The End of the H1N1 Pandemic

Aug 23, 2010
The world spent billions on medication and vaccine stockpiles because the World Health Organization cried wolf. If the WHO cannot cleanse its ties to the industrialists hungry for profits in exaggerating the severity of disease in order to sell treatments, why should we ever again listen to anything they say?… View Article

Reaction to the Tamil boat: curious comparisons

Aug 21, 2010
If the 492 Tamil asylum-seekers who recently arrived by boat on BC’s shores are “queue-jumpers”, then I guess my parents were too. See, they came as Vietnam War draft dodgers from the US in 1967. Like a couple of the Tamil women just arrived, my mom was pregnant with me. My parents did not seek… View Article

HST and the NDP

Aug 21, 2010
Let’s face it. You can’t blame the NDP or anyone else enjoying the drubbing the Liberals are getting from Bill Vander Zalm and co. It is incredibly fun to watch. There is no question that the drubbing is well deserved. Whatever one thinks of the merits of an HST versus the PST it replaced, it… View Article

Lack of water data a cause for public concern

Aug 19, 2010
In our high-speed digital world, there is no excuse for regulators failing to post and update information that is readily available to them and of evident public interest. This is especially true when the fate of vitally important, publicly owned assets such as water hangs in the balance. To have faith that water resources are… View Article

The impact of the recession on young people

Aug 13, 2010
The International Labour Organization published a report this week on world youth unemployment that seems to have some relevance here in British Columbia. The study, Global Employment Trends for Youth, outlines the devastating impact the recession has had on young people worldwide.  More than 80 million people aged 15 to 24 were unemployed at the… View Article

Cholesterol drugs don’t help the healthy

Aug 12, 2010
I have said this before and this recent research begs me to say this again: Someday we will look back on society’s zeal for checking and chemically altering our blood cholesterol in the same way we now regard blood letting and purging: A medical barbarity that good science cannot support…. View Article

The Smart Tax Alliance. Non-Partisan? Really?

Aug 8, 2010
Last Thursday BC newspapers carried a large ad supporting implementation of the Harmonized Sales Tax.  The advertisement was signed by the “Smart Taxation Alliance” a group of 30 or so employer organizations. The ad carried the usual dubious arguments that transferring the cost of taxes from corporations to consumers will create vast economic activity.  What… View Article

12 year olds at work: cuts, strains, dislocations and fractures

Aug 4, 2010
Last month the Medical Officer of Health for the Sea to Sky Region published an article in a Squamish newspaper raising his concerns about child labour in British Columbia. In his column Dr. Paul Martiquet reports that in BC the minimum age for working a regular job is 12 – the lowest of any jurisdiction… View Article

‘Prosperity’ Mine

Jul 30, 2010
So there I was in Durham near Newcastle, enjoying a pint in a very historic and charming little pub called the Dun Cow (where do the Brits come up with these names). I was looking at some old photos of hard working folks coming out of the mines and couldn’t help but think of B.C.’s… View Article

Western Climate Initiative: another baby step

Jul 29, 2010
It has been a while but this week climate change is back in the news cycle. The front page of today’s Globe reports on the latest climate impacts tally: The report …  concluded 2000 to 2009 was the warmest decade ever, and the Earth has been growing warmer for 50 years. Each of the past… View Article

The U.K. having problems with its P3s

Jul 27, 2010
Britain, which led the charge for public private partnerships under both Conservative and Labour governments over the past decades, is now seeing problems with the projects. This month the new coalition government cancelled the controversial Building Schools for the Future program.  Michael Gove, the Conservative Secretary of State for Education said the P3 school program… View Article

Marc’s Summer Reading

Jul 22, 2010
With summer comes a lightening of my work load, so I’ve finally found some time to dive into a few interesting books. These are all related to my ongoing research interests (I do have some fiction sitting around waiting for a real holiday, with Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna at the top of the pile): The… View Article

The Census: Evidence based decisions better than decision based evidence

Jul 14, 2010
There is beginning to be a lot of discussion about the decision by the Federal government two weeks ago to drop the compulsory long form census. Armine Yalnizyan, a senior economist with the CCPA was one of the first people to raise the issue in an open letter to the Minister of Industry who is… View Article

And now for the bill: the cost of the Olympics

Jul 12, 2010
The BC government has released its final estimates of the cost of staging the 2010 Winter Games, highlighting the problems this government has with telling the truth (other examples include the 2009 pre-election fudge-it budget, and the HST). The Tyee reports: British Columbia’s government spent $325 million more on the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics… View Article

BC’s 2009 Super-Fudge-It Budget

Jul 12, 2010
Under the “we told you so” category, I am filing the BC public accounts for 2009/10. The province closed the year with a deficit of $1.8 billion. As Will McMartin comments in The Tyee: … B.C.’s public accounts for the fiscal year 2009/2010 conclusively prove that the pre-election fiscal plan foisted on British Columbians by… View Article

Gas prices and consumption: BC vs Pacific Northwest

Jul 12, 2010
On a weekend getaway to Washington state, I was alarmed at how much cheaper gas prices are south of the border. Typically, we paid $3 per gallon, whereas the price in Vancouver upon our return was $1.16 per litre, which is $4.39 per gallon (with the exchange rate roughly parity over the weekend). This is… View Article

Good news from the BC government – with a couple of caveats

Jul 10, 2010
The BC government’s announcement July 9th that it had signed a deal on generic drugs with the province’s drug stores is good news.  As discussed in an earlier blog, British Columbians have been paying far more than consumers in other jurisdictions for generic drugs.  Alberta, Quebec and Ontario had already taken steps to correct this… View Article

Will the HST boost job growth and when?

Jul 6, 2010
As BC and Ontario have now started paying the HST at the till, many people may be wondering when exactly can we expect to see those jobs postings opening up. This is a good question. According to analysis commissioned by the BC government from economist Jack Mintz, titled British Columbia’s Harmonized Sales Tax: A Giant… View Article

BC’s carbon tax turns two

Jul 5, 2010
With all of the attention focused on the HST implementation on July 1, most people seemed to miss the next increment of that other much-hated tax, BC’s carbon tax. As of July 1, the carbon tax is now $20 per tonne of CO2, or about 4.6 cents on a litre of gasoline. And like any… View Article

On the economic impacts of the HST

Jul 5, 2010
My previous HST post focused on the impact of the tax on households and I concluded that it’s likely that it will cost families and that some modest income families will be hurt by the tax. Is this sufficient reason to campaign for the tax to be repealed? Not necessarily. Public policy is about choices… View Article