Executive sweet
Thousands of BC government employees lost jobs to privatization and service cuts. Even more lost income through reductions in employment and pension benefits and, with efforts to reduce public services…
Norman Farrell
Sales tax not only way to pay for public services
CCPA Budget Submissions Natural Resource Royalties Reform, Iglika Ivanova, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, October 2014 BC used to collect well over $1 billion per year from natural gas royalties,…
Horgan with Jessop, CFAX Feb 12
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Pray, don’t pay
During famine of the 19th century, Irish people dying of starvation were told to pray for God’s help while traders loaded ships to carry food to England. Referring the poor…
Readers speak
I had planned today to relate a story from a few years back, about what might have been rockets passing just beneath the helicopter I rode on a harrowing flight…
Politics of opportunism
In a Times Colonist Op-Ed, Bercove, Madden and Coste wrote, We have the choice between trying to build an industry of uncertain benefit based on a finite resource that is…
Easy road to nowhere
February 4, The Tyee published an article by Torrance Coste: Raw Log Exports: A Made-in-BC Problem that’s Only Getting Worse. Work here that relied on reports from BC Stats helped…
A camel is a horse…
Voters in Metro Vancouver are asked to approve a regional increase in provincial sales tax to generate an estimated $250 million a year for TransLink. The vote is an advisory…
Public service: a rewarding career
This is a small piece of information learned in my recent examination of business in Norway. In the article Two Oil Economies, I mentioned Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global, the…
Eventually, the piper must be paid
L.F. Copeland (1888): Mathematics is an exact fact; figures don’t lie, but liars sometimes figure. Financial statements of governments and crown corporations should be simple and understandable. They should be;…
Performance short of promise
During the 2013 BC election, Liberals talked frequently of “Debt-Free B.C.” The party platform included this: No conscious person will be surprised when I state the performance has fallen short…
Two oil economies: Norway and Alberta
NORGES BANK Using the Bank of Canada’s average rate of exchange for 2014, a Norwegian krone has been worth $0.1757 CAN. That results in a fund value of $1,165,769,500,000 Canadian,…
With Ian Jessop, CFAX1070, Jan 22
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Motorcycle Guy roars, we should listen
This was a comment on the preceding article from a regular reader. He’s a man I’ve come to admire for his dedication as he tries to reveal that government cut…
A few billion here, a few billion there…
Growth in long-term debt at #BCHydro. #bcpoli pic.twitter.com/27grtfWv7g — Norm Farrell (@Norm_Farrell) January 22, 2015 In addition to growth in long-term debt, #bchydro obliged to pay over $50 billion for…
Speaking for the future
This week I got confirmation that new corporate funding has been assembled to counteract bloggers and writers in alternative media who reveal mismanagement of provincial assets and emphasize the public’s…
BC Prosperity Fund Accrual
February 13, 2013, Premier Christy Clark announced …the new British Columbia Prosperity Fund to ensure communities, First Nations and all British Columbians benefit from the development of a new liquefied…
Distracting, dissembling, deflecting – lest you forget
Are you unhappy with rapidly increasing electricity rates and the general state of BC Hydro finances? Are you looking for the party responsible? Well, the Vancouver Sun has the answer.…