Search results for: “site/Pat Armstrong”

  • Health care spending falls short in 2022 federal budget

    Marjorie Cohen will deliver the CCPA–BC’s 2022 Gideon Rosenbluth Memorial Lecture on September 14, 2022 at 4:00pm PT. This free lecture will be held on zoom, you can register online here. A consistent theme in the media, when writing about health care in Canada, is to use disparaging adjectives, such…

  • Activity Based Funding won’t solve waitlists and overcrowding in hospitals, creates barriers to needed reforms: Study

    READ THe REPORT summary HERE. VANCOUVER–As Canada’s premiers meet in Victoria to discuss different approaches to health system reform, a new study raises serious concerns about “Activity Based Funding” (ABF), a new funding model introduced in BC that pays hospitals based on the number of surgeries they perform. Research evidence…

  • Fast Facts: Russia’s War on Ukraine Provides Sober Reminders for Canada’s Energy Policies

    Russia’s war on Ukraine reminds us of an important lens through which to consider Canada’s energy policies responding to climate change.  Pressures to transition to a low carbon future are high as the world faces down climate catastrophe, but now sanctions on Russian hydrocarbon supplies are leading to calls to…

  • Three ways BC can make it easier for precarious workers to unionize

    The BC Labour Relations Code is being reviewed for the first time in over 15 years. Since the last comprehensive review, which took place in 2003, workers’ rights under the Code have been continuously eroded. The current review presents an important opportunity to reverse this trend by improving access to…

  • April 2008: First Nations Fight to Protect Their Land

    Algonquins and settler allies block proposed uranium mining A mining exploration company’s government-supported attempt to drill for uranium on First Nations land is finally beginning to create outrage far beyond the quiet corner of Eastern Ontario where it began over a year ago. On February 15, a Kingston judge’s draconian…

  • Photo: © Garth Lenz

    The Petro State Lackey: How BC’s zest for natural gas fuels Alberta’s oil sands

    In the past year, an energy dispute for the ages has played out in Canada, culminating in the federal government announcing that it will buy an aging oil pipeline for $4.5 billion and then twin it with a new high-capacity pipeline that would move massive amounts of diluted bitumen from…

  • The Monitor, March/April 2021

    One year later Download 5.4 MB “More than an infectious pathogen,” writes Michal Rozworski in his feature analysis for this issue, “the novel coronavirus is a very harsh mirror held up to pre-pandemic reality… It is exposing the true cost of hollowed-out public services, debilitated trade unions, and cross-cutting economic…

  • Fast Facts: The government of Manitoba is failing Manitobans every step of the way in their pandemic response and needs to do better

    No one in the world has had all the answers, and there are bound to be mistakes and missteps. But the chronic lack of preparedness, slow responses and a legacy of austerity has resulted in more suffering in uncertain times. Without adequate investment in public health care now and into…

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    Threatened caribou further endangered: Suppressed audit shows Oil and Gas Commission undermining provincial efforts to save species

    On an April morning in 2014, members of the Fort Nelson First Nation tucked into a helicopter to begin a day of flying to fossil fuel company operations in their territory. The Nation’s lands are part of the expansive Treaty 8 territory that includes northeast British Columbia. A professional biologist…

  • Fossil fuel companies broke numerous rules intended to protect threatened caribou, suppressed report shows

    VANCOUVER – BC’s Oil and Gas Commission sat on a damaging audit for nearly four years that showed companies that drill and frack for natural gas repeatedly broke rules intended to protect threatened boreal caribou. The document, obtained by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), underscores lax regulatory oversight…

  • The Lawsuit

    The Lawsuit A couple of weeks ago I wrote that Brian Day and his followers had launched a lawsuit against the province, alleging that, “in contravention of the value of individual choice,” the Medicare Protection Act restricts or prohibits patients from “accessing the private health care of their choice”. Day…

  • Fast Facts: Manitoba’s Silica Sand: Use for Fracking Natural Gas

    The Manitoba government is poised to approve two silica sand mines, one near Vivian in Southeastern Manitoba proposed by CanWhite Sands (CWS), the other on a community-designated trapline adjacent to the Hollow Water First Nations reserve boundary, on the eastern shores of Lake Winnipeg, proposed by Canadian Premium Sand (CPS).…