Month: July 2012

As usual, there has been quite a hubbub surrounding this week’s release of British Columbia’s Public Accounts.  The provincial auditor says the provincial deficit is $520 million more than the government admits. And then there is the Auditor General’s review of finances at the legislature that found “substantial irregularities.” But all of the above is… View Article

Based on recent announcements, it seems that the Ministry of Social Development is in the mood to address some of the long-standing problems within BC’s welfare system (although welfare rates remain distressingly low). Seth Klein recently recapped the Ministry’s June 11th announcement, which set out almost 30 proposed changes to the system. More recently, the… View Article

With each passing month and no firm commitments by company shareholders to commit the billions of dollars required to build a natural gas pipeline to B.C.’s west coast or the billions more to build Liquefied Natural Gas processing plants, questions arise about the economic wisdom of gas exports from the province. But that isn’t stopping… View Article

In 2008 British Columbia’s controversial public private partnership (P3) program was in trouble. With P3s private companies put up financing for public services and infrastructure and in exchange get to manage the projects with guaranteed profits for decades.  The cost of private finance was always higher than if government borrowed the money itself, but in… View Article

Sliammon (Tla’Amin) Nation, located on the northern segment of British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast, is making history.  But not in the way that may have been expected. After over ten years of negotiations, the vote for a final treaty agreement was to take place on June 16th, 2012.  The intention, according to both the Sliammon Treaty… View Article