Month: February 2009

With the BC budget just 27 hours away, in today’s Vancouver Sun, you can find my pre-budget oped. Alas, as often happens, I am paired with the Fraser Institute for the Economically Insane. In today’s edition, Neils Veldhuis and Milagros Palacios act as yang to my yin. Their pre-budget oped seems strangely distant from the… View Article

BC’s Freedom of Information Commissioner released his annual report last Friday. These reports are a pretty good indication of how open and transparent our government is. The Commissioner is unhappy and he says so in tough language: The stark fact is that the government’s overall record of compliance with its legal obligations under FIPPA is… View Article

Just when I thought I had read the worst the Vancouver Sun can provide, I caught another Olympics article that sets a new standard. I suppose you could admire their extra effort — going for the Gold. But even here in my very relaxing Baja casa, I find it just plain annoying. The gist of today’s article is… View Article

Next week the provincial government releases their budget and I am looking for something, anything at all, for forest workers.Now I hate to be a total whiner, but since 2001, BC has lost 65 sawmills, four pulp mills and about 20,000 jobs in the forest industry. With the spin-off effect of about 1 to 3,… View Article

Okay, I can understand why the Premier thinks the Olympics will be fun — even inspiring.  And I accept the pitch from his boosters at the Vancouver Sun that we should make the Games the best they can be. But the public policy issue isn’t whether the Games will be fun or inspiring. The issue… View Article

Transportation Minister Keven Falcon had letters to the editor this week in both the Vancouver Sun and the Times Colonist saying, “The new Port Mann Bridge will not cost taxpayers a dime.” He was saying that the bridge will be paid for by tolls but he seems to have forgotten that people who cross the… View Article

That’s the catchy slogan for the Poverty Olympics, which took place in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside on Sunday. The event mixed fun and games with a serious message about our province’s failure to adequately tackle poverty and homelessness while we spend spend spend getting ready for the 2010 Olympics (more in this Wall Street Journal article…or… View Article

According to the Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD), 15% or about 1 in 7 children in BC suffer from a mental health problem serious enough to cause significant distress and impair their development and functioning.   In children, mental illness supersedes all other health problems in terms of the numbers affected and the degreee of impairment.  Think about… View Article

The provincial government officially changed its no-deficits-no-matter-what tune this week with its proposed amendments to BC’s balanced budget legislation. Not too surprising. To reject the view of economists far and wide that red is the new black by insisting on a balanced budget at all costs would be political suicide, not to mention bad policy…. View Article

A week ago, BC Finance Minister Colin Hansen let the cat out of the bag: the province is going to run a deficit in this year’s budget. And, as promised, two days ago the province repealed the “No More Deficits!” Balanced Budget and Ministerial Accountability Act, pushed through the legislature in 2001. Hansen’s alibi for… View Article