Transportation Transformation

Apr 19, 2011
Just in time for Earth Day, we have a new release from the Climate Justice Project, Transportation Transformation: Building Complete Communities and a Zero-Emission Transportation System in BC. The report is perhaps the most visionary of our CJP publications to date (and has lots of great graphics to illustrate that vision), a necessity given that… View Article

From The Missing Issues File: Climate Change

Apr 14, 2011
Did I miss something, or did the two-hour English election debate go by with only one passing reference to climate change, the most urgent issue of our time?  There seems to be an inverse relationship at play between the severity of the crisis and its place on the political radar. The issue is receiving much… View Article

Can cooperatives humanize the economy?

Apr 13, 2011
Book Review of Humanizing the Economy: Cooperatives in the Age of Capital, by John Restakis, New Society Publishers, 2010. The economy is about business, right? Sure, we have a dynamic mixed economy, and most people support decent social programs and government intervention to protect the environment or to improve living conditions for the poorest. In… View Article

Environmental Violence

Apr 11, 2011
Time magazine recently reported that particulates in the air from “industry, traffic and domestic heating, cause 4,300 premature deaths in London each year”. That works out to about 12 people dying every single day, in just one city. The British government does not seem worried about this horrific toll. To put their response in perspective,… View Article

A Call to Action on the Forest Front

Apr 8, 2011
Does the provincial government have a coherent plan to address the exponentially deepening forest health crisis in our province? Evidently not, as outlined by two scientists in a sobering critique of provincial government forest policy (or the lack thereof) published in today’s Vancouver Sun. Penned by Suzanne Simard, a professor of forest science at the… View Article

Robin Hood Economics

Apr 5, 2011
Canada’s economic context at the time of Election 2011 is one of “precarious recovery”, and overall demand conditions are weakened by a few major factors. Unemployment is still just under 8%, which is good compared to the double-digit unemployment of the early 1990s, but not great compared to the expansions of the late 1990s and… View Article

Ten years of tax cuts: a household’s perspective

Apr 1, 2011
I did my taxes yesterday and once again was surprised to see how low my family’s income taxes have gone. In 2010, my wife and I paid a combined 13.7% of our income in federal and provincial income tax. Canadian modesty does not permit me to disclose the exact amount of income, but it was… View Article

Health Act Inquiry Into Threats Posed by Sour Gas A Step Closer?

Mar 30, 2011
A local citizens initiative aimed at highlighting the health threats posed by sour gas wells in B.C.’s energy-rich Peace River region appears to be gaining momentum, but whether or not it will result in a public inquiry remains to be seen. Last week, the Alaska Highway News reported that during her first installment of promised… View Article

How income splitting works and who does it work for: some practical examples

Mar 29, 2011
Income-splitting works by allowing families to allocate more of their earned income to a lower tax bracket by sharing the earned income between the spouses when filing taxes. The maximum amount of income that can be split this way is $50,000. Income-splitting makes a difference to a family’s tax bill because we have a progressive… View Article

Income splitting: a poorly targeted non-commitment with negative labour market implications

Mar 29, 2011
I was on the CBC Early Edition this morning, discussing Stephen Harper’s first election promise: income splitting for families with children. If you missed it, you can listen to the podcast here (I’m at about 1:08:00 onwards). Since five minutes is too short for any kind of informed discussion, and I think that informed discussions… View Article

CCPA blogs the federal election

Mar 28, 2011
Our colleagues at the CCPA’s National Office have launched a great new blog that will offer commentary on the federal election. Check out Making It Count for informative posts on income splitting, taxes, EI and more. Meanwhile, stay tuned to Policy Note for ongoing commentary on the busy BC political scene…. View Article

There is no Goldilocks in democracy

Mar 24, 2011
Oh boy, we’re in for a lot of democracy here in BC this year.  Federal election in May and probably an HST referendum in June.  My money is on an October provincial election if Christy Clark thinks the numbers are right.  Then a vote for councils and school boards in November. And that is just fine… View Article

Corporate tax cuts haven’t delivered

Mar 23, 2011
Yesterday I debated an economist from the Fraser Institute on CBC radio about the Federal Budget. One of the points of contention (and indeed, one of the core issues around which this budget will likely bring down the government) was the matter and merits of corporate tax cuts. My point: corporate tax cuts simply have… View Article

More thoughts on BC’s new minimum wage

Mar 23, 2011
As some of you may have seen, Adrienne Montani (of First Call) and I had a piece in the Vancouver Sun earlier this week: a “memo” to the new Premier on what a “Families First” agenda should look like . (If you didn’t see it, you can find it here.) In it, we praised Cristy… View Article

Reading the tea leaves in a Cabinet shuffle

Mar 15, 2011
Figuring out what the changes in a Cabinet shuffle mean is a lot like reading tea leaves: you can find just about anything you can imagine. Christy Clark’s first Cabinet announced yesterday is no exception. That being said, there are some things that stand out as pretty strong likelihoods. First of all it looks like… View Article

How flipping equity in P3s boosts profits and ends up with the projects being run from Channel Islands tax havens

Mar 9, 2011
Just like good stilton cheese, public private partnerships (P3s) were imported to British Columbia from the United Kingdom.  And like good stilton, in the UK P3s are starting to smell. In 2003, as part of its privatization agenda, BC’s government created Partnerships BC as a private company owned by the Ministry of Finance.  Partnerships BC’s… View Article

Tradable Water Rights – Coming to a province near you

Mar 5, 2011
In January of this year, the BC government joined Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba to become the fourth province to announce that it is considering creating tradable water rights as a way of curbing use and improving the efficiency of allocation. The announcement came as a vague reference to “water markets” in the latest draft of… View Article

Hydro rate hikes are bad news for BC’s poorest

Mar 3, 2011
BC Hydro has proposed to dramatically increase its residential electricity rates. While the proposal still must be approved by the BC Utilities Commission, and the BCUC could intervene to change those rates in its decision, as it stands low- to middle-income households are going to get hammered. For example, the 12% of BC households with… View Article

The Frontier Centre’s dubious numbers about public sector wages

Feb 28, 2011
As if the Fraser Institute needed any help getting its message in the media, there are now a number of Fraser clones that are preaching the same message.  One of those clones, Winnipeg’s Frontier Centre for Public Policy, has gotten a lot of ink in the last few weeks with a report arguing that salaries… View Article

When everything you ask for isn’t enough – BC business calls for more cuts to labour standards

Feb 24, 2011
Last November BC’s Labour Minister quietly announced his Ministry was conducting a review of employment standards and the minimum wage.  There has been virtually no news coverage on this.  That’s too bad because the results could be important for BC workers.  The recommendations could offer a blueprint for BC’s new Liberal Premier to be chosen… View Article