Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Early bird tickets for the 2024 CCPA–BC Gala featuring Dr. are selling out fast! Get your ticket: https://ccpabc.ca/gala

Early birds will also receive a link to Dr. Shiva’s documentary “The Seeds of Vandana Shiva”. This offer ends on September 6, 2024. Don’t miss out!

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Dr. Vandana Shiva is an eco-feminist and environmentalist who has galvanized food sovereignty movements in India, advocating for the rights of farmers fighting against “seed monopolies” of the wealthy, corporate few—does Monsanto ring a bell? Don't miss the chance to see her speak at this year's CCPA–BC Gala and support independent, progressive research while doing so. 🙂 We hope to see you there!

Some stats and facts about in BC. The upside is that BC can afford to improve these conditions and eliminate poverty in the province—and we have the policy solutions to do exactly that.

Find out more at:
policynote.ca/poverty-reportcard

Don’t miss it! This November 7th, support bold and progressive research while enjoying an evening of conversation, good food and celebration in the company of Dr. Vandana Shiva (this year’s keynote speaker) and progressive change-makers!

Get your tickets for the annual CCPA–BC Gala at: https://ccpabc.ca/gala

The first 200 people to get tickets will also receive a link to stream her documentary, “The Seeds of Vandana Shiva” in early September.

Early bird tickets are selling out fast! We hope to see you there 🙂

In case you missed it: Did you know that emissions from the export of liquified natural gas (LNG) and its final combustion outside of Canada are not counted towards BC’s greenhouse gas emissions tally? This obscures the real impact of these fossil-fuel-burning megaprojects and their contribution to the climate crisis.

Read the full analysis by CCPA–BC senior economist Marc Lee on Policy Note: https://www.policynote.ca/cedar-lng/

Last week, the BC Government revealed its new Poverty Reduction Strategy. Read our joint analysis with Living Wage for Families BC and BC Poverty Reduction Coalition: people in poverty need policy solutions, not a report card.

Read our full analysis here: https://www.policynote.ca/poverty-reportcard/

Ontario's Minister of Education has been blaming a federal limit on for-profit childcare centres for space shortages in the province. There's just one problem—that's not true.

Ontario is responsible for province's child care shortages, not the… The following article has been re-printed with the author's permission. It was originally published on childcarepolicy.net. Todd Smith is Ontario’s new Minister of Education and he has already decided who he wants to blame for Ontario’s child care shortages —it’s the federal government. So, ...

A June investment decision by Cedar LNG highlights the challenges and contradictions of BC’s climate and energy policies. For the BC government this is the model industrial project: it creates jobs and development in the North, has a major Indigenous partner and will meet the low-emissions target established for new LNG plants. Senior economist Marc Lee notes the obvious: the main problem is the planet is burning.

Cedar LNG: Chronicles of a petro-state in the age of climate change A final investment decision in June 2024 by Cedar LNG highlights the challenges and contradictions of BC’s climate and energy policies. For the BC government, this is the model industrial project: it creates jobs and development in the North, has a major Indigenous partner in the Haisla Nation and...

Canada's free trade deals use language from the 1980s to protect its cultural industries in free trade deals. That outdated language urgently needs to be updated in the age of digital production and distribution.

Canada needs to strengthen the “cultural exemption” in its free trade… When Canada negotiated with the U.S. for the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA), Canada insisted on a cultural exemption—language in the agreement which allowed Canada to protect its cultural sector using policies that would otherwise violate free trade rules or be considered…

Join us for the 2024 CCPA–BC Gala featuring Dr. Vandana Shiva!
You don't want to miss this event.

Details:

🗓️ Date: Thursday, November 7, 2024
🕠 Time: 5:30PM - 9:00PM
📍 Venue: Fraserview Hall – Located at 8240 Fraser Street, Vancouver
🎫 Early Bird ticket: $125 (regular price: $150) ccpabc.ca/gala

The BC Government revealed its new Poverty Reduction Strategy last week. It was supposed to set out a roadmap for how they plan to reduce poverty by 60% over the next 10 years. We reviewed it, alongside the BC Poverty Reduction Coalition and Living Wage for Families BC and we found it focused a lot on work that they’ve done already, but few concrete plans for what they’ll do to actually achieve their targets.

