Month: April 2010

Whenever he’s confronted with questions about BC’s record high child poverty rates or by the growing income inequality in the province, our Premier maintains that the best social policy is a job. In fact, reducing the costs of doing business in BC seems to be this government’s chief economic strategy. Consider the HST, for example,… View Article

I don’t follow the provincial legislature closely enough to judge whether the proposed Clean Energy Act is the worst legislation the Liberals have introduced since first being elected, but it has to be a front runner. The first objective listed in the Act is the government’s misdirected requirement for BC Hydro to be self-sufficient, with all of… View Article

The coalition of environmental groups and unions that published Managing BC’s Forests for a Cooler Planet in January continues to work together. Over the past week, we’ve had op eds published in the Victoria Times Colonist and the Vancouver Sun. George Heyman, executive director of Sierra Club BC, and I co-authored Little left to celebrate… View Article

Some great news to share on the living wage front. Last night (April 26), New Westminster City Council voted unanimously to adopt the first municipal Living Wage policy in Canada. They have used the broad definition of the family living wage, developed two years ago by CCPA, First Call and the Victoria Community Council (meaning,… View Article

Alone amongst provinces, only B.C. failed to exempt even a single municipality or provincial agency from the recent Canada/U.S. Procurement Agreement…. View Article

Yesterday, the Fraser Institute released its Consumer Tax Index report, which claims to show that the average Canadian family’s tax bill has increased by a whopping 1,624% since 1961. There are a lot of things wrong with Fraser Institute’s math. Here are just a few of them. To begin with, the numbers should have been… View Article

The Fraser Institute and the CCPA do not typically see eye to eye, but they seem to agree that personal income taxes take up a relatively small fraction of the average tax bill — about 13 – 14%. According to the Fraser Institute’s recent report on the average Canadian family’s tax bill, the average family… View Article

It’s tax season and people are looking more closely at their incomes and the amount of taxes they pay. The Fraser Institute released their annual Consumer Tax Index report yesterday, claiming that the total tax bill of the average Canadian family now takes up 41.7% of their income. This seems like a big number, which… View Article

I recall talking to a senior BC Hydro planner a number of years ago who mapped out a very sensible way to develop the BC Hydro system. Retain the Burrard gas-fired thermal power plant as a back-up for extreme drought, when electricity supply at the hydro facilities on the Peace and Columbia river systems is… View Article

The punch may have landed on the Vancouver School Board but make no mistake; BC Education Minister Margaret MacDiarmid just took a swing at every school board in the province. The Minister’s imposition of the province’s Comptroller General as a budget cop for the Vancouver school board sends a clear message to other school districts. … View Article