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  • Highlights from BC Budget 2017

    The 2017 BC Budget was just released; here’s our analysis so far: MSP goes down for families with income under $120,000 MSP premiums are going to be cut in half for families with incomes under $120,000 as of January 2018. Essentially, BC Budget 2017 reverses the MSP increases this government…

  • Trade and Investment Research Project

    The US wants a NAFTA deal this month; Canada should say no

    Lighthizer, Guajardo and Freeland feeling the NAFTA love in April.For the past four weeks, NAFTA negotiators in Washington, D.C., have been working around the clock to reach an agreement in principle before the U.S. and Mexican electoral calendars sideline the Trump administration’s hopes for a speedy deal. Due to the…

  • Trade and Investment Research Project

    Open letter: Canada must support global access to COVID-19 vaccines at the WTO

    This letter was sent to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on March 10, 2021.  Dear Prime Minister, Since the beginning of the pandemic, world leaders have repeatedly spoken of the need for global solidarity to get us all through this once-in-a-century health crisis. You were among the first to call for…

  • Shapeshifting: P3s in Manitoba

    Five schools for the price of four—this is the deal the Pallister government got when it abandoned the plan to build schools through a Public-Private-Partnership (P3) model and used the usual public model instead. The government built five schools for the same cost using the regular process. In addition to…

  • Red markers indicate dams currently being reviewed by the EAO’s office; yellow markers indicate water licences that Progress Energy applied for on December 23 of last year and where dams already existed.

    A Dam Troublesome Exception: Progress Energy’s dams should not be exempted from environmental review

    I sent the following letter to BC’s Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) in response to Progress Energy’s extraordinary request to retroactively exempt the Lily and Town dams from environmental reviews. Such reviews should have been conducted before the dams were built. Not only did those reviews not happen, but the company…

  • A protestor holding a placard stating the inequality of capitalism during the Occupy Toronto Movement on October 17, 2011 in Toronto, Canada. © arindambanerjee via Shutterstock

    That 70s show: The evolution of income inequality in Canada

      This brief looks at the evolution of inequality going back to 1976. Drawing on Statistics Canada’s Canadian Income Survey, it reviews changes in the distribution of income by decile (groupings of ten percent of households ranked by income from lowest to highest income), and asks a hypothetical question: what…

  • "TheBC Hydro Dam site gallery (2019) slide 10/150.” style=”border-radius:0px;–objectFit:cover;–imagePosX:50%;–imagePosY:50%” decoding=”async” srcset=”https://www.policyalternatives.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/pn_august2020_site-c-tunnel-300×133.jpg 300w, https://www.policyalternatives.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/pn_august2020_site-c-tunnel-768×341.jpg 768w, https://www.policyalternatives.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/pn_august2020_site-c-tunnel.jpg 900w” sizes=”(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px” />

    A Big Fracking Mess: As Site C dam construction bogs down in geotechnical problems, thousands of earthquakes triggered by fracking operations occur nearby

    Earthquakes triggered by natural gas industry fracking operations near BC Hydro’s troubled Site C dam construction project are far greater in number than previously thought, raising troubling questions about whether they are adding to the already formidable geotechnical challenges at the site. Not only are more earthquakes occurring in proximity…

  • Ben Parfitt taking notes outside a new pellet-burning thermal electricity plant in Japan, north of the city of Sendai. Photo: Conservation North.

    Thanks for a great ride

    Twenty years ago, an insect attack of biblical proportions in British Columbia’s forests became a hot-button topic.  Thanks to unusually warm winters (guess why), mountain pine beetles exploded in number in the province’s interior forests killing millions upon millions of lodgepole pine trees.  The provincial government responded by approving huge…

  • Interview: Ann Collins on the challenges and opportunities for uniting Indigenous and settler struggles

    From August 21 to 24, thousands of participants from social movements across the country converged in Ottawa for the Peoples’ Social Forum. Among its many goals, the forum aimed to bridge Canadian, Quebec and Indigenous struggles, conversations and ideas for how to transform Canada. The CCPA took part in three…

  • Silencing the outriders, silencing democracy

    Since taking power federally in 2006, the Conservative government has undertaken a continuous attack on civil society organizations.  One of the government’s first actions was to cut support for women’s organizations that lobbied or did research on the status of women.  Environmental organizations have been accused of acting in the…

  • Would pharmacare spell trouble for drug companies?

    The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has brought the issue of prescription drug access back to the fore as questions of affordable access became international news in March. However, the question of how to guarantee access to necessary medications for Canadians is not new. During the last federal election, calls for a…

  • Everything you wanted to know about the housing taxes and expenditures in BC Budget 2018

    BC Budget 2018 was billed to have major investments in housing, and did not disappoint. Indeed, the surprise of the Budget was just how far the BC government went on the demand side through new tax measures to make the property tax system much more progressive, and to discourage out-of-province…