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Search results for: “site/Pat Armstrong”

  • Why not put some Metro Vancouver property transfer tax into infrastructure?

    When it comes to revenue for the provincial government from property taxes in British Columbia, Metro Vancouver is such a cash cow we should be able to hear it say “moo.” The province gets revenue from property from two sources: the BC school tax and the property transfer tax. On…

  • What you need to know about BC Budget 2016

    “The measure of any society is reflected in the degree to which it is willing to help the most vulnerable.” Mike de Jong in the BC Budget 2016 Speech If this is the measure we apply to Budget 2016, then BC is failing miserably. What this budget offers to BC’s most vulnerable is…

  • Oh, Oh, Canada

    We’d be prouder if our country lived up to its potential Canadians generally are not as wildly and uncritically patriotic as Americans. We are not chauvinists. We don’t continually wave the flag and boast about our country’s pre-eminence in everything from culture to quality of life to military might. Most…

  • Taxation and Poverty

    Injustice built into our tax system hurts poor the most U.S. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once famously declared: “I don’t mind paying taxes. They buy me civilization.” I completely agree. But in the last 28 years, tax policies have been ever more biased in favour of powerful special interests which…

  • A Pandemic of Greed

    The real global epidemic is blatant media fear-mongering If there is any pandemic sweeping the globe, it’s one of fear and greed, not a deadly new strain of influenza. The news media have filled their pages and newscasts with reports of deaths in Mexico, Texas, and even one in Canada,…

  • Yet another case of our government delaying the release of important data

    Less than a week after BC’s Freedom of Information and Privacy Association (FIPA) report raised serious questions about secrecy in government (see Keith’s comments here), The Tyee reporter Andrew MacLeod has uncovered another case of important statistics not being released on time. The culprit this time is the Housing and…

  • The NDP Platform and BC’s Economic Challenges

    Below is an oped of mine that was done at the request of the Vancouver Sun and that ran in today’s paper. Unfortunately, for reasons that are not entirely clear, the last two paragraphs were cut off, leaving the oped hanging. I put them back in below, and have requested…

  • And Another Thing About the Port Mann non-P3

    Now that the government has abandoned private financing of the Port Mann, it’s time to make the bigger but equally sensible leap and abandon the concept of a cost recovery project toll. I’m all for tolling. Unless you are a fan of the queues inevitably created by what can only…

  • Manitoba Research Alliance

    Fast Facts: The Tough on Crime Strategy Has Not Made Our Communities Safer

    Crime rates in Canada have been steadily declining for more than a decade, yet prison populations have been increasing in recent years. Commentators have attributed this disconnection between dropping crime rates and rising incarceration numbers to the Harper government’s tough on crime strategy. Since 2006 the Harper Conservatives have implemented…

  • Economic Security Project (BC)

    A call to all BC political parties: time to commit to a poverty reduction plan

    In early February, over 200 organizations and community leaders from across BC issued an open letter to BC political parties, calling on them to commit – prior to the May election –– to a comprehensive poverty reduction plan, with legislated targets and timelines. We were among the signatories. The time…

  • Open for Business?

    What’s wrong with corporatizing our universities? Plenty! A serious problem for progressive people nowadays is that neoliberal discourse has become so established, so commonsensical, that it is difficult to publicly question, much less challenge it. How can one argue with claims that public institutions such as our universities should be…

  • The utter stupidity of P3s in BC

    For the “we told you so” file. The BC government has been insisting on P3s (so-called “public-private partnerships” where the private sector builds and operates infrastructure) all over the province. We at the CCPA have consistently argued that this practice is foolish: more complicated, more expensive, and leaving taxpayers holding…