Tag Archive: 20th Anniversary

Sticker Shock: The impending cost of BC Hydro’s shift to private power developers – Ten years on

Nov 24, 2017
In April 2007, the BC government’s energy policy was rapidly transforming the province’s electricity system from publicly owned to one operated in the interests of private energy developers and multinational energy corporations. Sticker Shock was written to expose the enormous costs of the BC government’s private power agenda. It documented the fact that the BC… View Article

Challenges persist: Community-based mental health in BC

Nov 17, 2017
In 2006, I wrote the report, “Community Based Mental Health in BC: Changes to Income, Employment and Housing Supports” to explain policy changes that had occurred with a new government and to look at their impact on community-based mental health services. In 2001 the Liberals came into power in BC after ten years of an… View Article

Climate justice and the BC carbon tax: 20th Anniversary retrospective

Oct 27, 2017
BC’s carbon tax was announced in February 2008, a year after the landmark February 2007 Throne Speech that focused extensively on climate change. That set in motion a whole-of-government exercise out of the Premier’s office aimed at developing a climate action plan. (See my ten-year retrospective here.) At the time, a carbon tax was widely… View Article

Legal Aid Denied: A 20th Anniversary retrospective

Oct 20, 2017
Legal Aid Denied: Women and the Cuts to Legal Services in BC was written in 2004 shortly after the election of a neo-conservative Liberal government in BC. The report outlined the nature of the changes this government quickly introduced to the provision of Legal Aid in BC including slashing funding from almost $100 million to… View Article

Employment supports and labour market participation: 20th Anniversary retrospective

Oct 13, 2017
From 2001 to 2003, BC’s new Liberal government instituted significant policy reforms in the delivery and governance of public services. In 2004, Simon Fraser University and the CCPA-BC secured a five-year Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Community-University Research Alliances (CURA) grant to research how those reforms were affecting the economic security… View Article

Ten tax myths revisited: 20th Anniversary retrospective

Oct 6, 2017
In October 1999, I wrote the report Ten Tax Myths. Any retrospective on this issue must examine the relationship between research and analysis and the question of political agency. We know that no matter how good the research and analysis, unless there is a change agent to use it, the work sits frustratingly on the… View Article