Month: November 2012

The release of the BC Budget Second Quarterly report notes an increase in the projected budget deficit to $1.5 billion, up from $1.1 billion when the beans were first counted back in September. The growing deficit, amid a soft economy, is bound to get plenty of media attention. But this blog post is not about… View Article

In September, when the BC government tabled its First Quarterly Report on the BC Budget the big story was on plummeting natural gas royalties, which means cuts to public services in order to keep the budget balance in check. As the update states on page 6: The deterioration in natural gas royalty revenue is the main… View Article

I was in London for the last week and I was amazed to see what a big issue the idea of paying people a living wage has become there. The living wage, as opposed to the minimum wage, is based on what a family needs to have the essentials of life. Last week a KPMG… View Article

Vaughn Palmer had an interesting piece in the Vancouver Sun yesterday. In a piece entitled “Dix agenda bows to post-HST reality,” Palmer writes that the NDP, if elected next May, will be forced to keep its tax increases modest, and that this is the legacy of the HST battle that raged after the last election:… View Article