Search results for “site/Pat Armstrong”

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    Whose wealth is it anyway? BC’s top 10 billionaires and the rest of us

    Economic inequality has exploded in recent decades—globally, in Canada and here in BC. Much of our concern about inequality has focused on the growth of extreme disparities between the incomes of the very rich and those of us on the middle and lower rungs of the income ladder. But there’s…

  • The Harper Government’s Record on Medicare

    Canadian Medicare faces growing threats across the country. Many patients using private, for-profit clinics find themselves paying out of pocket for services covered by Medicare. Murial Schoof was required to pay more than $6,000 for sinus surgery at B.C.’s for-profit False Creek Surgery Centre. Court documents state that her physician…

  • 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…

  • Contracting Out: Enough to make you sick

    There is now an accumulation of evidence, both international and domestic, that contracting out is good — but only if you happen to own shares in MDS, Sodexho, LifeLabs, Compass, Aramark or any number of other piggybackers. Unfortunately, if you are merely a patient, taxpayer and/or hospital worker you are…

  • Trade and Investment Research Project

    The false hopes and empty promises of investment treaty modernization

    A Canadian company’s successful challenge to a precautionary mining ban in Colombia shows how little investor–state dispute panels care about the right to regulate.

    A Canadian company’s successful challenge to a precautionary mining ban in Colombia shows how little investor–state dispute panels care about the right to regulate.

  • Vancouver’s Secured Rental Policy and the battle over density

    In North American cities with growing populations and economies, a similar political story on housing affordability is playing out. Calls to permit more dense housing supply—also known as upzoning or changes to land use regulations to allow multi-unit buildings on “single-family” detached lots—pit older, wealthier homeowners against younger, less affluent,…

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    The concerning rise of corporate medicine: Public contracts with private clinics top $393 million over last six years

    Private surgeries and medical imaging are big business in BC. Over the last two decades, this for-profit sector has benefited from increased outsourcing of publicly funded procedures and unlawful patient extra-billing. These private businesses are flourishing in part because the BC government has been awarding them millions of dollars in…

  • June 2004: The Indymedia Phenomenon

    The revolution won’t be televised, but it might be uploaded Wih the rise of “networked” society, we have seen the emergence of democratic social movements with a distinctly global orientation. Such movements are increasingly informed by, and dependent upon, information technologies and computer-mediated communication for their organizational activities, their ability…

  • Government pressure to cut wages will increase the risk of deflation

    It is now abundantly clear that Canada and the world is facing its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. However, a sense of premature Hoover-type optimism seems to have settled in to Ottawa’s thinking, breeding a dangerous complacency that the government has done all that is required to combat…

  • Ignoring proven wait list solutions undermines health care sustainability

    Imagine looking in a mirror and not seeing the nose on your face. There it is, right in front of your eyes but somehow you just don’t see it. Sound impossible? Clearly, for some people it’s not because when it comes to health care, our provincial government is expert at…

  • Big ideas on the supply side of housing affordability

    The final report of the Canada-British Columbia Expert Panel on the Future of Housing Supply and Affordability, published in June 2021, contains 23 recommendations made primarily to the BC and federal governments. The Panel organized these under five broad calls to action:    Creating a planning framework that proactively encourages…

  • Ontario Alternative Budget

    Liberals’ patchwork reinvestment strategy leaves public services underfunded, says Ontario Alternative Budget

    TORONTO— According to an Ontario Alternative Budget technical paper released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the McGuinty government’s current fiscal plan would result in program spending dropping to levels lower than it was when they took power. Despite funding increases in key areas, the McGuinty government has…