Search results for “site/Pat Armstrong”

  • The roots of our housing crisis: Austerity, debt and extreme speculation

    We’re now 10 years on from the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Or, as our national mythology puts it, 10 years since Canada breathed a deep sigh of relief as the crisis mostly grazed our economy and financial system. Since 2008, we’ve had 10 years of congratulatory back-patting…

  • Public Interest Research Project (BC)
    Seniors Care

    What happened to the national home care program?

    In 1997, after wide consultation across the country, the federal government’s National Forum on Health concluded that home care should be considered an integral part of publicly funded health services. A year later, the National Conference on Home Care identified home care as a vitally important component of a responsive…

  • Climate Justice Project

    Making a Just Transition

    The steady stream of bad news from Alberta’s oil patch is a potent reminder of the boom-and-bust nature of being a resource commodity exporter. It’s a story deeply understood in Canada’s resource communities, as decisions made halfway around the world dictate whether you will have a job tomorrow or not.…

  • Log exports: waving the white flag of economic defeat

    As more and more raw, unprocessed logs leave British Columbia’s coast in ocean freighters bound for the far side of the world, a common refrain from some in our forest industry is that we have no choice. Because workers in mills in China are paid so little, log buyers there…

  • The Latin American Revolution (I)

    Latin American Presidents address World Social Forum In a historic first, on January 29, five Latin American Presidents addressed the 2009 World Social Forum (WSF) held in Belem, Brazil: Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Lula da Silva of Brazil, and Fernando Lugo of…

  • The Monitor, November/December 2020

    Democracy in free fall? Download 9.95 MB Donald Trump makes people sick, himself and his entourage included. Given the U.S. president’s shameful, almost criminally negligent record on COVID-19, it will be surprising if he is re-elected on November 3. A sizeable expat community aside, most Canadians will not have a…

  • Work Life: MB Liquor Between Rock and Hard Place

    The issuance of mandate letters to provincial crown corporations has put management and staff on notice, warning that “the old way of doing things” is over. The preamble for all the letters is the same, with claims that this government is committed to “prudent fiscal management, creating jobs, improving health…

  • Québec Students Strike Over Tuition-Fee Hikes

    This morning, there are more than 65 000 students on strike in Québec. University students, but also college-level students, are walking out of classrooms to reverse the 75% raise in tuition fees over five years announced in the last provincial budget. In the space of a single week, the number…

  • The culture of entitlement

    Don Copeman, of the infamous Vancouver clinic that bears his name, was plugging his business in Parksville’s local paper, the Oceanside Star. While doing so he managed to slag Canadians whose “culture of entitlement”, he charges, is the biggest obstacle to private clinics. “Trying to change the Canadian culture away…

  • Kevin Falcon’s narrow take on tax options

    BC Finance Minister Kevin Falcon says he is keen to take a fresh look at the BC tax system. He is welcoming new ideas, and he even wants your opinion. He has struck an “expert” panel to review BC’s tax regime, and in early January the government launched an online…

  • Fast Facts: Changes in practices needed, if we’re serious about reconciliation

    First published in the Winnipeg Free Press April 10, 2019 Offer money to leaders in a cash-poor community to gain support for a resource extraction project. Publicly shun and disenfranchise individuals who don’t agree. Deceive people into signing their support without full information. Divide the community. Commence destructive preparation of…

  • Work Life: Terminally ill professor pleads for asbestos ban

    University of Manitoba professor Patricia Martens has one more mission as an epidemiologist as she confronts her final days with a terminal disease. She wants the government to stop aiding and abetting the lethal trade in asbestos. Martens is a prominent and distinguished research scientist in the university’s faculty of…