People in poverty can’t afford to wait. They need:

• Social assistance raised to the poverty line

• Earnings exemptions and other clawbacks removed

• Public transit fare free for teens and available across BC

• More affordable housing

• The gap closed between the minimum and the living wage


And they need it now.

Read our full analysis of the 2024 Poverty Reduction Strategy:

People in poverty need policy solutions, not a report card Last week, the BC Government released the first update to the Poverty Reduction Strategy since the inaugural plan in 2019. As organizations long committed to ending poverty in BC, we hoped to see plans for how the government would achieve the targets that they set in the spring—reducing the overal...

The pandemic wreaked havoc on hotel workers: https://monitormag.ca/articles/the-pandemic-wreaked-havoc-on-hotel-workers/

In case you missed it: Under changes to BC’s personal tax system since 2017, the vast majority of households have seen their effective provincial tax rate fall, while only the top 1% have seen the rate rise.

However, despite these improvements, the richest in BC still pay a lower % of their income in tax than they did in 2000.

Read senior economist Alex Hemingway’s BC tax fairness analysis here: policynote.ca/bc-tax-fairness

The hotel industry was slammed by the pandemic. The industry has recovered—but its largely racialized, immigrant, women workers haven't.

The pandemic wreaked havoc on hotel workers In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a devastating upheaval in hotel workers’ work lives. Closures and travel restrictions, especially in the first wave of the pandemic, impacted both international and domestic tourism and recreation activities upon which the hotel sector depends. The hotel…

The right’s political project is about dismantling worker power. Don’t get played. https://monitormag.ca/articles/working-class-conservatism-is-a-bait-and-switch-scam-stop-taking-it-at-face-value/

Today the Bank of Canada lowered the interest rate for the second time in a row. It's now 4.5 %. Here's why cutting rates is the right move by David Macdonald.

The Bank of Canada is starting to cut interest rates. It’s about time. On June 5, for the first time in four years, the Bank of Canada cut the overnight interest rate, its main policy rate, bringing it down a quarter of a per cent from five per cent to 4.75 per cent. This shouldn’t be surprising. The Bank has long justified its rate hikes as a measure to fight…

Right-wing parties are trying to market themselves to workers. If you believe them, then we've got a bridge to sell you.

“Working class conservatism” is a bait-and-switch scam. Stop taking… In 1980, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) was in heated negotiations with the U.S. federal government. The government, under Democrat Jimmy Carter, had led a wave of deregulation and privatization in the airline industry, and air traffic controllers were upset. So they.....

On Thursday, November 7th, the CCPA–BC Gala returns! This year’s keynote speaker is no other than Dr. Vandana Shiva. She is a world-renowned environmental activist, intellectual and feminist who has worked in a wide range of fields inspiring change globally—particularly around issues of food, agriculture, bioethics and genetic engineering.

Get your early bird tickets today. Early birds will also get a link to stream the documentary ‘The Seeds of Vandana Shiva’.

🗓️ Date: Thursday, November 7, 2024
🕠 Time: 5:30PM - 9:00PM
📍 Venue: Fraserview Hall – Located at 8240 Fraser Street, Vancouver
🎫 Early Bird ticket: $125 (regular price: $150)

Tickets: https://ccpabc.ca/gala

Provincial governments have made substantial changes to BC’s personal tax system over the past 25 years. Both, the BC Liberal government that took power in 2001 and the BC NDP government that took power in 2017 reshaped the tax system—with very different effects on inequality and fairness.

Today, the CCPA–BC Office released a new report modelling the provincial tax changes over time and analyzing how these have impacted people across different income levels. Read the full report here:

policynote.ca/bc-tax-fairness

Is BC’s tax system fair? 🤔Kinda. Senior economist Alex Hemingway breaks it down for us—he writes that policy changes have improved tax fairness since 2017—when the NDP took office. However, the rich are still not paying their fair share.

We face big challenges in BC—unaffordable housing, a strained health care system, toxic drug deaths and climate crisis, among others. Improving tax fairness would help tackle extreme inequality and raise $ to invest in public services. We could start by focusing tax increases on large corporations, wealthy landowners and those with the highest incomes.

