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  • Economic Security Project (BC)

    BC child care spending shows the power of good public policy. What’s next?

    On May 1, the Living Wage for Families Campaign released new living wage rates for 12 BC communities. Even though costs are increasing steeply for rent and other basic necessities, the cost of living for families with children is lower this year thanks to the provincial government’s new child care…

  • Manitoba Research Alliance

    Fast Facts: The Tough on Crime Strategy Has Not Made Our Communities Safer

    Crime rates in Canada have been steadily declining for more than a decade, yet prison populations have been increasing in recent years. Commentators have attributed this disconnection between dropping crime rates and rising incarceration numbers to the Harper government’s tough on crime strategy. Since 2006 the Harper Conservatives have implemented…

  • Public or private – how the choice for P3s gets made

    Did you ever wonder how Partnerships BC justifies using 35 year contracts for public private partnerships rather than borrowing the money publicly and doing things like hospitals and roads as public projects? Well now you can find out.  PBC has published its methodology on a website.  They have even asked…

  • Inside job: How BC Hydro customers wound up bankrolling private power companies

    The chickens have finally come home to roost on the previous BC government’s private power giveaway. The just-released provincial report by Ken Davidson on the costs of BC Hydro’s power purchases is a damning indictment of its electricity policies—policies whose exorbitant and wholly unnecessary costs will saddle BC ratepayers with…

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    Raising the minimum wage is good for public health

    Soon we expect the Fair Wages Commission to advise the BC government on a path towards a $15 minimum wage and a plan for regular increases. This will be very good news for our province. Increasing the minimum wage is an important step in reducing poverty and income inequalities that…

  • BC isn’t broke: putting teacher bargaining in perspective

    Last Monday, BC teachers held a Day of Action in communities across the province to protest the BC government’s decision to legislate a contract and put an end to their collective bargaining process. I was invited to speak to teachers at the Surrey rally, where I had the opportunity to…

  • Poltergeists and P3s: They’re back

    In February, with the spectacular collapse of the $3 billion Port Mann Bridge public private partnership, many people thought P3s in British Columbia were a dead item.  They’re back. With the Fort St. John Hospital project the government’s privatization agency, Partnerships BC (PBC), has found a way to drastically reduce…

  • Water Politics

    Underdevelopment and overconsumption drive water crisis Water crises are often ranked second only to climate change in environmental challenges that we face in the 21st century. But, unlike climate change, “water crisis” is a slippery term. There is little agreement on what exactly the “water crisis” even is, much less…

  • Drummond, Deconstructed

    In the Commission report that bears his name, and in all of his media appearances since its release, Banker Don Drummond has ably played the disinterested expert, taking no pleasure in sharing the “gloomy message” he has for Ontario. From the way most TV hosts and journalists have rushed forward…

  • Fast Facts: Changes in practices needed, if we’re serious about reconciliation

    First published in the Winnipeg Free Press April 10, 2019 Offer money to leaders in a cash-poor community to gain support for a resource extraction project. Publicly shun and disenfranchise individuals who don’t agree. Deceive people into signing their support without full information. Divide the community. Commence destructive preparation of…

  • Research for Communities: Green New Deal Needed in Canada Too

    First it was 44 million, then 66 million and now 78 million tonnes of C02: every year Environment Canada increases the amount by which Canada is projected to miss its Paris Agreement target [i]. “Transitions to a cleaner future are hard,” said Environment Minister Catherine McKenna in a press conference…

  • Making health care funding sustainable

    The BC Legislature’s Select Standing Committee on Health is currently investigating the sustainability of BC’s health care system (with a focus on demographic / aging trends), and asked for written submissions of peer-reviewed studies on the subject. Here’s what I just submitted: Submission to the BC Legislature’s Select Standing Committee…