With income assistance rates frozen for over 10 years now, welfare recipients have a very small amount available for rent. With the province of BC providing a single person on welfare with only $610 a month, SRO landlords are very limited in what they can charge for rent. So they use the low rental revenue…
Category: BC Liberals
Hanging by a thread
Wow! What a night it was! And it ain’t over yet! I’ve witnessed many election night roller coasters but nothing quite like last night. I went to sleep last night dreaming of proportional representation, big money out of politics (union and business donations alike), no Kinder Morgan pipeline, no Site C dam, and no Massey…
The power of Green
Will it finally happen? An NDP minority with the Green Party holding the balance of power in BC? Last week the writ was dropped and the provincial election is, finally, formally underway. What makes this election possibly unique in our history is the fact that the NDP and the Liberals are in a statistical dead heat…
Letting the light in for the New Year
As the year has wound down, it’s time to look back on it and forward to 2017. 2016 has seen many dark clouds. The election of Donald Trump was perhaps the darkest one of all. Justin Trudeau appears to have lost his appetite for proportional representation, and climate change is accelerating. No one would blame…
A tale of two school boards: One fiery, one fired
One of my fondest political memories is the night when results came in for the by-election of a brand new Vancouver School Board in 1986. Two years earlier, in 1984, COPE (Coalition of Progressive Electors) had won a bare majority on the school board, electing five of the nine trustees. They had campaigned very heavily…
A silver lining to Victoria’s tent city
Many of us concerned about the crisis of homelessness have watched with interest as homeless people in Victoria started living on the lawn in front of the courthouse last year. As their numbers grew, so did the pressure on the provincial government to offer meaningful solutions — not just overnight shelters but real accommodations. In…
Lots of cake to go around
The provincial government’s decision to raise income assistance rates for people with disabilities with one hand then reduce those rates with the other has been in the news lately. Before the changes were announced, anybody forced to live on the paltry amount of $906 a month (a rate frozen since 2007) also received a free…