Search results for “site/human rights”

  • Fast Facts: Decolonizing the Inner City – a look at Youth for Christ

    Youth for Christ is an evangelical Christian organization whose “Centre for Youth Excellence” received public funding based on a business plan that promised to meet the needs of local Aboriginal youth. The public funding for, and presence of this building on a key corner, continues to anger many in the…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Clearing the hurdles — sports brands and worker rights

    As we prepare to host the Olympics, it’s worth thinking about how high (or low) the bar is set by the major companies that make sportswear. Despite some progress in recent years, substantial violations of worker rights and poverty wages are still the norm for workers in the sportswear industry.…

  • 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…

  • Labour Matters

    Work Life: Academic Freedom

    Ivory tower privilege or public interest? The University of Manitoba narrowly averted its third faculty strike in eighteen years in late October, a strike that would have disrupted the lives of 29,000 students and almost 9,000 staff members. What brought the professors so reluctantly to this last-ditch effort to get…

  • Labour Matters
    Trade Union Research Collective

    Labour Notes: The attack on unions has now come to Canada

    How do we respond? Anyone who has been keeping tabs on recent developments in what can accurately be called the assault on trade unions and working people in the U.S., Britain, Ireland, and much of continental Europe, knew that it would eventually come to Canada. Well, it’s now here, in…

  • 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…

  • Treat water rights with the respect they deserve

    On Canada’s frequently drenched west coast, it is sometimes easy to forget that there are times and places where water is scarce. A case in point is northeast BC, where last year’s drought led to a five-metre drop in water levels at the Williston Reservoir, fields grazed by buffalo were reduced…

  • 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…

  • Making Women Count

    Gender equality in Canada going nowhere fast: study

    CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL REPORT OTTAWA—Progress towards gender equality in Canada has stalled, says a study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The study, a shadow report on Canada’s Implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, provides a detailed view of Canada’s progress…

  • Economic Security Project (BC)

    False promises for recent immigrants

    Study reveals low wage job cycle, workplace rights violations CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL REPORT (Vancouver) In spite of high education levels, many recent immigrants to BC find themselves stuck in low wage jobs, with few meaningful protections in the workplace, according to a new study released by the…