The early and fatal undermining of TransLink

Feb 25, 2015
Pete McMartin wrote an excellent column in the Vancouver Sun documenting the many ways that the provincial government has undermined TransLink. The upcoming referendum isn’t the first but rather the culmination of a two decade, tragically effective, bipartisan effort to prevent TransLink from doing what it was originally set up to do and what the region… View Article

BC Budget 2015 snapshot: More revenue from MSP, tuition, but less money for public services

Feb 25, 2015
One way to measure a government’s commitment to public services is to see what percentage of the province’s wealth (GDP) the government spends on these services. According to government plans outlined in the Budget Documents: Health care spending will fall from 7.9% of GDP in 2012/13 to 7.5% in 2017/18. Education spending falls from 5.6%… View Article

Low-carbon urban infrastructure: a view from Vancouver

Feb 18, 2015
I have a new case study (full pdf; summary article from the publishers) out as part of the Economists for Equity and Environment‘s Future Economy Initiative. I look at the City of Vancouver’s Neighbourhood Energy Utility (NEU), a low-carbon district energy system that hits a sweet spot of clean energy, local control, and stable prices at competitive rates…. View Article

11 things you need to know about BC Budget 2015

Feb 17, 2015
1. Budget 2015 ends the claw-back on child support payments for single parents on welfare. This is estimated to put $13 million in the hands of some of the poorest British Columbians. It’s a good step forward, but it is very very small. $13 million is three hundredths of one percent of the provincial budget…. View Article

3 worrisome facts about BC’s job market on the eve of Budget 2015

Feb 16, 2015
2015 marks the sixth year of BC’s recovery from the recession. But it’s been a slow and largely jobless recovery in BC. 1. BC needs 93,000 more jobs to return to our pre-recession employment rate (the proportion of working age British Columbians who have jobs). Only 71.2% of working age British Columbians have jobs today…. View Article

Rethinking social protections in the age of contractors

Feb 14, 2015
The job market is changing rapidly. While most workers of our parents’ generation could have reasonably expected to spend their entire working careers in permanent full-time jobs with one or two employers, today many rely on contract work or freelancing, and even regular full-time employees change jobs frequently. There are pros and cons to this shift,… View Article

Ok, Let’s Talk.

Jan 29, 2015
Yesterday was Bell Let’s Talk Day 2015.  You might have heard about it.  According to Bell, a record 122,150,772 Bell Let’s Talk tweets, texts, calls, and shares on January 28, 2015 translated into a new donation of $6,107,538 to mental health initiatives. Let’s Talk is a multi-year campaign focused on four “action pillars” related to… View Article

Charity is not the right way to tackle poverty in British Columbia

Jan 28, 2015
The existence of poverty in British Columbia is a violation of human rights. There is not only a moral duty to eradicate poverty but also a legal obligation under international human rights law. Just before the holidays, December 10 was International Human Rights Day but we have little to celebrate here in BC. A human… View Article

Who gets paid more?

Jan 20, 2015
The Fraser Institute is really concerned that public sector employees might be making more than private sector employees. What is notable about the recent Fraser Institute report on public and private sector wages in British Columbia is that it does not seem particularly concerned with the reasons why there are variations in public and private… View Article

The case against a revenue-neutral carbon tax

Jan 15, 2015
I’m a fan of carbon taxes, but increasingly I see the term “revenue-neutral” attached to it. Where I live, in BC, we have perhaps the most prominent example of a revenue-neutral carbon tax, and carbon tax advocates have come to promoting the BC model to other jurisdictions, such as Ontario, who are contemplating their own carbon tax…. View Article

Yes Mr. Harper It Is A Sociological Phenomenon

Jan 14, 2015
This piece originally appeared on Blogging for Equality. Inter‑American Commission on Human Rights Issues Breakthrough Report on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls The Inter‑American Commission on Human Rights has provided a direct answer to Prime Minister Harper: Yes, the murders and disappearances of Indigenous women and girls are a ‘sociological phenomenon’. The Inter-American Human… View Article

Denying inequality is a problem for Canada won’t make it go away

Jan 8, 2015
Jock Finlayson’s article “Income inequality not a problem in Canada” misses the point. Just because inequality in Canada is somewhat lower than in the U.S. (the Western world’s most unequal country) doesn’t mean we don’t have a serious problem. The small decline in the share of income going to the top one per cent Finlayson… View Article

13 years on, BC Finance Ministry finds big problems with its public private partnership program

Jan 7, 2015
The BC Finance Ministry has produced a report much more critical of Partnerships BC and its activities around public private partnerships (P3s) than might have been expected by a province so committed to the practice. It raises issues of conflict of interest, dubious practices and questionable assumptions in the multi- billion dollar program. The story… View Article

Ontario Auditor breaks new ground with review of public private partnerships methodology: BC Auditor says maybe, sometime

Jan 5, 2015
Last month Ontario’s Auditor General issued her annual report. One of her targets was Ontario’s use of public private partnerships to build public infrastructure. As the Toronto Star put it, “Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk has taken a wrecking ball to the (Ontario) Liberals’ use of private money to bankroll new hospitals and transit…” Lysyk’s report… View Article

Site C

Dec 18, 2014
I was a bit surprised by Minister Bennett’s statement that I was 100% wrong when I suggested in a CBC radio interview that BC Hydro didn’t need to start on Site C right away.  He emphatically disputed the suggestion that the decision and start of construction on Site C  could be deferred three to five… View Article

Latest poverty stats show BC still has one of the highest poverty rates in Canada

Dec 15, 2014
The latest poverty statistics were released by Statistics Canada last Wednesday, and the data once again shows that British Columbia has one of the highest poverty rates in Canada. Using the Low Income Cut-Off – After Tax (LICO-AT) as the poverty line, 1 in 10 British Columbians are living in poverty. That’s 469,000 people struggling… View Article

Now is exactly the right time to regulate oil and gas

Dec 11, 2014
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Harper declared that, given oil prices plummeting to $60-70 a barrel, now would be a “crazy” time to introduce regulations on the oil and gas sector. This comes after promising nine years ago that the federal government would bring in new GHG regulations on the oil and gas sector (but… View Article

Child care is a human right

Dec 11, 2014
By Lynell and Melanie Anderson Our understanding of rights evolves along with society, yet the required and corresponding evolution in government policy in BC is stagnant. Re-establishing the Human Rights Commission, as recommended in a new report, could change this reality. We’re passionate about women’s and children’s rights, and concerned about the rights of mothers… View Article

BC must provide education to foster discrimination-free workplaces and services

Dec 10, 2014
Today, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the Poverty and Human Rights Centre released a report on the need for a human rights commission in British Columbia. Yes. You read that right. British Columbia has no human rights commission. It is the only province in Canada without a publicly-funded independent agency that works to… View Article

The BC Human Rights Commission and Mental Health

Dec 10, 2014
In BC the human rights of people experiencing mental illness are routinely violated through the use of Section 28 under the BC Mental Health Act which is implemented when a person is thought to be a danger to themselves or others. A recent Globe and Mail article indicated that these apprehensions in BC (frequently initiated… View Article