Search results for “site/ceta”

  • Trade and Investment Research Project

    The false hopes and empty promises of investment treaty modernization

    A Canadian company’s successful challenge to a precautionary mining ban in Colombia shows how little investor–state dispute panels care about the right to regulate.

    A Canadian company’s successful challenge to a precautionary mining ban in Colombia shows how little investor–state dispute panels care about the right to regulate.

  • June 2004: The Indymedia Phenomenon

    The revolution won’t be televised, but it might be uploaded Wih the rise of “networked” society, we have seen the emergence of democratic social movements with a distinctly global orientation. Such movements are increasingly informed by, and dependent upon, information technologies and computer-mediated communication for their organizational activities, their ability…

  • Government pressure to cut wages will increase the risk of deflation

    It is now abundantly clear that Canada and the world is facing its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. However, a sense of premature Hoover-type optimism seems to have settled in to Ottawa’s thinking, breeding a dangerous complacency that the government has done all that is required to combat…

  • Big ideas on the supply side of housing affordability

    The final report of the Canada-British Columbia Expert Panel on the Future of Housing Supply and Affordability, published in June 2021, contains 23 recommendations made primarily to the BC and federal governments. The Panel organized these under five broad calls to action:    Creating a planning framework that proactively encourages…

  • BC’s shiny new climate plan: A look under the hood

    BC’s new climate plan, Clean BC, is a big and visionary document and was instantly lauded by environmental groups and businesses alike. In this post, I recap the key components of the plan and do a bit of a reality check against the hype, in particular the challenge of fitting…

  • Our Hopes and Dreams for Public Education

    We know there are significant pressures facing our valued public education system—overcrowding, chronic underfunding, a growing teacher shortage and inadequate support for students with diverse learning needs to name just a few. These cracks in our school system command our immediate attention and require our concerted advocacy.  When we’re focused…

  • April 2008: First Nations Fight to Protect Their Land

    Algonquins and settler allies block proposed uranium mining A mining exploration company’s government-supported attempt to drill for uranium on First Nations land is finally beginning to create outrage far beyond the quiet corner of Eastern Ontario where it began over a year ago. On February 15, a Kingston judge’s draconian…

  • Indigenous activists Andrew Paull, Chief William Scow, and Rev. Peter Kelly (seen left to right) with the First Indian Advisory Committee. Credit: North Vancouver Museum and Archives 2191.

    Nothing ‘liberal’ about colonial policy prior to Confederation

    After 30 years of treaty talks, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission findings, and the adoption of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, First Nations still face racism on a systemic basis in this province. Can Indigenous People ever find justice in this province? John Price and…

  • Three ways BC can make it easier for precarious workers to unionize

    The BC Labour Relations Code is being reviewed for the first time in over 15 years. Since the last comprehensive review, which took place in 2003, workers’ rights under the Code have been continuously eroded. The current review presents an important opportunity to reverse this trend by improving access to…

  • Flooded road

    Government must do more than shuffle chairs to solve BC’s water woes

    British Columbia’s Ministry of Forests was always a poor choice to manage the province’s water resources—and it showed. So it was fitting in October that the government decided after years of being urged to do so to transfer that power to the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship. But…

  • Photo: © Garth Lenz

    The Petro State Lackey: How BC’s zest for natural gas fuels Alberta’s oil sands

    In the past year, an energy dispute for the ages has played out in Canada, culminating in the federal government announcing that it will buy an aging oil pipeline for $4.5 billion and then twin it with a new high-capacity pipeline that would move massive amounts of diluted bitumen from…

  • Provincial zoning reform essential to reduce housing exclusion and displacement

    Sky-high rents, ultra-low vacancy rates and fierce competition for scarce homes have become the grim but familiar picture of housing in BC, driving unaffordability, exclusion and displacement. The BC government has made major housing policy announcements in recent weeks and a key focus has been tackling chronic municipal roadblocks to…