Month: September 2012

Yesterday, Opposition leader Adrian Dix indicated that, if he wins government, he would scrap BC’s balanced budget legislation (BBL). His announcement has drawn some fire from predictable sources. Some media reports indicate that Dix appeared uncomfortable sharing this news. He shouldn’t have. Scrapping BBL is good public policy. CCPA researchers have long been critics of… View Article

Seniors and their families need and should have access to useful information when they are making critical decisions about residential care and throughout the period of residence in facilities. — BC Ombudsperson, The Best of Care: Getting It Right for Seniors in British Columbia (Part 1) Mass replacement of staff can occur when facility operators switch… View Article

Hundreds of mayors, municipal councilors and regional district directors are meeting this week in Victoria at the annual gathering of the Union of BC Municipalities. And not surprisingly, one of the major topics of discussion in the first three days has been the taxes local governments collect to provide their services. The local government leaders… View Article

I think that Philip Hochstein, president of the Independent Contractors and Business Association, is probably more hostile to the interests of working people than just about anybody else in British Columbia. So when I find myself agreeing with him on something, my fingers twitch at the keyboard. But that is just what happened with the… View Article

Guest blogger Diana Guenther drew on extensive work experience in social services to develop her Masters of Urban Studies thesis on improving services for at-risk youth in BC. She shares some of her key recommendations here: Having worked with at risk youth for 15 years and in three different countries, I have always been quite… View Article

A new report by the CCPA, Eduflation and the High Cost of Learning, shows that average university tuition bill in Canada has grown three times faster than inflation over the last 20 years. It’s also outpaced the growth of family incomes, making university considerably less affordable for the average Canadian family than it used to… View Article

The Minister leading up BC’s Carbon Tax Review, Kevin Falcon, may be gone – his departure came just as the deadline for submissions was closing – but the carbon tax lives on. For now. Back in 2008 when the carbon tax was announced, it was scheduled to rise from an initial level of $10 per… View Article