CCPA Policy Note

Entries Tagged as 'Education'

Living wage reports reveal a big gap between actual wages and the costs of raising a family in BC

May 2nd, 2013 · · 1 Comment · Economy, Education, Employment & labour, Poverty, inequality & welfare, Taxes, Women

How much do working parents need to earn to be able to afford to live in our community? There reports released today provide the answer for the three largest regional districts in BC, home to 2/3 of this province’s population: $19.62/hour in Metro Vancouver, $18.73/hour in Greater Victoria and $16.37/hour in the Fraser Valley.

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BC’s social infrastructure house of cards

February 23rd, 2013 · · Comments Off · Children & youth, Education, Poverty, inequality & welfare

In her report on BC’s 2013 budget CCPA-BC economist Iglika Ivanova concluded that the province’s financial statement focused on balancing the budget at the expense of British Columbians’ present and future wellbeing. The following are a few examples of this. Last Tuesday’s budget continues a 12 year record of systematically undermining the province’s social infrastructure. [...]

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Time to Rethink The Way We Fund Higher Education

October 9th, 2012 · · Comments Off · Children & youth, Economy, Education, Employment & labour, Provincial budget & finance, Taxes

This September, like every year, a new group of high school graduates headed to college or university to pursue higher education. But today’s generation of students is in for a very different experience from the ones their parents had. On campuses across the country shiny new buildings are popping up, bearing corporate logos or the [...]

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Cost of Learning Growing Faster than Incomes

September 11th, 2012 · · Comments Off · Children & youth, Education, Employment & labour

A new report by the CCPA, Eduflation and the High Cost of Learning, shows that average university tuition bill in Canada has grown three times faster than inflation over the last 20 years. It’s also outpaced the growth of family incomes, making university considerably less affordable for the average Canadian family than it used to [...]

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Seven reasons why you should support a move to low tuition fees for higher education

May 29th, 2012 · · 11 Comments · Children & youth, Economy, Education, Employment & labour, Poverty, inequality & welfare, Privatization, P3s & public services

Much of the media coverage of the Quebec student protests has dismissed the protestors as cranky middle and upper-middle class children trying to protect their unfair privilege. And in fact, the vast majority of today’s university students do come from relatively well-off families. But rather than weakening their position, this supports the protestors’ claims that [...]

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Christy Clark, George Abbott – meet Jeffrey Moore

March 14th, 2012 · · 3 Comments · Children & youth, Education, Human rights, Law & legal issues

There’s a freight train heading for BC’s education system — and it’s not being driven by government or teachers. This train hit the tracks long before the current collective bargaining dispute. Its operator is an eight-year-old boy from North Vancouver, named Jeffrey Moore. With the support of his family, Jeffrey is driving a human rights [...]

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BC isn’t broke: putting teacher bargaining in perspective

March 2nd, 2012 · · 99 Comments · Economy, Education, Employment & labour, Poverty, inequality & welfare, Privatization, P3s & public services, Provincial budget & finance, Taxes

Last Monday, BC teachers held a Day of Action in communities across the province to protest the BC government’s decision to legislate a contract and put an end to their collective bargaining process. I was invited to speak to teachers at the Surrey rally, where I had the opportunity to share some of my analysis [...]

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Breaking down financial barriers to higher education is more affordable than you think

January 25th, 2012 · · Comments Off · Economy, Education, Employment & labour, Women

In a new report released today by the CCPA, I revisit the important question of who really pays for university education. Convention wisdom has it that the public heavily subsidizes post-secondary education. The illusion of a subsidy comes from the fact that tuition fees, high as they are, don’t cover the entire cost of education. [...]

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Are international students the key to jobs in BC

September 21st, 2011 · · 1 Comment · Economy, Education, Employment & labour

The second day of the roll out of the Premier’s jobs agenda was marked by a single announcement made at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops. The focus of this piece of the jobs puzzle was ramping up international education and regional skills training. The idea of leveraging education, especially post-secondary education, to boost the economy [...]

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Foreign trade issues playing out in BC

June 10th, 2011 · · 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 [...]

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