With the 2017-18 Ontario budget officially tabled, the terms of the June 2018 provincial election have now been set — and it’s both a good and bad news story. The good news is that Ontario will go into the election with a balanced budget, which opens the door to a…
Very, very quietly, the BC provincial government is negotiating new arrangements for the purchase of generic drugs that could save the province hundreds of millions of dollars. Done right, all BC taxpayers will win as more money becomes available for other health services. Done wrong, much of the savings for…
It’s time to end Canadians’ long wait for Pharmacare Canadians have been waiting for Pharmacare since the early 1960s when it was proposed by the Royal Commission on Health Care. However, despite repeated promises in the ensuing decades from the National Forum on Health and even the Liberal party itself…
This is the second of two posts. Read the first here. Efforts by BC Hydro to ban potentially destructive natural gas company fracking operations in the vicinity of its biggest dams fall well short of what an Alberta hydro provider has achieved, raising questions about why British Columbia isn’t doing…
Premier Heather Stefanson began her tenure with a promise to listen to Manitobans. Her predecessor, Brian Pallister, had become identified with the chaos in Manitoba’s healthcare system and its often contradictory, and at times confrontational, pandemic messaging and policy. As premier, Pallister led these initiatives from the front. When he…
This post is part of our BC Budget 2019 series, which highlights key findings from the CCPA’s research and outlines our recommendations for the 2019 provincial budget. Find more from the series at: policynote.ca/budget2019 In any provincial budget, health care is one of the biggest line items and, of course,…
(Vancouver) The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says that if the provincial government cuts Pharmacare, it will be a costly mistake for British Columbians. “The ideas being floated by the BC Liberals aren’t about cutting costs, they are merely about shifting costs,” says Colleen Fuller, a health care researcher and…
For years, successive BC governments have forbidden any new large-scale hydro dams. When I was on the BC Hydro Board of Directors in the mid-1990s, the Board passed a motion that all government land-holdings associated with Site C should be sold. The BC Hydro Board was against building Site C,…
Vancouver is the epicentre of BC’s housing crisis and shortage. So why does the city still effectively ban new apartment buildings on most of its residential land, reserving it exclusively for low-density housing?
I recall talking to a senior BC Hydro planner a number of years ago who mapped out a very sensible way to develop the BC Hydro system. Retain the Burrard gas-fired thermal power plant as a back-up for extreme drought, when electricity supply at the hydro facilities on the Peace…
The BC government tabled a surprisingly stay-the-course budget today, making some improvements on the margins but missing the opportunity to shift BC towards a more inclusive and sustainable economy. While it appropriately includes large sums of time-limited spending relating to the pandemic (and indeed BC has led other provinces on…