transportation policy and personal financial ability (or available assistance) to invest in green options. Relying solely on an imprecise and unpredictable market mechanism like the carbon tax to reach critical targets within distinct time-frames runs the risk of falling short–at a time when the planetary stakes have never been higher.

B.C.’s carbon tax has been examined closely by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) The CCPA concludes that the tax in its current form is inequitable and discriminates against people who want to make the right choices both for themselves and for the planet but are struggling financially. British Columbians could turn against the essential transition to low-carbon lifestyles simply because they cannot afford to shrink their carbon footprints. The CCPA found that by year three of the carbon tax, BC’s highest 20 per cent of income earners will incur a net benefit from corresponding income tax cuts whether or not they reduce their carbon consumption, while everyone else has a net loss.

The irony is that higher income earners often have a hefty carbon footprint through lifestyles that include frequent and far-flung travel, larger vehicles like gas-slurping SUVs, bigger houses, and multiple dwellings. They have little incentive to forego what they can easily afford. Without fundamental change, the present carbon tax regime makes it harder for the majority of British Columbians to contribute to inspired solutions such as retrofitting their homes, buying locally-produced organic food or leaving their car at home in favour of improved public transportation.

A logical application of at least some of the province¹s carbon tax revenue, whether through low interest loans or grants, would be to assist many British Columbians to make those climate-friendly changes. In this vein, Metro Vancouver mayors have asked the province to free up to $300 million in annual carbon tax revenue to help pay for regional transportation. The enormous technical challenge of reconfiguring B.C.’s infrastructure will not be cheap and will not all be financed privately or by industry. The money stream generated by the current ‘revenue-neutral’ carbon tax cannot be applied, as it logically should, to low-interest retrofit loans, grants or public transit investment (including fare reductions which would encourage greater use). Taxes from gasoline are already used to build roads and bridges. It is also both sensible and necessary to use public money to finance measures and infrastructure changes which encourage climatic stabilization.

‘Cap and Dividend’ clearly has a place in Canada, and what better province than B.C. to guide the way? B.C. has already led by recognizing the need to manage our carbon. Now we can become a global leader in promoting a ‘Cap and Dividend’ solution that acknowledges the need for urgent action based on the most recent science, ensures BC¹s carbon reduction targets will be met and equitably helps all B.C. residents erase our collective carbon footprint.

George Heyman is Executive Director of Sierra Club BC. Dr. Colin Campbell is Sierra Club BC’s Science Advisor.

A February report from BC’s Information and Privacy Commissioner’s described what he called, “an unacceptable pattern of government-wide failure to respond to access requests in as timely a fashion as it should.”

But the Commissioner’s study grouped both requests for personal information and general information. The FIPA study, which had access to the government’s own FOI data base, looked only at general records.

Requests for general records…are made in order to scrutinize government policies and actions and hold the government accountable for them. When one focuses on requests for general information, an even darker pictured emerges of government non-compliance with the FOI Act.

The FOI act requires government to respond to these requests within 30 working days. FIPA found that between 2006 and 2008 more than half of responses failed to meet this legal requirement. People considered troublemakers by the government were much more likely to have their requests delayed. FIPA reports, “Our analysis found that political parties, interest groups and the media appear to be singled out for special treatment under the Act.” Ministries assign “sensitivity ratings” to FOI requests. The media, political parties and interest groups are much more likely than other groups to have their requests marked as highly sensitive. And highly sensitive requests are almost three times as likely to be delayed as those with a low sensitivity. At an average of 110 days to respond, highly sensitive requests took more than twice as long as low sensitivity requests. According to Professor Alasdair Roberts, the province’s FOI tracking system,

may be the most sophisticated of its kind in North America. It provides numerous details on who is making requests, response times and the eventual outcomes.

As bad as all this may seem, FIPA finds an even worse outcome. Fewer people and groups are even bothering to use the FOI legislation. Requests fell from 2,381 in 2006, to 2,225 in 2007 and then to 1,793 in 2008. FIPA says, “We attribute this to increasing frustration and disenchantment with the many barriers that now characterize the FOI process.” FIPA concludes:

“Over the past 10 years, a government culture has developed that employs every possible tactic to discourage and delay requests for information that it considers in any way “sensitive.” The culture of denial has employed a combination of budget and staff cuts, legislative and policy changes, government reorganization, delaying tactics, excessive use of the Act’s exceptions, and the extension of secrecy to additional government committees.”

Letter to the editor

Re. “Maintaining momentum in oil and gas,” May 7.

The oil and gas industry should stop its political mischief-making, and obfuscating the numbers about the industry’s contribution to BC’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The estimate that flaring, fugitive gas leaks and other waste gas sources account for approximately 13 per cent of BC’s GHGs is based on our research, derived from data from the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources. We stand by this research.

