aggregated from: Paying attention

Our inability to manage health care is one of the great public policy failures of the last 25 years, at least. The same issues and the same lack of information come up again and again and again.Given Kevin Falcon's musings on private and two-tier car...

aggregated from: Paying attention

Kevin Falcon is off to a bumbling and alarming start as health minister.Falcon sat down with the Vancouver Sun's health reporter and said he saw nothing wrong with letting affluent people pay for speedier treatment than the rest of British Columbians...

topics: health-care, liberal, ndp

aggregated from: Paying attention

I have no idea what to make of Gordon Campbell's proposed Recognition and Reconciliation Act. There's just not enough information. The Liberals think it's huge, in a good way. Some critics - business and First Nations - think it's huge, in a worrying...

topics: business, election, kamloops, liberals, new-democrats

aggregated from: Paying attention

It's looking liken the Liberals are ready to launch their third term as they did their first - with a full-tilt overhaul of government, conducted on so many fronts and so quickly that critics are left behind.Speculation, of course. Gordon Campbell an...

topics: business, election, housing, liberals, new-democrats

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Governing must be harder than it looks from the outside.Back in 1996, then opposition leader Gordon Campbell said the New Democrat's 18-person cabinet was way too big - bloated, expensive and out of touch. The Liberal platform promised no more than 1...

topics: agriculture, cope, crime, elected, housing

aggregated from: Paying attention

Property taxes are too high, complains Catalyst Paper Corp. (Like a lot of big industrial taxpayers in communities across B.C.)Can't pay, won't pay, the corporation insists, to quote Italian playwright Dario Fo. Instead, Catalyst's president says it ...

topics: business, liberals, ndp, premier, provincial-government

aggregated from: Paying attention

Leaving aside the personal vested interest, I'd argue the future of newspapers, journalism and community are all closely linked.The industry is struggling to come up with a working business model, as they say. If it can't, who will pay for people to ...

topics: business, politics

aggregated from: Paying attention

The good news is that fewer B.C. kids were living in poverty in 2007.The bad news is that the Best Place on Earth has the highest child poverty rate in Canada, according to Statistics Canada.Worse, perhaps, is the fact that despite six consecut...

topics: cope, economy, elected, election, environment

aggregated from: Paying attention

Gordon Campbell has discovered that the province's low welfare rates are hurting people and communities.A bit late, in terms of the poverty problem in the province, but still welcome.Or it would be, if there was a clearer sense that the government is...

topics: economy, employment, federal-government, forestry, liberals

aggregated from: Paying attention

It is alarming to think about North Korea armed with nuclear weapons. Or Pakistan or Israel or Russia.But I read The Atomic Bazaar on the weekend. William Langewiesche makes the argument that it's inevitable that many countries will get nuclear weapo...