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  • UNSPUN: Communities leading the way need provincial support

    The province has invested widely in community development and “place-based” approaches to renewal and poverty reduction, with many positive results. Place-based approaches such as these are now being adopted in communities across the country as research shows that residents overwhelmed by poverty need complementary supports and resources close to home.…

  • Raising the minimum wage: not if but how much and how fast

    While lone voices from the business sector still oppose a minimum wage increase (as in this article in The Province), the minimum wage debate in BC has now firmly shifted past the question of whether we should raise it or not. Virtually all leadership contenders for both the BC Liberals…

  • Government intervention needed to address youth unemployment

    The Canadian Federation of Students, and most of the people we have spoken to, is at a loss over how the government thinks it can increase student and youth employment without direct state intervention in the economy via wage subsidies and/or direct student employment programs. According to the OECD, if…

  • Fast Facts: Fight food insecurity with income

    The rise in food costs disproportionately affects the poor as food makes up a larger portion of their spending. Increased income, educational programs, and northern food subsidies need to work hand in hand if the food security crisis in Manitoba is to be overcome. Canadians can expect an increase in…

  • Basic income panel calls for major reforms to income security in BC

    When the final report of BC’s Basic Income Panel came out in January, the media coverage was largely reduced to a few dismissive headlines that the panel had rejected basic income. Behind the headlines, however, is a comprehensive and thoughtful analysis of the state of poverty in BC and the…

  • Vacancy control: taking the next step on housing affordability

    Recently, two Ontario-based Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) purchased 15 Vancouver apartment buildings for $292 million from Hollyburn Properties. Tenants in those buildings, totaling 614 units, now face a massively elevated risk of being evicted by absentee landlords so that higher rents can be charged to new tenants.  Tenants should…

  • Climate Justice and the Good Life, for Everyone

    In our Climate Justice Project, our research has stressed structural changes and collective action to lower carbon footprints rather than individual behavioural change. The ability of many actors to respond to incentives like a carbon tax is constrained by their circumstances. Suburban households often have no realistic option but to keep driving.…

  • Education Project

    Indigo’s “For the Love of Indigo” school library fundraising campaign

    Did you know that parents want their children to have access to well-stocked libraries in their schools? Were you aware that they’re very concerned that provincial governments aren’t doing enough to ensure that there’s enough money to pay for these books and libraries? Or that increasingly teachers have to dig…

  • Our Deadliest Addiction

    Oil drives our commerce, but could drive us to extinction “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” – Heraclitus, 535 BC-475 BC *     *     * When European explorers first sighted a pristine Gulf of Mexico 500…

  • Education Project

    Provinces pursuing two-tier tuition fee policies: study

    READ THE FULL REPORT HERE. OTTAWA—The average cost of tuition and compulsory fees for Canadian undergraduate students will rise by almost 13% over the next four years, from $6,885 this fall to an estimated $7,755 in 2017-18, says a study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).…

  • Public Interest Research Project (BC)

    BC’s minimum wage should not be a poverty wage

    Labour and social justice groups in BC have long urged the provincial government to increase the minimum wage to a level that guarantees a path out of poverty for a single person working full-year, full-time. Year after year, the government has turned them down with the argument that BC already…

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    Why has UBC divested from fossil fuels but UVic has not? The high cost of industry influence

    The death and disruption wrought by COVID-19 is calamitous. The bad news is that climate change will be worse. It is easy to forget that 2020 began with Australia burning in a brutal wildfire season. Like the current pandemic, Australia’s disaster was predicted years in advance by ecological science. As…