Month: April 2009

Great to see a debate kicked off among our research associates and others about the pros and cons of BC-STV. As Marc mentions below, the current issue of the CCPA’s BC Commentary has a special collection on STV, which you can download here. Keith outlines the case against STV below. And while the CCPA has… View Article

I will take Marc’s suggestion and provide a bit of information on the other side of STV. No STV recommends on their web site that people watch the video on STV prepared by the Citizens’ Assembly. They suggest that watching this video in support of STV will be enough to convince people it is not… View Article

By now, you have probably seen the lawn signs. True, they look a bit like NDP colours but they are actually non-partisan pro-STV signs (not signs for a guy named Steve, with an Eastern European spelling of his name, running for the dippers). You may remember STV from the 2005 BC election, where STV captured… View Article

Below is an oped of mine that was done at the request of the Vancouver Sun and that ran in today’s paper. Unfortunately, for reasons that are not entirely clear, the last two paragraphs were cut off, leaving the oped hanging. I put them back in below, and have requested that the online version be… View Article

So Keith Baldrey thinks the NDP has sold its environmental soul by opposing so-called green run-of-river IPPs. And Mark Jaccard , Tzepora Berman and friends predict economic and environment ruin from the NDP’s plan to abolish the Liberals’ carbon tax. As for run-of-river IPPs, the fact is they are not very green, at least not… View Article

One of the most striking contradictions in BC’s climate action plan is the oil and gas industry. Greg Amos in The Hook, quotes our “green” premier out on the campaign trail in the northeast: “Let me tell you what’s happened in the energy industry in British Columbia in the last eight years: thirteen billion dollars… View Article

In an earlier post I talked about the fact that when New Brunswick raised its minimum wage this spring, BC would be tied in last place for the lowest minimum wage in Canada. NB raised its minimum wage today and now BC, with the highest cost of living in Canada, is tied with two provinces… View Article

With the BC election campaign now officially on, the carbon tax debate is back. Since the fall’s federal election, when the Prime Minister dropped in to beat up the carbon tax to solidify his support in BC, the carbon tax has dropped off the public radar, replaced by stories about the economic and financial crisis…. View Article

There is an interesting side story to the information that came out last week showing a big jump in unemployment in BC. Almost all of the increase was among two groups – women and young people. The overall unemployment rate jumped from 6.7% to 7.4%. The increase for men over the age of 25 was… View Article

Just in time for a heated election campaign, the latest unemployment numbers paint a grim picture for BC. Just a year ago, BC was coasting along with an unemployment rate of just over 4%. By the end of 2008 that had crept up to 5%. And now a truly brutal first quarter that saw the… View Article