James at the UBCM: A welcome move off revenue-neutrality

Oct 6, 2009
In her  speech last Thursday to the annual meeting of the Union of BC Municipalities, NDP leader Carole James declared: “I am calling on the provincial government to cancel the corporate tax cuts that are scheduled to come in over the next two years related to the carbon tax. And let’s put that money into… View Article

Poverty: How do we measure up? Very poorly

Oct 5, 2009
Discussions about poverty in Canada and BC are, sadly, forever weighed down by debates about how to define and measure poverty. Statistics Canada’s low-income cut-off (LICO) is the line most commonly used, as it is the only measure reliably produced by the federal government each year. It is imperfect, but the best we have to… View Article

Something missing from the H1N1 fight

Oct 2, 2009
When the government announced its plans for dealing with H1N1 in schools on August 24th there was something missing. The government’s “pandemic response framework”, announced by the Ministers of Education and Healthy Living and sport deals with issues like transporting the sick, communications, roles of emergency response teams, school instruction and post-pandemic recovery plans. What… View Article

Green in a Different Sense

Oct 2, 2009
It is all about marketing I suppose, but I still can’t believe the proponents of the Highway 37 Northwest electric transmission line labelling it a green initiative. The only thing green about it is all the money BC Hydro will lose if it goes ahead. The proponents’ spin is that this transmission line will enable… View Article