In other words, taxing the rich to invest in the common good can help us meet those challenges head-on.

Read the full article at https://policynote.ca/bc-tax-fairness

Manitoba was the first province to introduce a universal home care program. Today, its services lag behind—due in part to inadequate treatment of workers.

From leader to laggard: A festering crisis in long-term and home care In 1974, Manitoba launched its universal, provincewide home care program—the first of its kind in Canada; one that would be emulated by most provinces. As researcher Amy Twomey has argued, the era of reform this policy emerged from was significant for Manitoba’s long-term care and home care…

TC Energy loses $15-billion NAFTA lawsuit against U.S. The welcome decision shines a light on Canada’s flawed defence in similar investor-state case against Canada. Read Stuart Trew and Scott Sinclair's latest:

TC Energy loses $15-billion NAFTA lawsuit against U.S. TC Energy has reached the end of the line in its legal vendetta against the Biden administration for terminating the Keystone XL pipeline in January 2021. A NAFTA investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) tribunal has sided with the U.S. on a key jurisdictional issue, putting a stop to the Canadian.....

New alcohol plan could cost Ontario $510 million a year. As Queen’s Park moves toward the Quebec model of retail, there’s only one way to maintain revenues: Ontarians will have to drink more ➡

New alcohol plan could cost Ontario $510 million a year Queen’s Park is planning big changes to the way Ontarians buy alcohol. How will this affect provincial finances? Seven weeks after the government announced the changes, that question remains unanswered. My estimate, discussed here, is that at current consumption levels, the new retail regime means...

The pandemic period has been a roller coaster for women in the workforce. Let's track some key dates.

A timeline: The pandemic’s impact on women in the workforce March 2020: COVID-19 strikes, massive job losses The COVID-19 pandemic upended women’s economic gains, wiping out 35 years of progress in two short months. Between February and April 2020, a total of 2.8 million women lost their job or were working less than half of their regular hours due to…

US presidents have been the target of assassins plenty of times in the past, but not since Lincoln has the violence coincided with such a sensitive time for the republic. The country was already on edge, the threat of large-scale political violence palpable. The risk of spiralling into rapid collapse is now greater.

The Trump assassination attempt puts American democracy in danger of… The following text was originally published on David Moscrop's Substack. It is republished here with permission. I remember where I was on September 11th, 2001. I was in high school, in English class, when someone came in to tell our teacher the news. Later, in the halls, students were sharing…

When “survival” jobs become “essential” work: Immigrant women workers disproportionately carried the weight of the pandemic in Nova Scotia https://monitormag.ca/articles/when-survival-jobs-become-essential-work/

The latest issue of the Monitor is live! Four years into COVID-19’s disruption, many women are still struggling. Read Katherine Scott's Unequal pandemic, unequal recovery:

Unequal pandemic, unequal recovery The COVID-19 pandemic that swept the globe in 2020 not only threatened people’s health but exposed and exacerbated entrenched inequalities. Women bore the brunt. Millions were working in public-facing jobs that were most affected by necessary public health closures. Millions more laboured on the.....

Mark your calendars! 🥂 On Thursday, November 7th, the CCPA–BC Gala returns, and we couldn’t be more excited to announce this year’s keynote speaker: Dr. Vandana Shiva.

Dr. Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental activist, intellectual and feminist who has worked in a wide range of fields inspiring change globally—particularly around issues of food, agriculture, bioethics and genetic engineering.

Join us on November 7th for an evening of conversation, good food and celebration in the company of Dr. Shiva and progressive change-makers. Don’t wait!

Tickets: https://ccpabc.ca/gala
Early bird pricing is available for a limited time.

Organized dentists associations are working hard to torpedo public dental care in Canada. Brandon Doucet, a dentist, has seen it firsthand.

Why dentists are not signing up for the Canadian Dental Care Plan As a dentist, and an open advocate for public dental care, I often speak to other dentists about the issue. Recently, I’ve started hearing a new type of story—dentists receiving threatening phone calls from their colleagues in the industry, intimidating them with threats to stop sending them…