The rich and connected appear to run British Columbia

tay

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May 20, 2012
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Jerry Dias views the B.C. NDP's plan for a $15 minimum wage

Against a backdrop of B.C. Premier Christy Clark increasingly being portrayed as a premier for the wealthy, the NDP in the province has rightly put forward policies aimed at directly helping working people.

Beyond the minimum wage plan, the B.C. NDP is calling for $10-a-day child care, low-income housing, help for renters, no-interest student loans, improvements to social assistance and other measures aimed at helping working people in the face of a widening wage gap that threatens our social fabric.

Young people who have done everything right -- gone to school, got the training, done volunteer work to make themselves more attractive to employers and improve their skills -- still find themselves stuck in casual or contract work with diminishing hope of building a decent life, let alone a decent future. It has to stop. We can and must do better.

In British Columbia, where the race for the May 9 provincial election is heating up, the NDP has called for a $15 minimum wage in the province by 2021. This is a good move, and one that progressive people across Canada should get behind.

A recent study by the Institute for Research on Public Policy, for instance, found that while Canadian incomes rose 13.5 per cent between 1982 and 2010, "that growth was strikingly uneven." Those with an income in the bottom 90 per cent saw their income rise by a meager two percentage points over that period. At the other end of the spectrum, those in the top 10 per cent enjoyed an increase of more than 75 per cent. Those in the top one-tenth of the one per cent saw a whopping 160 per cent income increase.

Such increasing disparity is not sustainable, which is why the policies of the NDP in this B.C. election are so welcome.

Elsewhere in the country, progressive people are working to improve the lives of those left behind by the policies of the past. We have already seen the benefits and success for working people by the leadership of Rachel Notley's NDP government who have taken bold and necessary steps to address the minimum wage of workers, and the needs of the community by investing increased funding in education and health to maintain public services.

Another good example is Jagmeet Singh, deputy leader of the Ontario NDP, who is calling for stronger protections for temporary workers -- including equal pay for equal work, a ban on so-called temporary jobs that end up being long-term gigs but remain officially temporary, and the elimination of unfair fees by temp agencies.

B.C. NDP's Pledge To Raise Minimum Wage Sets Example For Nation*|*Jerry Dias
 

B00Mer

Make Canada Great Again
Sep 6, 2008
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Rent Free in Your Head
www.canadianforums.ca
Tay wants another FastCat Fiasco... with the NDP in charge..

 

tay

Hall of Fame Member
May 20, 2012
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Tay wants another FastCat Fiasco... with the NDP in charge..
ummmmm.....no. I have nothing to do with BC politics. I just posted an article related to their election..........
 

tay

Hall of Fame Member
May 20, 2012
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The rise of haves and have-nots is particularly acute in B.C., where skyrocketing housing prices have left more people behind as the issue shapes the campaign, writes Justine Hunter

In this provincial election, inequality is not the stuff of stump speeches: NDP Leader John Horgan talks about affordability, and Liberal Leader Christy Clark is promising tax breaks for the middle class. But inequality is shaping the campaign in many ways, from the debate around housing costs, to questions about whether the wealthy have an outsized influence on politics through campaign contributions.

The widening gap in income and wealth is not a story exclusive to British Columbia. Inequality is growing across Canada and throughout much of the Western world. But in B.C. in particular, it is not only that the 1 per cent are getting richer faster than anyone else. In B.C.’s urban centres, those who happened to buy a home before the boom are the new class of “haves.” Those who did not are struggling with insecure housing, and are increasingly angry about the growing divide.

The BC Liberals and the New Democratic Party offer different paths forward on the issues raised by growing inequality.

Why is inequality growing?

Mr. Heisz is one of the 27 leading economists and experts who contributed to the 2016 book Income Inequality: The Canadian Story, published by the Institute for Research on Public Policy says

B.C.
 

Groot

Time Out
Apr 28, 2017
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BC is so messed up....cons pushing for Libs.

It's like cons voting for Trump.
 

taxslave

Hall of Fame Member
Nov 25, 2008
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Crispy Carp and the Liberals are our version of Hillery and the Dems.

BTW, there is no Liberal party in BC. They are Social Credit/BC Reform in liberal clothing.



Grizzly Hunt 101: The 'It's a Tradition' Argument
[For the next 3 weeks leading up to the BC election, I'm going to be posting facts about grizzly bears and the grizzly bear hunt]

The 'It's a Tradition' Argument: Perhaps the weakest argument of them all when it comes to trophy hunters and their various reasons for believing they should be allowed to kill our grizzly bears centers around the idea that grizzly hunters should get to continue to kill because they've been hunting grizzlies for years/their father hunted grizzlies/their grandfather hunted grizzlies/their whole family hunts grizzlies.

It used to be tradition to shoot buffalo from trains on the prairies. To kill wolves using leg-hold, steel-jawed traps. And to hunt orcas and eagles. But we've evolved as a society. Just because something was done in the past does not make it acceptable to do today or in the future.

