Memo to Colin Hansen: Time for forest industry reality check

Mar 2, 2009
If Finance Minister Colin Hansen’s budget forecasts are right, British Columbia’s battered forest industry is in for a modest recovery this coming fiscal year and a more robust recovery in 2010/2011. Gian Sandhu isn’t buying it. Owner of the Jackpine Group of Companies in Williams Lake, Sandhu was a leading light in British Columbia’s interior… View Article

Cancelled P3 saves $200 million

Feb 27, 2009
Wow. Things can change pretty quickly in a day. Apparently the Port Mann Bridge P3 was just too ridiculous. Jeff Nagel already has a very interesting article in the Surrey Leader on the cancellation of the public private partnership. He includes the following quote from the Partnerships BC boss Larry Blain. Critics have long said… View Article

Death of a P3

Feb 27, 2009
And so the P3 financing deal for the Port Mann Super-Bridge died, conveniently right when it will get the least media coverage. Here’s the breaking news from the Sun: The province has been unable to reach a finance-arranging deal with the consortium that was to build the new Port Mann Bridge, transportation Minister Kevin Falcon… View Article

Behind the dramatic drop in the budget of the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and the Arts

Feb 27, 2009
Budget commentators across the province (including Marc Lee on this blog) noted the lack of drastic spending cuts to government programs. While there were some cuts to the budgets of particular ministries, such as Aboriginals Relations and Reconciliation, Community Development and Finance, most of those did not seem debilitating (see Table 1.4 on p. 11… View Article

Axing the Forest Service: The Cuts Continue

Feb 27, 2009
Well it looks like they’re getting ready to wield the axe yet again at the Ministry of Forests, and that the latest victims will join a long list of their sisters and brothers whose jobs were to protect the public interest and ensure that our publicly owned forests were responsibly managed. In its latest annual… View Article

P3s? Fairly ridiculous

Feb 27, 2009
They keep moving the goal posts for using public private partnerships (P3s) in BC to procure large projects. Government officials have argued in the past that the magic bullet for P3s was the combination of risk transfer and private investment. The government transferred risk to the private sector and private companies risked losing their investment… View Article

“The (not so) slow de-industrialization of the province”

Feb 26, 2009
Yesterday, Catalyst Paper announced the closure of the Crofton kraft pulp mill, a week after shutting the doors at its 350-employee mill in Campbell River and “restructuring” (laying off 127 workers) at its Powell River facility. That’s 850 job losses in basically one shot. It is not the first shot, either, and it definitely won’t… View Article

Partisan claims and the BC economy

Feb 23, 2009
BC’s recession and election together mean things are going to get nasty in the political realm. Already we seeing plenty of sneering commentary from our esteemed cabinet ministers. Consider this jibe from Colin Hansen, the Minister of Finance, in his annual address to the brethren of Sigma Chi: “I want you to think about one… View Article

Where’s Our Danny Boy?

Feb 23, 2009
Give Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams credit for leading by example and doing what no BC politician in recent years had the guts to do: force the issue on what, exactly, the public deserves by way of public returns from publicly owned resources. Williams’ well publicized decision in December to yank back AbitibiBowater’s public timber and… View Article

Not the usual sceptics

Feb 22, 2009
Scepticism about the provincial budget last week is extending beyond the usual sceptics. BC’s Credit Union Central has published its take titled “The Bandage Budget” (read here) and it is raising some questions about assumptions being presented. On the size of the possible deficit: The projected deficit in 2009/10 is small in absolute ($495 million)… View Article

Electricity Policy in BC: “Buy High – Sell Low”

Feb 20, 2009
It was only a one-liner in the budget — the government plans to spend $10 million to advance the $400 million Northwest transmission line project along Highway 37, a project it says it will develop in partnership with the private sector. But this not-so-little initiative raises major questions about electricity policy (and sustainable economic development… View Article

Accounting games of Olympic proportion

Feb 20, 2009
The long awaited 2010 security budget was finally unveiled today. The latest estimate pegs the cost of securing the Olympics at $900 million or just over five times more than the original estimate of $175 million. BC’s portion of the total now sits at $252.5 million or roughly three times more than its original price… View Article

Numerically Challenged

Feb 20, 2009
The BC budget just doesn’t add up once you look at some of the details. Since the 2009 economy is shrinking, how can revenues from personal income tax be greater in 2009 than 2008, when the yearly economy was still growing? A more for less approach seems to be endemic with the premier. When commenting… View Article

Government wage freeze damages economy

Feb 20, 2009
One more sign as to how out of touch the February 17 BC Budget is with the rest of the world. The BC Budget includes a two year wage freeze for people who get their pay from the provincial government. The Budget documents say: No funding is included in the fiscal plan for the next… View Article

The Budget: A Determinant of Health

Feb 19, 2009
I know this budget is supposed to be good news for health, but I want to argue here that the exact opposite is true. We’ve had a lot of budgets like this in B.C., so this one is in keeping with its right wing predecessors. During the 1980s, for example, the never-ending Social Credit government… View Article

Time to take the axe to province’s dubious forest-related budget projections

Feb 19, 2009
Two words sprang to mind this week when perusing the provincial government’s latest revenue projections from BC’s once healthy, wealth-producing forests – confusing and misleading. Confusing because Finance Minister Colin Hansen projected that forest revenues will go up next year when all signs point the other way. And misleading because even a cursory review of… View Article

Happy Birthday, Carbon Tax!

Feb 18, 2009
A year ago, in the 2008 BC Budget, a new tax was born. There was a hush over the House as its mother, the Finance Minister, prepared for delivery. The proud papa, the Premier, stood glowingly beside the new mom Carole and her baby tax, and basked in the glow of praise from climate scientists,… View Article

Why do BC kids need Finance Minister’s charitable donation to buy them shoes?

Feb 17, 2009
Minister Hansen donated money for shoes for poor children. Then he delivered a budget that doesn’t help parents who receive income assistance or who are working for the $8.00 per hour minimum wage to buy shoes for their own children. An act of charity that will help several children today compared to a missed opportunity… View Article

Talk of addressing homelessness in Throne Speech remains just that

Feb 17, 2009
Yesterday’s Throne Speech got me excited with its promise of finally addressing homelessness in BC. Like everyone else, I expected the economy to be the main focus of the document and was not surprised to hear that the government is planning to create jobs through ramping up infrastructure spending. But then I got to page… View Article

BC Budget 2009: Vanilla, No Sprinkles (revised)

Feb 17, 2009
Faced with a nasty recession at its doorstep, the BC budget is uninspiring and underwhelming in its ambition. Overall there is little that actively plans for a recession, preferring instead a steady-as-she-goes budget, perhaps aimed at cultivating the image of responsible economic managers in a time of crisis. There are no tax cuts or drastic… View Article