Posts by Iglika Ivanova

Iglika Ivanova

About Iglika Ivanova

Iglika Ivanova is a Senior Economist and the Public Interest Researcher at the CCPA’s BC Office. She researches and writes on key social and economic challenges facing BC and Canada, including poverty, economic insecurity and labour market shifts towards more precarious work. Iglika is Co-Director of the Understanding Precarity in BC Project (UP-BC)

Iglika also investigates issues of government finance, tax policy and privatization and how they relate to the accessibility and quality of public services. She is particularly interested in the potential for public policy to build a more just, inclusive and sustainable economy. Follow Iglika on Twitter

On the economic impacts of the HST

Jul 5, 2010
By
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 Is this sufficient reason to campaign for the tax to be repealed?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

The HST and BC family budgets

Jun 24, 2010
By
That the HST will take a bite out of family budgets is clear to everyone. The main question right now is just how big of a bite. Two studies released earlier this week asked this exact question but came to very different conclusions. On Monday, the Fraser Institute released a paper arguing that lower and… View Article

A new era for measuring poverty in Canada

Jun 18, 2010
By
Last Thursday’s Statistics Canada release of individual and household income data for 2008 marks a new era in the study of poverty in Canada. Instead of reporting only on the Low Income Cut Offs (LICO), as they used to, Statistics Canada reported on three of the most common measures of low income in the same… View Article

Job creation alone will not solve BC’s poverty problem

Apr 29, 2010
By
Whenever he’s confronted with questions about BC’s record high child poverty rates or by the growing income inequality in the province, our Premier maintains that the best social policy is a job. In fact, reducing the costs of doing business in BC seems to be this government’s chief economic strategy. Consider the HST, for example,… View Article

Have taxes changed all that much over the past half century?

Apr 20, 2010
By
Yesterday, the Fraser Institute released its Consumer Tax Index report, which claims to show that the average Canadian family’s tax bill has increased by a whopping 1,624% since 1961. There are a lot of things wrong with Fraser Institute’s math. Here are just a few of them. To begin with, the numbers should have been… View Article

Are Canadians paying too much in taxes?

Apr 20, 2010
By
It’s tax season and people are looking more closely at their incomes and the amount of taxes they pay. The Fraser Institute released their annual Consumer Tax Index report yesterday, claiming that the total tax bill of the average Canadian family now takes up 41.7% of their income. This seems like a big number, which… View Article

Tax cuts don’t make up for BC’s low minimum wages

Apr 4, 2010
By
Responding to news of Ontario’s latest minimum wage increase (to $10.25 per hour), BC’s labour minister Murray Coell held firm on his government’s commitment to leave BC’s $8 minimum wage unchanged. The Minister seems convinced that the tax cuts over the last decade were so beneficial to low wage workers in the province, that they… View Article

BC’s minimum wage is now 22% lower than Ontario’s

Mar 31, 2010
By
Today, thousands of low wage workers in Ontario are getting a raise of 75 cent per hour, as the province’s minimum wage goes up to $10.25. This makes Ontario the first province to pass the $10 mark, but several other provinces are following closely. Newfoundland’s minimum wage will increase to $10 in July, as will… View Article