The industry’s David Collyer claims emissions from these sources account for between one and two per cent of BC’s GHG emissions, and cites the BC Oil and Gas Commission as his source. He is wrong. The Commission itself has made clear that this figure refers only to flaring, not the far more damaging (from a GHG perspective) venting and pipeline leaks.

Applying a royalty on this wasted gas, as the NDP proposes, is good public policy. Collyer notes that the BC Liberals are proposing to extend the carbon tax to some of these fugitive emissions. This would be an improvement to the tax, although the Liberals propose taxing only a portion of all flared gas.

Not only would financial penalties like royalties capture revenues for the public, but more importantly, they would create an incentive for the industry to quickly make the capital investments needed to capture these flared and fugitive emissions, and ensure this gas goes to market, rather than being let loose into the atmosphere.

Signed,

Seth Klein and Ben Parfitt, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

A new Early Childhood Learning Agency will be established. It will assess the feasibility and costs of full school day kindergarten for five-year-olds. It will also undertake a feasibility study of providing parents with the choice of day-long kindergarten for four-year-olds by 2010, and for three-year-olds by 2012. That report will be completed and released within the year.

If you can’t seem to recall ever hearing about that report, you’re not alone. The report was quietly posted on the BC Ministry of Education website just before Easter this year (a little behind schedule) and left for interested web-surfers to discover for themselves. With no government news release announcing the report completion (that I could find), it’s hardly surprising that it received virtually no media attention. The only mention of the report that I have seen so far is in this article by Pieta Woolley in the online version of the Georgia Straight, and it came almost a month after the report’s release.

This is a pity because the Early Childhood Learning Agency produced an excellent report. Expanded Early Learning in British Columbia for Children Age Three to Five draws on the latest research on early child development and a year-long consultation with parents, childcare providers and other stakeholders to conclude that expanding early learning programs in BC is both desirable and feasible.

The Agency estimated the total operating costs to about $615 million per year for full day programs available to all three, four and five-year-olds. The report recommended that the program be introduced in stages over several years and even outlined next steps for the government to take right away, taking into account the fiscal constraints that the current recession imposes. Next steps include:

1. carrying out a detailed facilities analysis and starting to prepare space for programs;
2. creating a human resource strategy; and
3. developing program standards for full day kindergarten for five-year-olds and pre-kindergarten for four-year-olds

Yet, you won’t find any of the reports’ recommendations reflected in the BC Liberals’ election platform. The closest the current government comes to committing to action is this paragraph on the BC Ministry of Education website:

Based on the findings of the feasibility work and its commitment to expanding early learning, the British Columbia government is still committed to pursuing the vision for full day kindergarten and other enhanced early learning opportunities for our youngest learners as soon as reasonably possible. [emphasis added]

The NDP is not doing much better on the childcare front. Their platform states that they will introduce full day kindergarten for five-year-olds “as finances permit” (where have I heard that before?) and promise to create “targets and timelines to build an affordable, accessible, quality child care system” (but we are left to wonder what these targets and timelines might be).

Both parties have made it clear that childcare and early childhood education are not priorities for them, hiding behind the recession as an excuse. But there is no need to make children wait for quality early learning programs until after the recession. $615 million is not a trivial amount of money, but it is only about 0.3% of provincial GDP and, as a society, we can easily afford it if we make it a priority.

It is not only possible but also desirable to invest in early childhood education in times of recession. Because as Susan Prentice points out in Old Dollars, New Sense: Recent Evidence and Arguments about Child Care Spending, childcare is better seen as “a productive investment instead of an economic drain on the public purse – one that will more than pay for itself in the future.”

As an added benefit in these hard economic times, setting up a universally available province-wide preschool program will create jobs when they are most needed. New classrooms/early learning centres would have to be built, employing construction workers in the process. Additional teachers and early childhood educations will be required to staff the programs, creating jobs (which, incidentally, would be mainly filled by women – a group that has been largely ignored in the government’s stimulus package so far).

In today’s Vancouver Sun, David Collyer of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers makes the case for expanding the industry based on some dubious facts. First there is this gem:

The industry has invested almost $30 billion dollars in British Columbia over the last eight years, resulting in 34,000 direct and indirect jobs.

According to BC Stats, the oil and gas industry contributed only 2,200 direct jobs to the provincial economy in 2008. In addition, there are perhaps the same amount of jobs in the various support services for oil and gas (it is hard to tell because there are 9,300 jobs listed but they are lumped in with support services for mining; the latter had 14,300 direct jobs, so if we take the same proportions for the support services as for direct jobs, we are looking at 1,000 to 2,000 jobs). Sum it up and you get maybe 4,000 jobs in oil and gas, or about 0.2% of total employment in the province.

