Month: September 2015

Today’s report from the Fraser Institute, LNG Exports from British Columbia: The Cost of Regulatory Delay, states that “revenue losses from regulatory delays imposed upon the BC LNG export market would be on the order of $17–23 billion (US) per year.” This, they say, is equivalent to 9.5% of 2014 BC GDP. A closer examination… View Article

My recent post comparing the NDP and Liberal election positions to date drew some criticism for leaving out the Green Party. So hoping to rectify that with this post on what I see as some strengths and weaknesses of the Green plan. On Sept. 9, The Green Party became the first of the major parties… View Article

Tuesday Sept. 15 saw the release of an exciting new document – The Leap Manifesto: A Call for a Canada Based on Caring for the Earth and One Another. In essence, the manifesto is a positive vision for Canada. It calls upon the next government to move Canada off fossil fuels quickly, insisting that baby… View Article

Today is the first day of school and newspapers, Twitter feeds and Facebook pages are filled with photos of backpack-carrying children and well wishes from their community for a new school year. This celebration speaks to the importance we all place on learning, and on our collective effort to educate our children. It’s one of the most important… View Article

by Seth Klein and Tyson Schoeber It’s been a year since the longest strike in the history of BC’s public school system. A key outcome of that dispute was increased understanding of the phrase “class size and composition.” During the strike, the public came to appreciate that teachers were fighting not just for better wages,… View Article

Canada is officially in a recession and while BC is expected to sail through it relatively unscathed, the projected modest GDP growth performance does not seem to be translating into job gains for British Columbians. Statistics Canada’s latest job numbers show BC created 3,100 jobs in August, which represents a gain of one tenth of one percent in… View Article

I’m often asked which opposition party, with a potential to win the election, has the better platform when it comes to tackling climate change and inequality – the two great inconvenient truths of our time, and the focus of much of our work at CCPA. (I’m leaving out from this comparison the Conservatives, who have thus… View Article

The much anticipated quarterly GDP numbers are out, and StatsCan confirmed what 79% of Canadians already felt to be the case — Canada’s economy is in decline. A drop in economic activity of 0.1% in the second quarter of 2015 officially tipped Canada in recession territory (after a drop of 0.2% in the first quarter). The… View Article

Freedom of Information legislation (FOI), or Access to Information (ATI) as it is known at the federal level in Canada, was a pretty important addition to government accountability when it became law in jurisdictions across Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada described freedom of information legislation as a pillar of our democracy that provides citizens… View Article