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U.S. demand, privatization, pushing Canada toward continental electricity market
Study CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL REPORT (OTTAWA) The desperate need for electricity in the U.S. is a powerful force behind the privatization of electricity in Canada, according to a new study released today. Written by economist Marjorie Griffin Cohen for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the study…
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The wrong question in the wrong forum
It didn’t take very much time at the joint federal-provincial environmental hearing into Site C, which started this week in Fort St. John, to realize that it is not the best forum to address the central issue underlying BC Hydro’s proposal to develop the $8 to $9 billion hydro project.…
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Steve Estvanik / Shutterstock” style=”border-radius:0px;–objectFit:cover;–imagePosX:50%;–imagePosY:50%” decoding=”async” srcset=”https://www.policyalternatives.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/pn_mar2023_logging-trucks-300×133.jpg 300w, https://www.policyalternatives.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/pn_mar2023_logging-trucks-768×341.jpg 768w, https://www.policyalternatives.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/pn_mar2023_logging-trucks.jpg 900w” sizes=”(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px” />The extra-long logging haul
As forests shrink, drivers work 16-hour days to deliver single loads of logs to BC sawmills When Eugene Wilson started driving a logging truck 24 years ago, he worked out of the Bulkley valley community of Houston three hours west of Prince George. He recalls the trips as if they…
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Wood wasted at BC logging sites would fill a cross-country truck convoy — twice
Costs include thousands of potential jobs, sharply higher CO2 emissions: report CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL REPORT (Vancouver) A new report on BC’s forest industry finds that startling numbers of usable logs are being left to rot or burn at logging sites, at a potential cost of thousands of…
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Budgets more than numbers
The Nova Scotia Department of Finance recently launched an interactive “Back to Balance” website, giving community members an opportunity to try their hands at government budgeting. The site is technically sophisticated and informative. Users can move sliders to adjust the levels of various taxes and expenditures, and pop-up bubbles provide…
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Reckless Abandon
Canada, the GATS and the Future of Health Care Download 66.14 KB144 pages This study shows that, contrary to repeated assurances from federal government officials, the government has, in fact, recklessly exposed health care to the GATS commercial rules. Matthew Sanger made the discovery that health insurance has already been…
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Out-of-control rents
Rental wages in Canada, 2023
CMHC, “Rental Market Survey Data Tables,” 2023. For a notable exception, see John Rapley, “Canada’s approach to housing is bad for the economy,” The Globe and Mail, July 14, 2023. David Macdonald, “Unaccommodating: Rental Housing Wage in Canada” (Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2018), policyalternatives.ca/unaccommodating. David Macdonald and Ricardo…
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Financialization of housing must be confronted
Previously published in the Winnipeg Free Press January 12, 2023 Government housing policy preferences are based on values, the most fundamental being the extent to which housing is viewed as a right, or as a commodity. From a rights value base, housing is a social good — a home and…
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BC Budget 2021: Stay-the-course budget misses the mark on key areas of urgency outside health
The BC government tabled a surprisingly stay-the-course budget today, making some improvements on the margins but missing the opportunity to shift BC towards a more inclusive and sustainable economy. While it appropriately includes large sums of time-limited spending relating to the pandemic (and indeed BC has led other provinces on…
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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…
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Swimming against the tide
The challenge of higher interest rates and high household debt The run-up of interest rates since March, led by the Bank of Canada in a bid to tame inflation, represents a substantial economic shock, one that is now pushing the country towards a recession. The bank’s overnight, or policy, interest…
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Why are we letting corporate medicine take hold in Vancouver’s new urgent care centres?
The BC government has rolled out a flurry of impressive measures to strengthen our public health care system over the past two years. Flying below the radar, though, is a new effort by for-profit corporations to push their way into BC’s health care system — and the Vancouver Coastal Health…
