Posts by Marc Lee

Marc Lee

About Marc Lee

Marc Lee is a Senior Economist at the CCPA’s BC Office. In addition to tracking federal and provincial budgets and economic trends, Marc has published on a range of topics from poverty and inequality to globalization and international trade to public services and regulation. Marc is Co-Director of the Climate Justice Project, a research partnership with UBC's School of Community and Regional Planning that examines the links between climate change policies and social justice. Follow Marc on Twitter

LNG Canada: Short-term politics trumps long-term climate responsibility

Oct 4, 2018
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LNG Canada’s final investment decision to build a natural gas liquefaction facility in Kitimat is a triumph of short-term politics over long-term responsibility to act on climate change. Exaggerated numbers have been used to sell the project to the public, while risks have been downplayed. The politics of liquefied natural gas (LNG) have a certain logic… View Article

Fighting poverty through tax credit reform

Sep 21, 2018
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One way to fight extreme inequality is to have a progressive tax system. We mostly think about this in the form of progressive income tax brackets, which are structured so that those who have higher incomes pay higher tax rates. Other taxes, however, like sales tax or the carbon tax, are not necessarily progressive in… View Article

The problem with BC’s “clean growth” climate rhetoric

Aug 2, 2018
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The BC government recently released three “intentions papers” on climate policy—transportation, buildings and industry—all wrapped in the term “clean growth.” In fact, the term “clean” appears more than 70 times in just the introduction to the exercise, Towards a Clean Growth Future in BC. Clean growth is not a commonly used term, nor is it… View Article

LNG is incompatible with BC’s climate obligations

Jul 11, 2018
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Now that we are in a sunny lull between the end of flooding season and the start of fire season, it’s time we had a talk about fossil fuels and climate change in BC. The BC government deserves praise for standing up to Alberta and the federal government over the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion (TMX),… View Article

Tax breaks and subsidies for BC LNG

Jul 5, 2018
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At the height of LNG-mania in 2013/14, high prices in Asia fueled a gold rush mentality in BC—based on shipping cheap BC gas to Asia for mega-profits. But those high prices proved only temporary, and by 2015 the economic case for LNG (liquified natural gas) turned on its head. The subsequent Asian price for gas… View Article