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  • BC’s Election Act doesn’t just throttle the big spenders, it crushes the grassroots

    The BC government wants you to shut up during the next election. That’s the message that emerges when you read between the lines of its proposed amendments to the Election Act. The Premier claims she is trying to prevent Big Money from buying provincial elections. Her government has re-introduced a…

  • Labour Matters

    Fast Facts: Private Long Term Care & Home Care Zombies

    UBC economist Robert Evans calls user fees in health care zombies, a policy option that keeps surfacing despite being killed over and over again by the evidence.   During Manitoba’s recent provincial election Brian Pallister invoked zombies anew by saying that he would not rule out the introduction of private sector…

  • We’re putting fossil fuel industry influence under the microscope

    By Bill Carroll and Shannon Daub The tremendous concentration of power and influence we see in the fossil fuel industry today places sharp limits on our democracy (for examples, see our previous post). And as oil, gas and coal corporations pursue their relatively narrow, short-term profit goals, crafting effective responses…

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    Massey Bridge P3 borrowing costs yet another problem

    As more information becomes available about the controversial $3.5-billion, 10-lane Massey Bridge project, concern about the project increases. Issues had already been raised about the cost and need for the project given questions about traffic growth, but the publication of two new documents raises concerns about the plan to build the…

  • 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…

  • The Economist Magazine calls out BC

    Well, I never thought I’d see this rebuke of Canada and BC in The Economist Magazine of all places. But the current issue of the conservative magazine singles out BC for its high rate of child poverty. You can find it here. The piece highlights cuts to welfare, and notes,…

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    Penticton’s peculiar policy on freedom of information

    This is International Right to Know Week, a week in honour of the public’s right to information held by their governments. The week is being celebrated in different ways in the 105 countries around the world with right to information laws. Here in British Columbia the City of Penticton is celebrating…

  • February 2006: “Soft” Fascism is Getting Harder

    U.S. use of torture and chemical weapons are war crimes Given the now indisputable U.S. practice of torturing prisoners of war, the “soft” fascism term I applied to the Bush administration a few months ago has become harder. The widespread American use of torture, both in physically and mentally abusing…

  • Statistics Canada’s Senseless Census Decision

    Open letter to the Honourable Tony Clement, Ministry of Industry and Minister Responsible for Statistics Canada and Munir Sheikh, Chief Statistician, Statistics Canada June 30, 2010 Open letter to the Honourable Tony Clement, Ministry of Industry and Minister Responsible for Statistics Canada and Munir Sheikh, Chief Statistician, Statistics Canada Dear…

  • For Finance Minister Flaherty – and for Bay Street – tomorrow is another day

    For a politician, the only thing worse than having to use up political points cleaning up someone else’s mess, is cleaning up when the mess was created by tax cuts — that you originally supported in opposition — turned out to be a bad idea. That’s the unenviable prospect faced…

  • Infographic: Is BC education funding really at “record levels”?

    Click to enlarge (files open in a new window).

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    How the so-called “Clean Energy Plan” still wreaks havoc on BC Hydro’s rates

    My wife says I hold on to things too long. Still, when I read BC Hydro’s most recent rate application to the BC Utilities Commission (BCUC), I couldn’t help but recall Mark Jaccard’s spirited—if misguided—defence of Premier Gordon Campbell’s Clean Energy Plan in a critique of a paper, Lost in Transmission, that I co-authored in 2007. BC…