From an ethical standpoint, it's quite clear that the majority of people in British Columbia and beyond do not think that killing grizzly bears for sport and a trophy is a socially acceptable activity anymore (the most recent polls show that over 90% of BC residents are against the hunt, including almost 75% in rural hunting hotbeds -- Grizzly bear trophy hunt: 74% of rural B.C. residents oppose it).

The bottom line in this argument is that nobody cares that you've been killing grizzly bears for the past 20 years, that's simply not a valid excuse for continuing an activity. People used to drive without seatbelts, tv stations used to advertise smoking cigarettes as being cool, and strangers used to hand out homemade candy apples at Halloween.

But times change, and so do societal values.

Perhaps it's time that our government's views on grizzly bear hunting caught up.
- John E. Marriott Wildlife and Nature Photography
See to it that you actually post some facts for a change.
Fact 1 There are too many grizzleys in some areas.
Fact 2 Some communities take in a lot of cash that they desperately need from the hunt.
Fact 3 Since we "manage" some parts of the food chain it is important that we manage all parts so it doesn't get out of kilter.

Ridings are rigged in favour of the East because 7/8ths of the population lives there.

Not true. But you already know that. Compare the number of citizens in a riding in Prince Edward Island against the number of people in a riding in BC or Alberta. Better yer compare the size of the ridings.
 

Groot

Time Out
Apr 28, 2017
107
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See to it that you actually post some facts for a change.
Fact 1 There are too many grizzleys in some areas.
Fact 2 Some communities take in a lot of cash that they desperately need from the hunt.
Fact 3 Since we "manage" some parts of the food chain it is important that we manage all parts so it doesn't get out of kilter.

Fact, what would happen if people were not around to "manage" nature.

Guess all hell would break loose....da faq.:roll:
 

taxslave

Hall of Fame Member
Nov 25, 2008
36,362
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The rise of haves and have-nots is particularly acute in B.C., where skyrocketing housing prices have left more people behind as the issue shapes the campaign, writes Justine Hunter

In this provincial election, inequality is not the stuff of stump speeches: NDP Leader John Horgan talks about affordability, and Liberal Leader Christy Clark is promising tax breaks for the middle class. But inequality is shaping the campaign in many ways, from the debate around housing costs, to questions about whether the wealthy have an outsized influence on politics through campaign contributions.

The widening gap in income and wealth is not a story exclusive to British Columbia. Inequality is growing across Canada and throughout much of the Western world. But in B.C. in particular, it is not only that the 1 per cent are getting richer faster than anyone else. In B.C.’s urban centres, those who happened to buy a home before the boom are the new class of “haves.” Those who did not are struggling with insecure housing, and are increasingly angry about the growing divide.

The BC Liberals and the New Democratic Party offer different paths forward on the issues raised by growing inequality.

Why is inequality growing?

Mr. Heisz is one of the 27 leading economists and experts who contributed to the 2016 book Income Inequality: The Canadian Story, published by the Institute for Research on Public Policy says

B.C.
The only places that housing prices are skyrocketing is the lowermainland, the lower par of the island and a few choice spots in the interior. The real problem is that once these newly minted million are in Vancouver move out they buy up the affordable housing in other communities where few locals can afford to build a new house.
 

tay

Hall of Fame Member
May 20, 2012
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Dan Levin writes that Christy Clark and her B.C. Libs have turned British Columbia into a haven for capital to run wild without any social responsibility or public benefit:
Like many places, British Columbia set up a system of tax incentives to lure businesses to the far western Canadian province in the hopes of creating jobs and transforming Vancouver into a global financial center.

But if the program has been good for business, it’s been less beneficial for British Columbia.

Participating companies have created few jobs, according to government figures, while more than 140 million Canadian dollars ($106 million) have been doled out in tax refunds since 2008, when the initiative was expanded.

The incentives operate under a cloak of secrecy that is unusual for similar efforts in Canada and the United States, critics say. The province will not name the companies that get the breaks. The only information available about them is on the website of a nonprofit that promotes the program.

“This is essentially a temporary foreign-worker program for the rich, with secret government subsidies for multinational corporations,” said Dermod Travis, the executive director of IntegrityBC, a nonpartisan political watchdog group based in Victoria, the provincial capital. “The government is selling B.C. as a tax haven for the global elite to park investment here, but not have to contribute.”
 

Curious Cdn

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Feb 22, 2015
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See to it that you actually post some facts for a change.
Fact 1 There are too many grizzleys in some areas.
Fact 2 Some communities take in a lot of cash that they desperately need from the hunt.
Fact 3 Since we "manage" some parts of the food chain it is important that we manage all parts so it doesn't get out of kilter.



Not true. But you already know that. Compare the number of citizens in a riding in Prince Edward Island against the number of people in a riding in BC or Alberta. Better yer compare the size of the ridings.

Those four little ridings in PEI spoil your democracy, do they? Go to proportional representation and PEI's voice disappears but so does Alberta's.
 

Cliffy

Standing Member
Nov 19, 2008
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Nakusp, BC
The only way to manage the food chain is to eliminate, or at least mitigate, those at the top: cull the human population.