Public Accounts confirm economic impacts of COVID-19
Despite strong fiscal results in the first three quarters of 2019-20, unforeseen changes in the fourth quarter due to COVID-19, including declines in tax revenues, ICBC losses and early measures to tackle the pandemic, affected the Province’s 2019-20 financial results. “While the first three quarters of 2019-20 reflected a ...
Column: From the Hill -- Morneau's resignation and pandemic recovery
Bill Morneau resigned as Minister of Finance on Monday. I enjoyed my interactions with the former minister—he was approachable and often crossed the aisle to chat with me when I had a question or comment on financial issues affecting my constituents. Rumour has it that he was at odds with the rest of the cabinet when it...
Opinion: Want to farm? Need Land? Check out this resource.
Some people have land that can grow crops, but they don’t want to farm; others want to farm and can’t find land. The solution – a program that matches people who want to farm with those who have land available to lease, and want it to stay in production or start producing crops. It's called the BC Land Matching Program (BCLMP)....
COLUMN: From the Hill -- Greener Hydrogen?
My role as Natural Resources critic for the NDP covers forestry, mining and energy—and the big issue these days in that trio is energy. The pandemic has intensified calls for a national energy strategy that will direct federal investments to help us recover from the economic impacts of the crisis and put us on a good footing...
Column: From the Hill -- Wealth gap a drag on the economy
Imagine a country where the top one percent of the population owned one quarter of all the wealth and the bottom 40 per cent together owned only one per cent. Sounds outrageous? That country is Canada. The source of those figures is the latest report of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. The disparity between the super-wealthy...
Letter: Let's not lose more wilderness to development
To The Editor: The BC Government Mountain Resorts Branch has recently received an expression of interest (EOI) for a new ski resort development (Zincton Expression of Interest) from Brent Harley and Associates Inc. and are requesting feedback from the public. The British Columbia Backcountry Hunters and Anglers (BCBHA) have...
Mercer announces 30 days downtime at its Celgar mill
In a press release Friday, Mercer indicated there will be a month of downtime this summer, over an above its annual shutdown. The press release reads as follows: "Mercer International Inc. (“Mercer”) (Nasdaq: MERC) reports that its Celgar mill, in addition to regularly planned maintenance downtime of five days, will be taking...
Teck creates fund to help with COVID-19
VANCOUVER, BC, April 16, 2020: Teck Resources Limited (“Teck”) today announced the creation of a $20-million fund to support COVID-19 response and future recovery efforts. This funding will go to support critical social initiatives and increased healthcare capacity, including procuring one million masks to be donated for ...
Local face shield production expanded
Austin Innovation is scaling the production of medical face shields from their lab in Trail, BC as a stopgap measure to meet the demand for COVID-19-specific personal protective equipment (PPE). The new entity, located in the lower level of Austin Engineering, is part of the collaborative team manufacturing PPE for the medical...
Early prohibition of fires, fireworks throughout BC: UPDATED
In addition to the earlier announcement of an early burning ban across the province to begin on April 16, the province has issued open burning restrictions for all High Smoke Sensitivity Zones across the province until Wednesday, April 15, 2020. These restrictions are directly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the...
