Search results for “site/human rights”

  • 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…

  • Economic Security Project (BC)

    Is another Charter challenge on BC labour rights waiting in the wings?

    While the BC government mulls over the Supreme Court’s recent landmark decision that Bill 29 is unconstitutional (because it infringes on health care workers’ right to collective bargaining), it should also consider the constitutionality of another piece of labour legislation passed in 2002. Although not yet challenged before the courts,…

  • Imbalance in residential tenancy rights enforcement in BC

    Yesterday some media outlets reported that the Residential Tenancy Branch has conditionally waived the first (and to my knowledge only) administrative penalty it has issued. BC’s Residential Tenancy Act was amended in 2006 to allow the Branch to issue administrative penalties, essentially monetary fines, against landlords or tenants that contravene…

  • American flag flying over cargo ship
    Trade and Investment Research Project

    Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity (APEP) Consultations

    Evaluating the costs and benefits of participation in this U.S.-led and U.S.-designed project. Download 111.8 KB5 pages Between March 25 and May 9, the federal government consulted the public on Canada’s participation in a U.S.-led trade negotiation called the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity (APEP). The hemispheric scope of APEP…

  • Federal government moving backwards in workplace safety

    On April 28, the National Day of Mourning for workers killed on the job, we are reminded that although workplace injuries and fatalities may be accidents, they are preventable.  While preventing injuries and deaths benefits both employer and employee, it is always left to government to create and enforce regulatory…

  • 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…

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    A progressive macroeconomic response to the coronavirus crisis in British Columbia

    While much of the world remains under strict lockdown and we have yet to determine the full extent of the already-unprecedented economic crisis caused by the global coronavirus pandemic, it is not too early to start thinking about the way out of the crisis. So many people have seen their…

  • 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…

  • Out-of-control rents

    Rental wages in Canada, 2023

    CMHC, “Rental Market Survey Data Tables,” 2023. For a notable exception, see John Rapley, “Canada’s approach to housing is bad for the economy,” The Globe and Mail, July 14, 2023. David Macdonald, “Unaccommodating: Rental Housing Wage in Canada” (Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2018), policyalternatives.ca/unaccommodating. David Macdonald and Ricardo…

  • What the UBC rape chant scandal says about women in the Canadian economy

    The news of UBC Sauder Business School students chanting about rape of underage girls during a FROSH week event has generated much outrage. As it should. While the chant might seem like an isolated incident, it is not. The recent rape chant scandals in UBC and in St Mary’s University…

  • Swimming against the tide

    The challenge of higher interest rates and high household debt  The run-up of interest rates since March, led by the Bank of Canada in a bid to tame inflation, represents a substantial economic shock, one that is now pushing the country towards a recession. The bank’s overnight, or policy, interest…

  • The Latin American Revolution (Part XIV)

    Opposition to Canadian mining companies rising in Colombia Canadian companies operating in Colombia are more economically powerful than ever before: they partly own and run Colombia’s largest oil pipeline (Talisman), and they are its leading private oil producer (Pacific Rubiales) and its biggest gold mining company (Gran Colombia Gold). With…