New developments since my recent post calling on municipalities to lead the way on adopting living wage policies: First, over just over 100 candidates have responded to the Open Letter issued by the Living Wage for Families campaign, covering almost every Lower Mainland municipality. Almost all have expressed support for this proposal or at least [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Municipalities'
Growing support for cities to adopt living wage
November 16th, 2011 · Seth Klein · Comments Off · Employment & labour, Municipalities, Poverty, inequality & welfare
Tags: living wage·Municipalities·poverty
The Union of BC Municipalities Convention: a potpourri of policy
October 2nd, 2011 · Keith Reynolds · Comments Off · Economy, Employment & labour, Environment, resources & sustainability, Housing & homelessness, Municipalities, Privatization, P3s & public services, Provincial budget & finance, Taxes, Transparency & accountability
For people who follow local policy issues the annual meeting of the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) is always chock-a-block with material. Last week’s meeting in Vancouver, which saw hundreds of mayors and councilors along with most of the Cabinet, much of the BC opposition and dozens of groups selling both items and ideas, was [...]
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Hochstein and the demand to cut union wages
August 8th, 2011 · Keith Reynolds · Comments Off · Employment & labour, Municipalities, Poverty, inequality & welfare, Taxes
Last week Philip Hochstein had an op-ed in the Vancouver Province accusing municipalities of profligate spending and accusing municipal workers of being vastly overpaid. Hochstein is president of the Independent Contractors and Business Association of BC – representing non union construction corporations. He is the public face of the hard right in British Columbia and has [...]
Foreign trade issues playing out in BC
June 10th, 2011 · Keith Reynolds · 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 [...]
Tags: CETA·Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement·Foreign Trade Zone
On the Forest Fire Front Line: One Ecologist’s Take on What it Will Take to Safeguard Communities
May 13th, 2011 · Ben Parfitt · 8 Comments · Economy, Environment, resources & sustainability, Municipalities, Provincial budget & finance
With one of the colder springs on record, many British Columbians quite naturally yearn for a good stretch of warm, dry weather. But for many people in the province, prolonged periods of hotter and drier weather are often far from welcome. That’s because when things get hot and dry they burn. And in many regions [...]
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Big municipal tax shift a great deal for business
November 7th, 2010 · Blair Redlin · 1 Comment · Economy, Environment, resources & sustainability, Municipalities, Taxes
Municipal spending and municipal taxes are amongst the lowest in Canada. KPMG says businesses in Vancouver have the lowest business taxes amongst 41 cities they studied. So how come the pressure keeps coming to shift property taxes away from business and on to residential taxpayers?
Tags: role of government·tax cuts·Taxes
If the Taxpayers Federation gets its way, we can be just like California
June 21st, 2010 · Keith Reynolds · 8 Comments · Municipalities, Taxes
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s Maureen Bader is inciting a tax revolt for municipal taxpayers. If she gets her way, maybe we can be just like California. Last Friday the Globe and Mail published an article in their business section outlining how Los Angeles area apartment owners in the mid 1970s financed a campaign against municipal [...]
Tags: tax cuts·Taxpayers Federation
Off the Highway by Mette Bach: politics and memoir
June 8th, 2010 · Sarah Leavitt · 1 Comment · Environment, resources & sustainability, Municipalities, Recommended reading
Another suggestion for summer reading: brand new from local publisher New Star Books: Off the Highway by Mette Bach, a short (about 80 pages) memoir of her childhood and adolescence in North Delta. Bach weaves together personal recollections, history and social commentary to create a quirky, funny, depressing picture of a little-known Vancouver suburb. Regular [...]
Victoria’s billion dollar P3 decision
March 16th, 2010 · Keith Reynolds · 4 Comments · Environment, resources & sustainability, Municipalities, Privatization, P3s & public services, Transparency & accountability
On March 24th the Victoria area’s Capital Regional District (CRD) is going to make a billion dollar decision. The province has ordered the CRD to end its controversial practice of pumping raw sewage into the ocean. But it has also ordered the CRD to consider using a public private partnership (P3) for the project. Regardless [...]
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Corporations are people too
January 31st, 2010 · Blair Redlin · 3 Comments · Electoral reform, Municipalities, Taxes
Advocates of democratic electoral reform are really out of step. Ideas like proportional representation and advertising spending limits are so retro, so 2004. The fashionable electoral reform idea this year is to give corporations a real say. It’s time for individual citizens to share their electoral democracy with corporations to give meaning to those old [...]
Tags: accountability·B.C. government·corporations·democracy·Electoral reform·Municipalities·STV & electoral reform
