Tag Archive: children

Parents want to reduce their car use, so let’s invest in transit, walking and cycling infrastructure

Apr 2, 2015
There’s a popular belief that parents chauffeur their young children everywhere. And certainly parents have many reasons for preferring cars over other modes of transportation: Children get easily tired. Parents need to pack things like food, diapers, etc. Parents want to keep their children comfortable and safe. Parents have busy and complicated schedules and taking… View Article

Frameworks and photo-ops

May 26, 2014
About a year-and-a-half ago, BC teachers and their employers approved a landmark framework agreement for their upcoming round of contract negotiations. In the wake of a difficult and divisive round of bargaining, and after many, many years of frustration and disappointment, the parties agreed to do things differently.  It was the first change to bargaining… View Article

Are we undermining our schools by not investing enough in education?

Sep 8, 2013
This year’s back-to-school media coverage featured surprisingly little analysis on how our schools are doing. Not to say that articles about innovative approaches to help students stay alert, back-to-school parenting advice and school lunch ideas aren’t useful, but surely those could have been combined with more in-depth analysis of the challenges and opportunities facing our… View Article

Seeking a Real Families First Agenda this First BC Family Day

Feb 7, 2013
By Seth Klein and Adrienne Montani On February 11, British Columbians will enjoy a well-deserved new stat holiday. With the inaugural Family Day, Premier Christy Clark has made good on a promise made during her bid for the BC Liberal leadership. The winter stretch needed a new long weekend, and many will appreciate this new-found… View Article

New voices in support of a BC poverty reduction plan

Sep 30, 2010
Two important new voices joined the call for a BC poverty reduction plan in the last couple days. First, on Tuesday, BC Provincial Health Officer Perry Kendall released a special report entitled Investing in Prevention. The report received quite a lot of media attention. However, most of the coverage dealt with the common-space issues of… View Article

What will it take to bring smarter family policy to BC?

Sep 27, 2010
Did you know that the BC government has set a goal to reduce early childhood vulnerability to 15% by fiscal year 2015? You can hardly tell by their actions. BC did introduce full-day kindergarten in some communities this fall, but other than that the family policy front has been rather quiet lately. The latest childhood… View Article

Your Brain on Capitalism

Sep 7, 2010
At least as far back as Sokrates, people have speculated on the relationship between psychology and politics. In the 20th century, Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm and members of the Frankfurt School (such as Herbert Marcuse) pioneered discussion about how individual dispositions affect one’s social and political ideologies. On the other hand, social psychologists like Stanley… View Article

The recent secretive, haphazard spending cuts should be repealed

Sep 23, 2009
Almost daily we wake up to news of yet another important program or initiative whose funding has been cut by the BC government. Literacy initiatives, high school sports, programs that protect women and children from violence, arts and culture: hardly an area of social service provision has been spared. These cuts have been devastating to… View Article

What should our government be spending money on?

Sep 16, 2009
One question that is missing from the public debate on deficits and debt is whether we’re getting the best bang for the stimulus buck. Even if we accept that it’s appropriate for governments to borrow and engage in deficit-financing during a recession, as I have argued here, we need to have a discussion about the… View Article