Indirect jobs are trickier to assess as they include retail and service jobs unrelated to the industry but that would not be there if the income from oil and gas workers did not exist. But in general, input-output models put indirect jobs at one-for-one with direct jobs. So doubling the 4,000 above to 8,000 to account for indirect jobs, we have a generous estimate of the employment impact of the industry that is nowhere close to what is claimed by CAPP. At most, about half of one percent of BC employment has some roots in oil and gas exploration.

Here is another claim:

Emissions from [flaring and other fugitive sources associated with oil and gas extraction] accounted for between one and two per cent of B.C.’s GHG emissions, rather than the 13 per cent noted in the platform (according to statistics from the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission).

According to the most recent National Inventory Report on greenhouse gas emissions, fugitive emissions in BC accounted for 8.7% of BC’s emissions in 2007 (this lumps in coal mining, which historically contributes about one-tenth of the total). The estimate of 13% comes from my colleague Ben Parfitt, who drew on data from the BC Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, and is an average over a decade (see this post). If there is a discrepancy in the data, it is whether the real percentage is 9% or 13%; neither number is close to the 1-2% claimed by CAPP and the Oil and Gas Commission.

That is not the end of the story, either. Fossil fuels burned to extract oil and gas are higher than that, another 11% of BC’s 2007 emissions. And none of this captures the emissions associated with end use by the consumer, whether in BC or in the US (emissions are counted where the fossil fuels are burned).

At the end of the day, the oil and gas industry contributes few jobs but causes a very large share of our total emissions. It is hard to imagine BC meeting its legislated target of a 33% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 without some major action that hits oil and gas.

What surprises me is that we don’t hear more outraged voices on this issue, considering the large number of people who stand to benefit from an expanded and improved childcare system. Pieta Woolley reminds us that:

Given that about 30.4 percent of British Columbians live in a household with kids 12 or under, the child-care issue theoretically affects more citizens than seniors’ issues (14.6 percent of B.C. is 65 or older), aboriginal issues (4.8 percent of the B.C. population is status), and public transit (4.7 percent take transit to work; all numbers according to the 2006 census).

UBC’s Paul Kershaw, assistant professor of political science, proposes an interesting theory as to why childcare is neglected in this year’s party platforms:

1. The costs scare politicians.
“By today’s standards,” he said, “it’s relatively expensive. And by that I mean we haven’t had to create a new social program in quite some time, as we did having to create health care and unemployment insurance and pensions. These are very expensive programs, but they’ve become normalized so we don’t view them as such. Health case is $15 billion, and childcare is $1.5 billion, so it’s no small chunk of change for any provincial budget. That’s one of the key reasons it’s a hot potato.”

2. Politicians won’t fund health promotion.
“We’re wonderful about treating illness after the fact. We will spend hundreds of thousands—if not millions—to save one preterm baby, but we are very uncomfortable about promoting housing for families with children that is affordable, or making the case that no one goes hungry in our province, or is homeless. Even when you get into the middle class, and childcare is largely a middle class issue, we don’t seem too concerned that we get these kids off to a good start in life. We let parents put together a patchwork of inadequate supports. We could really do so much to promote health if we go it right in the early years.”

3. Feminist arguments are considered fringy by politicians.
“No one wants to talk about gender inequality anymore….Even when both parents work full-time, women shoulder the responsible to shoulder childcare alternatives when regular care falls through, they stay home when the kids are sick. That’s just how houses are making decisions. Just 15 percent of people taking parental leave are men….Public policy seems content to say, women, figure it out yourselves….We are content to burn out women.”

4. The baby boomers are a “Canadian blight”.

“We are unwilling to ask tough questions about generational inequality….This is the generation that has their hands on the levers of power that’s tolerating 30 percent of our school-age population showing up vulnerable. These intergenerational justice questions are getting sidelined, because the dominant question seniors are wanting to ask is how much money is going to be there for me to get that next knee replacement. We need to make sure people are comfortable and cared for, but before we start debating whether people are eligible for three knee replacements, I think we really do want to think about what it means to promote health over the lifecourse and get that part right.”

I find the last point particularly interesting, as it starts raising questions about generational inequality. Can it be that politicians pay more attention to seniors because unlike children, seniors can vote? Consider also that seniors traditionally have high voter turnout rates, much higher than those of young people, the group that includes most parents of young children.

I hope I’m not being too cynical here. But it would be nice if the parties running for election would do something to dispel that cynicism. (if I may borrow from the conclusion of a recent Paul Krugman blog post)

For more excellent coverage on childcare in the election campaign, check out Ms Woolley’s articles Parties mum on time lines for child-care plans, Political parties ignore recent government-written plan for childcare and UBC prof gives four reasons BC isn’t delivering childcare.