Month: September 2013

Political commitments on climate action, to the extent they exist, are usually pitched in terms of targets and timelines. BC, for example, has a legislated target of 33% below 2007 levels by 2020; Canada’s official target is a 17% reduction by 2020 relative to 2005 levels. Neither target will be met under status quo policy,… View Article

Yesterday Statistics Canada published a nice counterpoint to part of the relentless drumbeat against public employees by organizations like the Fraser Institute and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB). Last December the CFIB published a report noting the horrifying finding that when it came to sick, disability and personal days off, public sector workers… View Article

When the government imposed its Energy Plan on BC Hydro it never bothered to estimate the costs (or for that matter the benefits) of what it hoped to achieve. Ardent supporters of that Plan, like my good friend Mark Jaccard, constructed scenarios under which it would make sense to force BC Hydro to buy more… View Article

Canada’s Harper-ment is getting increasingly desperate. The quest to double production out of the Alberta tar sands needs new pipelines (or rail). In recent months, we have seen new proposals for pipelines to the west and to the east, amid further delays of the KeystoneXL pipeline to the south. The success of US activists (environmentalists,… View Article

The news of UBC Sauder Business School students chanting about rape of underage girls during a FROSH week event has generated much outrage. As it should. While the chant might seem like an isolated incident, it is not. The recent rape chant scandals in UBC and in St Mary’s University in Halifax are evidence of… View Article

This year’s back-to-school media coverage featured surprisingly little analysis on how our schools are doing. Not to say that articles about innovative approaches to help students stay alert, back-to-school parenting advice and school lunch ideas aren’t useful, but surely those could have been combined with more in-depth analysis of the challenges and opportunities facing our… View Article