Month: October 2014

British Columbia’s new Auditor General, Carol Bellringer, published her annual report on government’s 2013-14 summary financial statements today and it contains some pretty interesting highlights. First of all, and for the first time, the AG has published a comparison of how much it costs the government to undertake projects on its own compared to using… View Article

Just how much money should a local government spend? If you ask the Fraser Institute, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) or the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) you will always get the same answer: they should spend less.  Oddly, taxpayers sometimes disagree. The Fraser Institute produced a report this week titled Comparing Municipal Government… View Article

Well, we saw this coming but it’s still sobering to see it in black and white. The BC government’s decision to cut its proposed LNG Income Tax in half (from 7% to 3.5%) is simply a cave in to industry. It’s massive giveaway of a public resource to global corporations by a desperate government who put… View Article

The BC government’s proposed carbon pollution benchmarks for LNG plants leave much to be desired. The package is an impressive display of cognitive dissonance: thanks to BC’s inconvenient law, the 2007 Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act, along with its carbon tax, the BC government has cultivated a reputation for being a climate action leader; there’s even… View Article

My clinical, community, and research work revolves around the relationship between poverty and health. I am privileged to hear the stories of patients who are struggling. I get it, I think to myself, and I’m committed to making a change. Do I need to do the welfare food challenge to help me do this? Probably… View Article

You would think that the fiasco of the government forcing BC Hydro in recent years to buy run-of-river and other IPP supply that it didn’t need, resulting in losses of hundreds of millions of dollars per year, would have put that unfortunate policy on the back burner for a long time. Not so. Clean Energy… View Article

How is it that we have seen a non-stop construction boom in Vancouver over the past decade-plus and yet we still have huge homelessness and affordable housing problems? In the Figure, based on data from the BC Economic Accounts, it’s pretty clear that as a society we spend a lot building new housing. It varies cyclically but over the… View Article

This Fall’s legislative sitting will be an important one for shaping the future of LNG in BC. Will one or more companies make final investment decisions? And if they do will there be any public benefits? One of the key questions is whether the BC government will cave on its proposed 7% LNG income tax rate. Industry has… View Article