What are we going to do with the oil and gas industry?

May 7, 2009
That is the question no one seems willing to entertain in this election campaign. In today’s Vancouver Sun, David Collyer of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers makes the case for expanding the industry based on some dubious facts. First there is this gem: The industry has invested almost $30 billion dollars in British Columbia… View Article

Why young children’s education and care are not priorities in this election

May 7, 2009
It seems clear that policy-makers in this province (and country, for that matter) are not prepared to invest in a quality early education and childcare system, despite the proven benefits for children. The reasons have got to be political, as the economic case for investing in early childhood education and care has already been made… View Article

Poverty reduction and the party platforms

May 7, 2009
The CCPA is a member of the BC Poverty Reduction Committee, the network that has been pressing all the BC political parties to commit to a comprehensive poverty reduction plan. Over 280 organizations have now signed an Open Letter to all the political parties calling on them to commit to a poverty reduciton plan with… View Article

There is more to good economic policy than protecting the interests of employers

May 6, 2009
Next week’s election will take place in the midst of an economic crisis which hit our province seemingly out of the blue last fall and hit us hard, causing 69,000 job losses between November and March (the April numbers will be released on Friday, May 8, and are expected to be just as grim as… View Article

The Case for STV

May 6, 2009
One final article from our BC Commentary special: The Case for the BC Single Transferable Vote (BC-STV) by David Huntley and Michael Wortis BC-STV has many advantages over the current First-Past-the-Post system (FPTP) used for electing our MLAs. BC-STV will achieve a reasonably proportional representation of parties, with the number of MLAs of each party… View Article

The Case Against STV

May 5, 2009
More from our BC Commentary special on STV: The Case Against STV By David Schreck Will STV “make your vote count”? Actually, BC-STV can make your vote worth less and make your MLA less accountable. Our existing first-past-the-post (FPTP) system is not perfect, but it is better than BC-STV. Inequality is inherent in BC-STV. The… View Article

A Framework for Enhancing Home Support in BC

May 4, 2009
Home support is an important element of the broader home and community care system, which unfortunately tends to get overlooked in many health care discussions. Home support serves an important dual purpose: it improves the quality of life of vulnerable citizens by allowing them to continue living independently in their own homes and it enables… View Article

STV: A better democracy and more progressive politics

May 1, 2009
Dennis Pilon from UVic published this excellent article on STV in the CCPA Monitor, so I am republishing it below: MAY 12 DECISION DAY FOR B.C. VOTERS: Change to STV system would be helpful to progressives By Dennis Pilon May 12, 2009 will be the “make-or-break” day for voting system reform in British Columbia, and… View Article

Seniors’ care concerns should be taken seriously in this election

May 1, 2009
Access to residential care beds for seniors was dubbed “an election hotspot” by CTV early last week, and for good reasons. The party that forms government after May’s election will have to deal with the pressures that the aging population would put on the already strained system of seniors’ care in BC. Fundamentally, providing an… View Article

Government report on welfare leavers at odds with narrative

May 1, 2009
Kudos to the Tyee’s Andrew MacLeod for extracting a long delayed report on welfare leavers from the provincial government. The report can be downloaded here. Andrew’s Tyee article about the report can be found here. The report uses tax data of BC welfare leavers between 2000 and 2005 to see how people have done. Comparing… View Article

The Premier speaks out on labour issues

Apr 30, 2009
On April 27th I posted about the BC Federation of Labour’s report on the impacts of changes to BC’s workers compensation system under the current government. Today Tom Sandborn writing for the Tyee posted a story quoting Premier Campbell’s response to health and safety issues. The story also dealt with the NDP and labour issues,… View Article

BC’s child care crisis IS an election issue

Apr 30, 2009
The provincial election is off and running, and once again families and communities know that childcare should be a high priority for every candidate in every riding. After eight years of failed policies, ad hoc decisions, and inadequate funding, B.C. childcare is in a crisis. Just ask any young family about their struggle to find… View Article

Reflections on the Citizens’ Assembly

Apr 30, 2009
One of the most interesting stories behind BC’s Single Transferable Vote referendum is how we got there. The Citizen’s Assembly on Electoral Reform ran for a year, a fascinating exercise in deliberative democracy, and perhaps the most interesting and forward-looking thing done by the Liberals in their first term. Wendy Bergerud was a CA member… View Article

School funding an election issue at the local level

Apr 30, 2009
It hasn’t particularly reached the level of a provincial election issue, but school funding is quietly percolating along as an issue at the local level. The provincial election overlaps with the time that school boards set their budgets and many of those school boards are making cuts due to lack of funding. A few examples?… View Article

BC’s economy and the Liberal platform

Apr 29, 2009
With my oped last week on the NDP platform making me less than popular over at NDP HQ, today the Sun published my take on the Liberals’ platform, thereby guaranteeing that the list of Christmas parties I get invited to dwindles to next to nothing. BC’s Economic Challenges and the Liberal Platform By Marc Lee… View Article

The Ghost of Elections Past (revised)

Apr 29, 2009
From our STV series in the new BC Commentary, UVic historian Ben Isitt looks to the past when he sees STV. UPDATE (April 30): It seems that there is some confusion about the term Single Transferable Vote and its applicability to the 1952 and 1953 elections. Dennis Pilon, also from U Vic wrote to say… View Article

BC’s soaring EI claims

Apr 28, 2009
Today’s Statistics Canada release features the latest (February 2009) stats on Employment Insurance claims. From February 2008 to February 2009, the number of EI beneficiaries is up 69%. And the number is up 11.6% just between January and February. More evidence that the BC economy is in much worse shape than the major political parties… View Article

How Workers’ Compensation cut costs for employers and benefits for injured workers

Apr 27, 2009
A report published by the BC Federation of Labour last week finds that since 2002 employers have saved hundreds of millions of dollars in Workers’ Compensation expenses at the cost of reduced benefits to injured workers. I never cease to be amazed that such a report, which outlines the hardship to injured workers from the… View Article

Oh, about that recession …

Apr 27, 2009
BC’s recession started in 2008. That is the upshot of today’s release of Statistics Canada’s Provincial Economic Accounts, which provides the first estimates of BC’s GDP for 2008. Unlike national data, which are provided quarterly and on a timely basis, we have to wait about four months to tally the various provincial beans. These numbers… View Article

To Tax or Not to Tax — That is Not the Question!

Apr 27, 2009
It was disappointing to read Mark Jaccard’s sensational, but grossly misleading forecast of massive job loss if the NDP eliminates the carbon tax. Sure, if the NDP axes the tax and implements a cap and trade on large emitters to extract all the GHG reductions needed to achieve B.C.’s targets, there would be a huge… View Article