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  • Image: The massive Sunrise Plant, the largest gas plant built in Western Canada in 30 years, sits on farmland near Dawson Creek. It was one of three gas plants in a row exempted from provincial environmental assessments. © Garth Lenz

    Shielding fossil fuel corporations from public scrutiny: The new “neutral”?

    British Columbia’s Environmental Assessment Office bills itself as a “neutral” provincial agency. But there is evidence that this is not the case, and that BC Environment Minister George Heyman — who is tasked with “revitalizing” the province’s environmental assessment law — needs to make serious reforms. When a public regulator…

  • Who is Buying the Farm?

    Farmland Investment Patterns In Saskatchewan, 2003-14 Download 733.39 KB12 pages The question of who should get the right to own farmland in Saskatchewan has been a controversial one in recent years. The sale of $128 million in farmland holdings to the Canada Pension Plan in 2014 caused enough concern to…

  • Trade and Investment Research Project

    Trade committee hears big risks outweigh small rewards in TPP

    I appeared yesterday at the parliamentary committee on international trade alongside Hassan Yussuff and Angella MacEwan (Canadian Labour Congress), Gus Van Harten (who just released a report for the CCPA on investor-state dispute settlement), and Victoria Owen and Susan Haigh of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries. For once, at least, the critical…

  • Quality of Life Assessment is too important to be left to economists

    Download 229.48 KB 4 pages In 2008, French President Nicolas Sarkozy estab­lished the Commission on the Measurement of Eco­nomic Performance and Social Progress. It was headed by two Nobel laureates, Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, and coordinated by the French economist, Jean-Paul Fitoussi. The 22 members of the Commission included…

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    LNG Canada: Short-term politics trumps long-term climate responsibility

    LNG Canada’s final investment decision to build a natural gas liquefaction facility in Kitimat is a triumph of short-term politics over long-term responsibility to act on climate change. Exaggerated numbers have been used to sell the project to the public, while risks have been downplayed. The politics of liquefied natural gas…

  • Managed wind-down of BC’s fossil fuel industries: A just transition to a green economy

    Imagine it’s 2025 and because of the escalating climate crisis, governments in Asia have declared ambitious new climate action plans and an aggressive transition off natural gas. BC’s fossil fuel exports would soon dry up, workers would be laid off and local communities would lose public- and private-sector jobs. This…

  • June 2004: Corporate “Sick Shops”

    P3 hospitals are bad for patients, for care-givers, and taxpayers Health care corporations push whenever they can for privatized health care, and the focus of their latest efforts are “private-public-partnership” (P3) hospitals. Currently, as many as 15 P3 hospitals are at various stages of pushing into Canada. Private corporations behind…

  • Shortchanging public sector workers is bad for BC

    Public sector workers are in the midst of difficult contract negotiations with the BC government. The workers are reportedly asking for wages to keep up with inflation, but the government hasn’t been willing to come to the table with an offer that reflects the rising cost of living. Public sector…

  • Our recommendations for the 2023 BC budget

    The BC government is holding its annual public consultation on Budget 2023 this June, inviting British Columbians to share their priorities for government investment next year.  On June 14, I presented CCPA-BC’s recommendations to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. Via the BC Legislative Assembly website, you…

  • Dangerous Cargo

    Nuclear waste to be transported through the Great Lakes Critics on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border are slamming a plan by Bruce Power, Canada’s private nuclear generating company, to ship 3,500 tonnes of nuclear waste through Lake Huron, Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, the St. Lawrence River, and the Atlantic…

  • Manitoba releases a long-awaited homelessness strategy: It must be election time

    Previously published in the Winnipeg Free Press Saturday March 11, 2023 The Manitoba government released its Homelessness Strategy on February 28th. The primary questions being asked by social housing advocates are: what took you so long, and what’s the long-term plan? As noted in the strategy, tackling homelessness requires multiple…

  • Innovative surgical projects show how waitlists can be solved: Submission to BC ‘conversation on health’

    CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL REPORT (Vancouver) Surgical waitlists can be dramatically cut if the BC government takes leadership by scaling up innovative projects already underway in the public system, a new study says. Why Wait? Public Solutions to Cure Surgical Waitlists, released today by the CCPA and the…