Month: June 2017

When the provincial government created the Oil and Gas Commission in 1998, it did much more than open a “one stop shop” for speedy oil and gas industry approvals; it also set British Columbia on a collision course with First Nations. The consequences of that collision course are more apparent with each passing day, and… View Article

Some recent media commentary has taken to flights of fantasy by assuming that large personal tax increases would be needed to fund the policies contained in the NDP and Greens’ Supply and Confidence Agreement. The assumption that major tax increases would be required ignores a key starting point: large surpluses are projected in this budget… View Article

What will happen if a new BC government raises taxes on rich individuals and corporations as the NDP promised in its election platform? If years of finger-wagging from pundits and the business lobby can be believed, you might assume the sky will come crashing down—right onto the BC economy. It’s an argument that’s been hammered… View Article

In their power-sharing agreement, the BC New Democrat and Green parties commit to support the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2014 Tsilhqot’in decision, calling the documents “foundational” to their shared policy agenda. Central to both is Indigenous peoples’ right to free, prior and informed consent when… View Article

The latest “Alert” from the Fraser Institute hits a new low in misrepresenting reality. The article claims to analyze the impact of proposed NDP-Green tax changes on BC families but their so-called “analysis” is pure fiction. In their election platform, the NDP proposed raising taxes for the wealthiest British Columbians and for large corporations as… View Article

Once the political reality of British Columbia is determined, next steps on energy projects like Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and the Site C dam will follow. And while the federal government has approved the pipeline expansion, the BC NDP and Green Party—which have signed a power-sharing agreement following the provincial election—say they will… View Article

In light of the growth and prevalence of precarious employment and the lack of decent conditions of employment for vulnerable workers, labour advocates and unions in Ontario campaigned for improvements to employment and labour relations laws. As a result of their campaign, in February 2015, Ontario’s provincial government established an independent review headed by two… View Article

The following is a review of  The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die by Keith Payne, published by Viking in May 2017. In 2016 Oxfam made the almost unbelievable announcement that the richest 62 people in the world had as much wealth as the poorest half of the global population. That was… View Article

Under their recent agreement, the BC NDP and Greens have promised a referendum on electoral reform in BC. This is great news. A huge amount of good could come from changing our outdated first-past-the-post (FPTP) system, as Alex Himelfarb argued in a recent analysis for CCPA (although he was speaking to the federal context). Let’s… View Article

British Columbia is in interesting times politically and that makes transparency around government decisions more important than ever. It is both a medium-term issue and a critical short-term issue. Controversies around access to government information dogged the government in recent years. The “triple delete” scandal saw a government functionary fined $2,500 for making false statements… View Article