Month: March 2021

When the final report of BC’s Basic Income Panel came out in January, the media coverage was largely reduced to a few dismissive headlines that the panel had rejected basic income. Behind the headlines, however, is a comprehensive and thoughtful analysis of the state of poverty in BC and the large number of existing programs,… View Article

A year into the pandemic, there is a near-universal realization across Canada that the recovery must include large-scale public investments to build a quality, affordable child care system. This would enable parents with young children, in particular mothers, to return to work or pursue educational opportunities to support children’s healthy development in the early years… View Article

We are often told that building affordable housing is just too expensive: land prices are too high, construction costs are rising, development fees and labyrinthine bureaucratic processes are stifling projects. There is some truth in each of these explanations, but to really get a major build-out of affordable housing we need to stop relying on… View Article

The Gideon Rosenbluth Memorial Lecture was held virtually in February. The lecture is in honour of Gideon Rosenbluth, who was an esteemed professor of economics at the University of British Columbia and a research associate with the CCPA’s BC Office.  As a young person, Peter Victor looked at the now-iconic, then newly minted image of… View Article

While the lives of millions of working people have been upended by the COVID-19 pandemic, the wealth of the richest few has continued to balloon in Canada. A wealth tax on the super rich is an important policy needed to address extreme inequality and help raise revenue for sustained, long-term increases in public investment in… View Article

In the week of International Women’s Day let’s celebrate BC’s positive steps toward gender equality while bringing attention to the changes still needed.   When it comes to gender and (paid) work, one recent big achievement is the BC government’s introduction of job-protected paid leave for workers who experience sexual and domestic violence. In March 2020,… View Article

In light of a surge in anti-racist uprisings, provincial legislators may want to take a moment to reflect upon what their predecessors did in taking “British Columbia” into Canada 150 years ago in 1871. When the legislature recently reconvened, we hope that MLAs paused and listened to the stories that these Indigenous lands are trying… View Article

Forced to use unprecedented amounts of electricity to heat their homes and stop their water pipes from freezing during the recent cold snap, Texas citizens found that their utilities were only adding to their misery. Hourly prices for electricity literally skyrocketed. Prices spiked from $34 to $9,000 per megawatt hour in a few days due… View Article