Search results for “site/Pat Armstrong”

  • 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…

  • December 2004: Medicare Still on Life-Support

    Health accord flawed by poor accountability and enforcement The health care accord reached last September by the federal, provincial, and territorial first ministers is a better deal than those signed in 2000 and 2003, but suffers from the same flaws: poor accountability, reporting, and enforcement. Despite this agreement, Medicare is…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Septmeber 2008: Tips for consultants

    Here’s how to fool most of the people most of the time With an alarmed public increasingly holding government and industry to account for a multitude of environmental and social outrages, the powers that be are scrambling to find ways to keep the status quo while appearing to respond. One…

  • September 2008: The WTO Doha Round Breakdown

    Developing nations are blamed, but they blame the U.S. The World Trade Organization’s meeting in Geneva in July, as it opened, was described by WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy as a “moment of truth” in the negotiations for a new global trade deal. But, after nine days of talks among a…

  • TFSA analysis in Budget 2015 does a number on Canadians: report

    CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL REPORT OTTAWA—The federal budget’s claims regarding who would benefit from doubling the Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA) annual contribution ceiling exclude key contextual data thereby leading to erroneous conclusions, says an analysis released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). The analysis,…

  • Public Interest Research Project (BC)

    BC’s minimum wage should not be a poverty wage

    Labour and social justice groups in BC have long urged the provincial government to increase the minimum wage to a level that guarantees a path out of poverty for a single person working full-year, full-time. Year after year, the government has turned them down with the argument that BC already…