Month: July 2020

In the face of the economic fallout from COVID-19, it’s easy to forget that some communities in British Columbia were in deep fiscal distress long before the pandemic began. Fort Nelson is a good example, and a textbook case of why senior levels of government need to be mindful when they roll out recovery plans… View Article

BC has long been in a housing crisis, and the pandemic economy we are currently living in has further put the squeeze on renters in particular. To shed light on the housing situation during this crisis, we draw on new data from a comprehensive survey of 2,289 residents across the province, conducted online by McAllister… View Article

The economic impact of the shutdown of large parts of BC’s economy in response to COVID-19 has reflected a sharp recession: a massive and rapid increase in involuntary unemployment, including layoffs, job losses and reduced hours; reduced household and business income and expenditure; closures (whether mandated or not) or greatly reduced capacity of many retail… View Article

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended public education around the world, touching every facet of school life. In British Columbia, while some students cautiously returned to classrooms in June, many international students instead returned to their home countries. As school districts across the province anxiously watch international tuition revenues shrink, many are contemplating or even implementing… View Article

The coronavirus pandemic has put governments and societies around the world to the test as they confront what is both a public health and economic crisis—one that clearly is not going away anytime soon. BC has fared well to date in containing the spread of the virus, and stands out among Canadian provinces with a… View Article

“Canada hasn’t seen this type of civic mobilization since the Second World War. These are the biggest economic measures in our lifetimes, to defeat a threat to our health… We all need to answer the call.”—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, April 1, 2020, during one of his daily pandemic briefings outside his home.   As Canada seeks… View Article