Search results for “site/human rights”

  • Arctic mega mining — a better future for Baffin Island?

    A huge iron ore development at Mary River on northern Baffin Island is about to change an ancient landscape. Baffinland Mary River is majority owned by ArcelorMittal, which was ranked 70th on the Fortune Global 500 largest corporations in 2012. The project consists of a massive iron ore deposit at Mary River,…

  • "Image:Pxhere” style=”border-radius:0px;–objectFit:cover;–imagePosX:50%;–imagePosY:50%” decoding=”async” srcset=”https://www.policyalternatives.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/pn_mar2018_bc-minister-loneliness-300×133.jpg 300w, https://www.policyalternatives.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/pn_mar2018_bc-minister-loneliness-768×341.jpg 768w, https://www.policyalternatives.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/pn_mar2018_bc-minister-loneliness.jpg 900w” sizes=”(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px” />

    Does BC need a UK-style Minister of Loneliness?

    A British Cabinet Minister, Tracey Crouch, has been given the task of coming up with a national strategy to combat an epidemic of loneliness in the UK. Loneliness is a health problem around the world, and British Columbia is no exception. Social isolation is increasing here and across our country. SFU’s Director…

  • A win for BC workers: single-step union certification

    The BC government recently introduced legislation that allows a majority of workers in a workplace to organize a union a little more easily, making it harder for employers to intimidate and interfere in organizing drives. That’s good news both for working people and for the quality of our democracy. Single-step…

  • Fast Facts: Responding to the Fentanyl crisis

    Constructing better drug policy in Manitoba First published on CBC online Dec 3, 2016 Increasing tragic deaths from Fentanyl are raising calls to deal with this crisis. Evidence shows that controlling supply and criminalizing drug users does not address the root causes of addictions, which are complex and multi-faceted. Research…

  • The Global Economic Crisis and its Canadian Dimension

    Economic downturn is already as bad as in the early 1930s There is still an air of disbelief in Canada about the severity of the current global recession — now widely accepted as the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s — both as it is affecting Canada and…

  • The meaning of the third of November to the Negro

    Photo credit: Lorie Shall, Flickr Creative Commons I started writing this column on September 18 as my social media feed filled with posts about National Black Voter Day, marking 50 days until the U.S. presidential election on November 3. Launched this year by the National Urban League, Black Entertainment Television…

  • British Columbians will pay the LNG industry’s power bills

    In his Tyee article BC’s LNG Fraud, Andrew Nikiforuk pointed out that the government’s new eDrive policy—under which BC Hydro will supply electricity to LNG plants at the standard industrial rate, instead of the much higher rate that government had determined was needed for BC Hydro to recover its costs—will result in…

  • Public inquiry needed to properly investigate deep social and environmental harms of fracking, coalition says

    VANCOUVER—A promised “review” of natural gas industry fracking operations should be broadened to a full Public Inquiry that examines all aspects of the dangerous gas extraction technique, says a coalition of community, First Nation and environmental organizations. The call on the new BC government is to broaden a promise first…

  • Urgent action required to realize promise of the Speech from the Throne

    “We must not let the legacy of the pandemic be one of rolling back the clock on women’s participation in the workforce, nor one of backtracking on the social and political gains women and allies have fought so hard to secure.” (Speech from the Throne, September 23, 2020) This call…

  • Legal Aid Denied: A 20th Anniversary retrospective

    Legal Aid Denied: Women and the Cuts to Legal Services in BC was written in 2004 shortly after the election of a neo-conservative Liberal government in BC. The report outlined the nature of the changes this government quickly introduced to the provision of Legal Aid in BC including slashing funding…

  • Christy Clark, George Abbott – meet Jeffrey Moore

    There’s a freight train heading for BC’s education system — and it’s not being driven by government or teachers. This train hit the tracks long before the current collective bargaining dispute. Its operator is an eight-year-old boy from North Vancouver, named Jeffrey Moore. With the support of his family, Jeffrey…

  • Beyond the crisis

    Ten propositions for a resurgence of the progressive movement The Hon. Ed Broadbent was the lunchtime speaker at an Alternative Federal Budget Roundtable held in Ottawa in November 2009. This is the text of his speech. Proposition One Virtually all governments in the developed democracies agree on one thing: our…