Month: August 2016

This spring school boards across the province experienced budget crises, raising questions about funding for elementary and high school education in BC (kindergarten through grade 12). Despite provincial government claims that education funding is “at record levels” funding has actually shrunk substantially as a share of BC’s overall economic pie, and fallen almost $1,000 per… View Article

My wife says I hold on to things too long. Still, when I read BC Hydro’s most recent rate application to the BC Utilities Commission (BCUC), I couldn’t help but recall Mark Jaccard’s spirited—if misguided—defence of Premier Gordon Campbell’s Clean Energy Plan in a critique of a paper, Lost in Transmission, that I co-authored in 2007. BC Hydro is seeking approval for… View Article

Today, after many months of delay (on a Friday afternoon in summer), the BC government finally released an updated “Climate Leadership Plan.” Except it isn’t one. It’s not a plan, it’s not leadership, and it doesn’t get us nearly where we need to go on climate action. I see no notable shift from what I wrote… View Article

This is the second of two posts. Read the first here. Efforts by BC Hydro to ban potentially destructive natural gas company fracking operations in the vicinity of its biggest dams fall well short of what an Alberta hydro provider has achieved, raising questions about why British Columbia isn’t doing more to protect public safety…. View Article

Senior BC Hydro officials have quietly feared for years that earthquakes triggered by natural gas industry fracking operations could damage its Peace River dams, putting hundreds if not thousands of people at risk should the dams fail. Yet the Crown corporation has said nothing publicly about its concerns, opting instead to negotiate behind the scenes with… View Article

Presentation to the federal Ministerial Panel holding consultations on the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Proposal Presented in Burnaby, August 10, 2016 Thank you for this opportunity. My name is Seth Klein, and I am the BC Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Our office has spent the last eight years hosting the… View Article

Recently tipping in the restaurant industry has been the subject of two national opinion polls, both of which suggest the public is divided on the ingrained social practice that is tipping. In early May, the CBC conducted an online poll asking, “Is it time to end tipping?” Only about 12 percent said No, while over… View Article