Many people believe that BC Hydro’s current job #1 is enabling the delivery of water and cheap power to northeast gas fields and heavily subsidized energy to remote mine sites. If true, […]
Industry – policy maker or welfare bum?
Favoured friends
After the Campbell Liberals were elected in 2001, influences of special business interests grew rapidly. Under Christina Clark’s leadership, non-renewable resource companies wield great political power and they use it to minimize […]
Truth found in numbers, lies found in words
I am reading budget documents and will soon be writing more about the provincial government’s financial smoke and mirrors but I have initial comments. Natural Gas BC Liberals, particularly Premier Clark, are […]
Vanishing revenues
There is too little public discussion of huge costs and questionable benefits of an industry that employs a tiny fraction of BC’s workers (0.4% in 2014 according to BC Stats). With land […]
Medical services poverty program
Readers of an age to receive a monthly Old Age Security cheque will be thrilled to notice a 57¢ increase in January. As I mentioned on Twitter, cautious saving of that amount […]
When industry buys a government…
Who knew that Christy Clark would make Gordon Campbell look like an effective, if somewhat dishonest, Premier. #bcpoli — Norm Farrell (@Norm_Farrell) December 4, 2015 //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js Did gas industry get a good […]
Trusted editorial content may not be trusted
Postmedia is a company in trouble. It cannot sustain crippling debt to American debt holders with revenues from traditional advertising, circulation and digital paywalls. One of its responses is Postmedia Content Solutions, […]
Remembering the desperate nineties – Updated
Sources: BC Public Accounts, BC Stats, Bank of Canada Sources: BC Public Accounts, BC Stats, Bank of Canada A recent report from Statistics Canada, Exports and imports of natural gas to and […]
Avoidance / Evasion: often a fine line
The price isn’t right, Corporate profit-shifting has become big business, The Economist: DURING THE TAX-EVASION trial of Leona Helmsley, a flamboyant hotelier, a former housekeeper testified that she heard her employer say: […]
Serving public or corporate interests?
The audio file below is a recording of my time with Ian Jessop June 17. We talk about LNG and resource taxation, inter-provincial cooperation on resource matters and oil spill response capability. […]
Horgan speaks to the Premier
Hansard, May 28, 2015 The notion of a Debt-free British Columbia — hard to imagine when you’ve seen $135-billion increase in debt and contractual obligations under the B.C. Liberal watch. But somehow, […]
"Jobs, jobs, jobs" Or, maybe not
. The audio file above is a recording of my time with Ian Jessop May 12. We talk about jobs and natural resources but we don’t deliver BC Liberal talking points like […]
Myth busting
Andrew Nikiforuk wrote advice for Albertans in his recent article Eight Steps to Reform the Broken Petrostate: Behave like an owner: Alberta’s oil and gas resources belong to Albertans. The Tories’ “strip […]
Flawed analysis
Following the passing of Alberta’s Conservative party, Macleans writer Colby Cosh described a drawn-out illness that made the result inevitable. Followers of British Columbia politics will recognize symptoms also found west of […]
Give them what they wanted, then give them even more
. In April, listeners to Ian Jessop’s CFAX1070 program heard about how government pays more to facilitate mining than it receives in direct payments for metals and minerals. In the latter part […]
Albertans will choose
//storify.com/Norm_Farrell/natural-resources-different-approaches/embed?border=false//storify.com/Norm_Farrell/natural-resources-different-approaches.js?border=false[View the story “Natural resources, public assets, or corporate?” on Storify]
Takin’ care of business
For each $1 million of Nestle branded water sold, BC is paid about $2. Mind you, this is a better rate of return than the province gains from resource companies mining for […]
From outside the Liberal spin machine – RERUN
The following first published July 21, 2014: Does it surprise you to learn that British Columbia earned a net of only $61 million in gas royalties in the last two fiscal years? […]
Sales tax war resumed
The good doctor at The Gazetteer diagnoses a similarity between issues underlying the now debated transit sales tax and the late and unlamented HST. RossK is focused on the tax ‘shiftyness’ involved […]
Sales tax not only way to pay for public services
CCPA Budget Submissions Natural Resource Royalties Reform, Iglika Ivanova, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, October 2014 BC used to collect well over $1 billion per year from natural gas royalties, but over […]
in-sights.ca 
Blair Fix at _Economics from the Top Down_ also wrote two very good papers on the converion of housing into…