On October 2, 2009, Premier Gordon Campbell announced a joint Task Force to make recommendations for legislative changes to improve the electoral process for local government elections across B.C.
It used to be said of the New Democrats (when they were in government during the 1990s), that, such was their lack of business and financial expertise, they couldn't run a lemonade stand.
Sadly, with Gordon Campbell and his BC Liberals, British Columbia today has a government whose fiscal acumen is so abysmal, so evidently lacking, that they appear incapable of operating any business enterprise of any size.
Advocates of democratic electoral reform are really out of step. Ideas like proportional representation and advertising spending limits are so retro, so 2004.
The fashionable electoral reform idea this year is to give corporations a real say. It’s time for individual citizens to share their electoral democracy with corporations to give meaning to those old legal rulings that said corporations are people too.
A brewing tax revolt by B.C. forestry companies has gained a legal foothold after the B.C. Supreme Court found a Vancouver Island community cannot boost its tax rate for forest lands.
This week's court decision will cost the City of Campbell River $1.2-million, but it is also sending ripples through other B.C. communities where forest companies are withholding tax payments in what they say is a battle for survival.
As pulp mills withhold taxes from tiny communities, BC's municipal officials brace for legal ruling.
"Our story begins on July 2nd, 2009, at 2:30 p.m.," Mayor Lawrence Chernoff began, "about two hours before the close of tax collection for the year."
The Castlegar mayor continued, "The local manager of our Celgar Pulp Mill came in and asked to see if he could see me. I wasn't there, so he left a letter."
Proposed landfill sits on top of aquifer, opponents argue MIDHURST – Simcoe County councillors voted this afternoon in favour of a one-year moratorium on the controversial development of the "Site 41" garbage dump in Tiny Township northwest of Barrie.
Pressure had been building on the councillors to halt the development over fears it would contaminate an underground reservoir that scientists say provides some of the cleanest drinking water in the world.
KAMLOOPS – Chair Robert Hobson, representing FCM’s Green Municipal Fund and the Honourable Cathy McLeod, on behalf of the Honourable Lisa Raitt, Minister of Natural Resources, announced today a Green Municipal Fund (GMF) grant for the City of Kamloops. The $327,750 grant will be used to develop an Integrated Community Sustainability Plan (ICSP) in order to tie together various City plans and strategies and provide a comprehensive evaluation framework to guide future growth and development.
