Decarbonizing homes and the price of gas
Our climate justice framework for BC is to eliminate fossil fuels by 2040. In the household sector, this poses a significant challenge, not so much in terms of technology and…
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What is a middle class income these days?
Whenever we consider the pros and cons of a new policy, we want to know if it benefits or hurts the poor, the middle class and those who are better…
Home energy retrofits: part one
I was in the budget lock-up in Ottawa back in 2009, when the feds announced a home renovation tax credit as part of the stimulus package, and one of my…
Province of BC launches Open Data Catalog: What works
As revealed yesterday, the province of British Columbia became the first provincial government in Canada to launch a open data portal. It's still early but here are some things that…
How much does poverty cost BC?
We’ve known for a long time that we all pay for poverty. We just didn’t know how much. This is the question I investigate in my latest CCPA report The…
Deconstructing BC’s carbon neutral government
Besides the carbon tax, one of the most important BC government climate action initiatives has been the adoption of Carbon Neutral Government. That is, count emissions from public buildings and…
$16.8 million in arts funding goes to BC Arts Council
Last Thursday, July 7, BC’s Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development, Ida Chong, announced $16.8 million in funding for the arts, to be administered through the BC Arts Council.…
Is BC about to drop a new carbon bomb?
Any day now the BC government should be releasing the latest greenhouse gas data for the province, and we will see if any progress is being made towards a legislated…
Democracy or policy?
With the HST referendum underway and ballots supposedly in the mail (I should have mine in the next couple days...) I've had a thought that there may be a bigger…
BC’s Regressive Tax Shift
With much of the talk on taxes in BC about the HST, we issued a new report today that looks at the bigger context for BC’s tax system (Vancouver Sun…
Not allowed to talk about poverty
BC Stats put out a release yesterday with the headline “Low Income Cut-Offs (LICOs) are a Poor Measure of Poverty” and author Dan Schrier gets in a dirty hit right…
Why I’m voting YES for NO HST
So the referendum is technically on for the BC HST; however, with the postal strike, it’s hard to know when I’ll actually get my ballot. Nevertheless, when my ballot does…
BC to Raise Corporate Taxes
Amazingly, BC’s government has joined its official opposition in proposing to restore the provincial corporate income tax rate from 10% to 12%. The same government that cut from 12% to…
The Fall of Christy Clark?
B.C. by-election Wednesday to decide if the un-elected Premier of British Columbia gets a seat in legislature One incredibly obvious plant was from a woman named Anna Lilly. I'm rarely…
2 votes, 2 weeks
May 11th. Just over one week after the federal election, myself and voters of Vancouver-Point Grey will be going back to the polls to vote for/against Christy Clark in the…
My vote for BC NDP leader: Mike Farnworth
After a long campaign, highlighted more by how much the leaders agreed than any substantive disagreements (except maybe on who hates Gordon Campbell the most), voting has commenced for the…
The things they carried – Photographer Brian Howell explores shopping cart culture
The series comprises 25 large-scale photographs of shopping carts that were purchased firsthand from their owners in Vancouver and around the Lower Mainland.