The catch-22 of low-income benefits that are phased out quickly

Oct 9, 2009
My friend Emily is a single mom. She works full time for a salary that keeps her and her child above the poverty line but doesn’t allow for much more. Her income is low enough that she qualifies for temporary relief from paying her student loans (which are massive even though she is yet to… View Article

HST: Why do the Feds want it so bad?

Oct 7, 2009
As the debate rages in BC about the Harmonized Sales Tax, one curious dimension I’ve been puzzling over is this––why do the Feds want the HST implemented so badly that they are willing to fork over $1.6 billion to the province as an enticement? And it isn’t just the federal Conservatives. Ever since the introduction… View Article

Canada-US Clean Energy Dialogue – worrisome signs

Oct 7, 2009
In February 2009 the US and Canada initiated a joint effort to deal with climate change issues through the US-Canada Clean Energy Dialogue (CED). The CED`s working group issued its Action Plan on Sept. 16th.  Much of the plan is encouraging, particularly priorities around clean energy technologies and research and development. But there are a… View Article

James at the UBCM: A welcome move off revenue-neutrality

Oct 6, 2009
In her  speech last Thursday to the annual meeting of the Union of BC Municipalities, NDP leader Carole James declared: “I am calling on the provincial government to cancel the corporate tax cuts that are scheduled to come in over the next two years related to the carbon tax. And let’s put that money into… View Article

Poverty: How do we measure up? Very poorly

Oct 5, 2009
Discussions about poverty in Canada and BC are, sadly, forever weighed down by debates about how to define and measure poverty. Statistics Canada’s low-income cut-off (LICO) is the line most commonly used, as it is the only measure reliably produced by the federal government each year. It is imperfect, but the best we have to… View Article

Something missing from the H1N1 fight

Oct 2, 2009
When the government announced its plans for dealing with H1N1 in schools on August 24th there was something missing. The government’s “pandemic response framework”, announced by the Ministers of Education and Healthy Living and sport deals with issues like transporting the sick, communications, roles of emergency response teams, school instruction and post-pandemic recovery plans. What… View Article

Green in a Different Sense

Oct 2, 2009
It is all about marketing I suppose, but I still can’t believe the proponents of the Highway 37 Northwest electric transmission line labelling it a green initiative. The only thing green about it is all the money BC Hydro will lose if it goes ahead. The proponents’ spin is that this transmission line will enable… View Article

Will job creation solve our poverty problems?

Sep 28, 2009
You may recall that during the leaders’ debate prior to last May’s election, Gordon Campbell argued that creating jobs is the best poverty reduction strategy out there. Since his re-election, the government’s attention has been focused on the economy, while social policy has taken a back seat. But is this the best approach? A recent… View Article

Poltergeists and P3s: They’re back

Sep 24, 2009
In February, with the spectacular collapse of the $3 billion Port Mann Bridge public private partnership, many people thought P3s in British Columbia were a dead item.  They’re back. With the Fort St. John Hospital project the government’s privatization agency, Partnerships BC (PBC), has found a way to drastically reduce private investment in P3s while… View Article

Droppin’ some HST

Sep 24, 2009
The province-wide revolt over BC’s looming Harmonized Sales Tax is reminiscent of protests a generation ago when the HST’s federal parent, the Goods and Services Tax, was born. The rationale for that shift was similar to that of the HST: to switch from an invisible tax paid by producers (the Manufacturers’ Sales Tax) that was… View Article

The recent secretive, haphazard spending cuts should be repealed

Sep 23, 2009
Almost daily we wake up to news of yet another important program or initiative whose funding has been cut by the BC government. Literacy initiatives, high school sports, programs that protect women and children from violence, arts and culture: hardly an area of social service provision has been spared. These cuts have been devastating to… View Article

Piecing together the puzzle: help us track BC government cuts

Sep 17, 2009
Since winning the May election, the provincial government has been steadily cutting public services, often without any public announcement. These cuts affect services ranging from the arts to seniors’ care to public schools. They will be particularly hard on the most vulnerable members of our society. In the absence of comprehensive information from the provincial… View Article

What should our government be spending money on?

Sep 16, 2009
One question that is missing from the public debate on deficits and debt is whether we’re getting the best bang for the stimulus buck. Even if we accept that it’s appropriate for governments to borrow and engage in deficit-financing during a recession, as I have argued here, we need to have a discussion about the… View Article

That sinking feeling: BC’s forests and CO2 emissions

Sep 15, 2009
As everyone knows, BC has a lot of trees. From a climate change perspective the nice thing about trees (forests, really) is that they suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. In the jargon, forests are a “sink”, reducing CO2 emissions, rather than a “source” that contributes them. At least, that used to be the… View Article

Putting our government debt in perspective (now with graphs)

Sep 15, 2009
It turns out that our province is in a good fiscal position to engage in deficit-financing at this time. BC’s debt-to GDP ratio has been decreasing since 2002, which means that out government debt fell relative to our collective ability to pay. As a result, BC entered the recession as one of the Canadian provinces… View Article

Should we be afraid of the government debt?

Sep 15, 2009
Governments around the world are running large deficits in order to prop up their economies and dampen the hit of the global recession. For almost a year now, economists abandoned their usual anti-deficit arguments and seemed to agree that increasing government spending to stimulate the economy is the best way forward. We were all Keynesians… View Article

Out of the Closet on Site C

Sep 14, 2009
For years, successive BC governments have forbidden any new large-scale hydro dams. When I was on the BC Hydro Board of Directors in the mid-1990s, the Board passed a motion that all government land-holdings associated with Site C should be sold. The BC Hydro Board was against building Site C, or any other large dam,… View Article

And from the department of kicking kittens……

Sep 10, 2009
Vaughn Palmer asked the Finance Minister a question in the Budget lock-up on the day of the Budget speech.  How about a list of all those programs you’re going to cut?  No can do, Finance Minister Colin Hansen replied.  You’ll just have to wait until the Public Accounts are published next year. In the Liberal… View Article

On tough times and priorities

Sep 10, 2009
The BC government cannot afford $130,000 for the budget of BC School Sports, a volunteer organization which organizes sporting events for students. This is likely to affect 100,000 high school athletes across the province whose meets and competitions will be canceled. “It’s not business as usual right now,” explained Education Minister Margaret MacDiarmid, quoted in… View Article

Doing the math on all-day-K

Sep 8, 2009
Amid the corner-cutting exercise that was the September BC budget, there seemed to be a glimmer of hope: actual money was alloted for the expansion of kindergarten to full day. Could it be that the BC government has finally started to get it and is planning to heed its own report on childcare (as I’ve… View Article