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Search results for: “site/Pat Armstrong”

  • Nova Scotia Alternative Budget

    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…

  • What would it take to meet Canada’s 2030 climate targets? Image source: Shutterstock

    What would it take to meet Canada’s 2030 climate targets?

      Adapted from the CCPA’s fall 2023 submission to Canada’s Net-Zero Advisory Body by Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood & Marc Lee When Canada first signed the Paris Agreement way back in 2015, the commitment to reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions by 30% below 2005 levels by 2030 seemed far away. So far…

  • The Ford government’s superficial arguments against pharmacare

    Ontario’s new Progressive Conservative government is rejigging OHIP+, a modest but promising pharmacare policy introduced by the previous Liberal government, allegedly to make more efficient use of tax dollars. Where the short-lived program covered most prescription drug costs for people under 25, OHIP+ will now only cover people without individual…

  • L’acquisition des navires de patrouille extracôtiers / de l’Arctique comporte une erreur digne du Titanic, selon un rapport d’expert

    OTTAWA – L’Institut Rideau et le Centre canadien de politiques alternatives publient un nouveau rapport sur le projet du gouvernement canadien de construire des navires de patrouille extracôtiers / de l’Arctique. 

  • Seniors Care

    Seniors Fact Sheet: Health Care

    <Click here to download this fact sheet in English (PDF)> <Haga clic aquí para ver la versión española (PDF)> <Click here to download this fact sheet in Chinese (PDF)> Caring for BC’s aging population: Improving health care for all   Introduction British Columbia’s seniors population is growing. How we can…

  • The Petro-Path Not Taken

    Comparing Norway with Canada and Alberta’s Management of Petroleum Wealth Download 1.79 MB 80 pages This report compares the Canada and Alberta experience of managing oil wealth to that of Norway, another major petroleum producing and exporting country. The report finds that for too long foreign and domestic petroleum interests have been…

  • 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…

  • The Path to Better Child Care in Ontario

    Download 2.9 MB8 pages This primer on child care in Ontario, co-authored by child care expert Martha Friendly and CCPA Ontario Director Trish Hennessy, makes the case for the government to take leadership and commit to public, non-profit, affordable, regulated child care.

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Photo credit: Citizen Monitoring Group

    The Energy Action Framework and BC’s carbon crossroads revisited

    Since first starting down the pathway of climate action in 2007, the BC government has both developed policies to reduce carbon emissions domestically while simultaneously promoting a growing oil and gas export industry. These contradictions are evident in the March 2023 announcement of a new Energy Action Framework, which tries…