Search results for “site/Pat Armstrong”

  • The Monitor, November/December 2022

    Recharging North America: The Trade Issue Download 2.38 MBThe 1980s were an era of great debate over the right’s push for a “free trade” agenda that the CCPA, among many other progressive organizations, warned would cost jobs, weaken environmental standards, and lock in neoliberal austerity. It’s no fun saying we…

  • 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…

  • 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.

  • 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…

  • 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,…

  • 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…

  • Article header image

    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…

  • 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…

  • Economic Security Project (BC)

    A Path Out of Poverty

    Helping BC Income Assistance Recipients Upgrade Their Education Download 240.2 KB33 pages

  • BC’s shiny new climate plan: A look under the hood

    BC’s new climate plan, Clean BC, is a big and visionary document and was instantly lauded by environmental groups and businesses alike. In this post, I recap the key components of the plan and do a bit of a reality check against the hype, in particular the challenge of fitting…

  • 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…

  • 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…