BC’s child poverty rate: Don’t cherry-pick the numbers

Apr 28, 2017
It’s always welcome to see poverty identified as an important issue in our elections as it was in last Wednesday’s BC Leaders’ Debate. We want to see our political leaders challenging each other to do better on this file. However, in the debate—as well as in numerous media interviews—Premier Clark has repeated the claim that… View Article

Sharing our realities: Life on disability assistance in BC

Apr 27, 2017
Both people with disabilities and those who work within the income assistance system say the effects of provincial government policy in British Columbia are demoralizing. Looking beyond the numbers to focus on real-life stories, the report Sharing Our Realities: Life on Disability Assistance finds a remarkable consensus between people with disabilities, income assistance workers, and… View Article

The incredible shrinking role of government in BC

Apr 25, 2017
As BC’s political parties lay out their election platforms, media pundits tend to focus on the flurry of spending promises. But all this attention on spending makes it easy to forget that we’ve actually witnessed an incredible shrinking of government’s role in BC over the past 15 years. Unlike the strange mist that shrinks Scott… View Article

Searching for affordable housing in the 2017 BC election platforms

Apr 24, 2017
Housing affordability is one of the top issues for voters in the 2017 election campaign, particularly for those in pricey Metro Vancouver. While most of the media attention has been on the jaw-dropping prices of residential real estate, a tight rental market has fuelled rising rents and renovictions, and the most recent count uncovered a… View Article

Climate change and energy issues in the 2017 BC election platforms

Apr 18, 2017
From the fracking fields and Site C dam in BC’s northeast to an LNG terminal and Kinder Morgan’s pipeline and tanker expansion in the southwest, energy issues should figure prominently in BC’s 2017 election campaign. Climate change, the result of all that pollution from dirty energy development here and elsewhere, is an overarching challenge. In… View Article

Distinguishing consent from veto in an era of reconciliation

Apr 10, 2017
An unfortunate legacy of the Harper era in Canada is that public officials and the media often conflate the right to consent for projects or policies that could affect Indigenous peoples with veto power. That error is not supported by Canadian or international law, and is at odds with the goal of reconciliation between Aboriginal… View Article

Economic insecurity touches seniors’ lives in profound ways

Apr 6, 2017
In the spring of 2016, the CCPA’s Terra Poirier and photographer Caelie Frampton met with three local seniors to document their lived experience of poverty and inequality. The images and stories of these women paint a sobering picture of what life is like when the hardships of living with a low income are combined with… View Article

As the BC election starts, where’s our collective head at?

Apr 4, 2017
Much of BC’s pre-election debate has coalesced around the free-for-all in corporate political donations—and understandably so, given the scale of the problem that’s been revealed by various investigations. But worrying as the potential corruption of our democratic system may be, it’s not the only concern weighing on British Columbians’ minds as we draw closer to… View Article

Faking climate action: BC’s misleading forest gambit

Apr 3, 2017
In its August 2016 climate plan update—and subsequent advertising campaign—the BC government put forests front and centre. While this may sound positive, it is really a sleight of hand by a province seeking to shirk its responsibility to reduce fossil fuel emissions. The BC government claims (without providing any evidence) that its vaguely defined forest… View Article