Search results for “site/ceta”

  • Proposed Canada-EU trade agreement a threat to procurement and public services: report

    READ THE FULL REPORT HERE. OTTAWA—The proposed Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) poses a serious threat to Canada’s procurement policies and a broad range of public services, says a new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). The release of the report Negotiating From Weakness: Canada-EU…

  • Wood wasted at BC logging sites would fill a cross-country truck convoy — twice

    Costs include thousands of potential jobs, sharply higher CO2 emissions: report CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL REPORT (Vancouver) A new report on BC’s forest industry finds that startling numbers of usable logs are being left to rot or burn at logging sites, at a potential cost of thousands of…

  • High cost of austerity

    Previously published in the Winnipeg Free Press June 23, 2023 After winning the 2016 provincial election, then-premier Brian Pallister moved Manitoba’s department of Indigenous and northern affairs under the municipal relations banner — suggesting a radical change in how the government viewed treaty rights, Indigenous rights, and working with First…

  • The wrong question in the wrong forum

    It didn’t take very much time at the joint federal-provincial environmental hearing into Site C, which started this week in Fort St. John, to realize that it is not the best forum to address the central issue underlying BC Hydro’s proposal to develop the $8 to $9 billion hydro project.…

  • New trade treaties jeopardize fisheries regulation

    CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL REPORT Ottawa – The proposed Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and other trade and investment treaties threaten the sustainability of fisheries and fishing communities, says a new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). Globalization, Trade Treaties and the Future of the…

  • Budgets more than numbers

    The Nova Scotia Department of Finance recently launched an interactive “Back to Balance” website, giving community members an opportunity to try their hands at government budgeting. The site is technically sophisticated and informative. Users can move sliders to adjust the levels of various taxes and expenditures, and pop-up bubbles provide…

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    The extra-long logging haul

    As forests shrink, drivers work 16-hour days to deliver single loads of logs to BC sawmills When Eugene Wilson started driving a logging truck 24 years ago, he worked out of the Bulkley valley community of Houston three hours west of Prince George. He recalls the trips as if they…

  • Red markers indicate dams currently being reviewed by the EAO’s office; yellow markers indicate water licences that Progress Energy applied for on December 23 of last year and where dams already existed.

    A Dam Troublesome Exception: Progress Energy’s dams should not be exempted from environmental review

    I sent the following letter to BC’s Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) in response to Progress Energy’s extraordinary request to retroactively exempt the Lily and Town dams from environmental reviews. Such reviews should have been conducted before the dams were built. Not only did those reviews not happen, but the company…

  • BC Budget 2021: Stay-the-course budget misses the mark on key areas of urgency outside health

    The BC government tabled a surprisingly stay-the-course budget today, making some improvements on the margins but missing the opportunity to shift BC towards a more inclusive and sustainable economy. While it appropriately includes large sums of time-limited spending relating to the pandemic (and indeed BC has led other provinces on…

  • A new government? It’s not as easy as it looks

    If there is a new government in BC on May 15th, it will be confronted with issues that make the transition particularly challenging. The financial issues are a given.  Debt has gone up.  Possibly, given the economic recession we faced, it should have gone up even further.  The dramatic rise…

  • Financialization of housing must be confronted

    Previously published in the Winnipeg Free Press January 12, 2023 Government housing policy preferences are based on values, the most fundamental being the extent to which housing is viewed as a right, or as a commodity. From a rights value base, housing is a social good — a home and…

  • Why are we letting corporate medicine take hold in Vancouver’s new urgent care centres?

    The BC government has rolled out a flurry of impressive measures to strengthen our public health care system over the past two years. Flying below the radar, though, is a new effort by for-profit corporations to push their way into BC’s health care system — and the Vancouver Coastal Health…