Search results for “site/human rights”

  • Tax Increment Financing and Social Enterprise

    Promoting Equitable Community Revitalization in Winnipeg Currently, Manitoba is one of only two provinces in Canada that utilizes Tax Increment Financing (TIF) as a means for financing community revitalization projects in municipalities, although it has a long history of use in the United States. In a TIF financing scheme, the…

  • Scrooge is alive and well

    In a Vancouver Sun article (Market wages would make a difference to city’s taxes, December 28, 2009) Philip Hochstein argues Vancouver civic workers who make a living wage should be made to suffer the fate of those in the private sector whose employers get away with paying under $15 an hour for…

  • Capitalism is the Crisis (Part II)

    Corruption, corporate power, inequality must all be curbed India’s poor rural majority has benefited little from the country’s economic boom, and in fact has seen its position worsen. The same pro-free-market economic reforms that have made India attractive to Western capital and benefited the urban-based middle and upper classes have…

  • The Regina Manifesto is Still Relevant

    Adopted in 1933, it’s a Manifesto that could be written today During the Depression of the 1930s, the League for Social Reconstruction (LSR), a progressive think-tank, emerged in Eastern Canada, while a new political party, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) was born in Calgary. The Regina Manifesto and its 14-point…

  • Climate Justice Project

    Subsidizing dirty industries with expensive clean electricity is a recipe for major rate hikes

    Premier Clark’s recent decision to cap the BC Hydro rate increases next year may have ratepayers breathing a sigh of relief. But it’s a short term fix that will only delay addressing the major financial challenges now facing our Crown utility. Once the 2013 election is over, whoever forms BC’s…

  • Climate Justice Project

    Few jobs, massive emissions from oil and gas: look to green investments for stronger economy, says report

    CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL REPORT OTTAWA—Accelerated oil and gas extraction will boost profits but won’t drive major employment gains, says a report released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). Instead, embracing a “green industrial revolution” will allow Canada to meet its climate change commitments while…

  • Managing Oil Wealth

    The Alberta/Canada Model vs. the Norwegian model The post-2000 petroleum-led resource boom is substantially reshaping the Canadian economy. It has driven up the dollar exchange rate from 62 cents to parity with the U.S. dollar, squeezing out other export sectors: traded services, tourism, forestry, and most notably manufacturing, where it…

  • Public Interest Research Project (BC)

    Restructuring government in BC

    Are we asking the right questions? The new BC government is clearly dedicated to so-called “smaller government”. On one major front, the premier has appointed a Minister of Deregulation to spearhead a 1/3 reduction in government regulations. On another, a far-reaching “core-review” has been initiated to “re-think” the nature of…

  • Global village or global apartheid?

    The world after September 11, 2001 For over 15 years I have studied and traveled extensively to Peru, a country besieged by terrorism. When the violence began, the first thing Peruvians learned was how vulnerable they were. No security force can patrol all the bridges, airports, government buildings, power lines,…

  • Spreading a fossilized view of the tar sands

    It is lamentable that commentator Rex Murphy, who sometimes acts like a resident apologist for the fossil fuel industry, on January 17 devoted his weekly commentary on CBC television’s The National, to undermining rather than encouraging citizens working against massive vested interests, for a habitable planet for future generations. Specifically,…

  • Alternative Federal Budget

    Think tank calls on feds to scrap spending cut plans

    Alternative Budget promotes a budget for the rest of us CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL REPORT OTTAWA—The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) urges the federal government to table a detailed budget that restores Canadians’ trust in the economy, public institutions, and democracy. With the release of its annual…

  • A Tale of Two Austerity Hardliners

    Conservative soul mates, Stephen Harper and British Prime Minister David Cameron, were in Davos, Switzerland a month ago lecturing Eurozone leaders on how to get their collective act together. As they have done since the G-20 meeting in Toronto, both were preaching fiscal austerity as the solution to Europe’s, and…