With all the budget talk of late, we should harken back to the provincial B.C. budget recently tabled in the legislature. Especially in regard to tax revenue, the MSP, how it is collected, from whom and for what purposes.
In B.C., you pay the same MSP premium if you earn $35,000 a year or $350,000. So it was reassuring to have the opposition parties’ call for an end to this regressive tax, and many grassroots groups organize in opposition to this tax.
Government may be feeling the pressure and that is why there is some relief for single parents.
Ontario and Alberta had similarly structured health premiums, but have long ago scrapped them. The B.C. government has increased MSP premiums: by 50 per cent in 2002, and by four per cent annually since 2010. In its latest budget, the B.C. government will collect $2.5 billion from MSP premiums, almost as much as it will collect from corporate income taxes.
The government has promised more tinkering, but this will not solve the fundamental problem with MSP premiums: They are an unfair tax. Replace revenue from the MSP premiums with a progressive income tax hike instead.
Given the options out there, I can’t think of a single reason to keep MSP premiums.
Public education losing out to private model
The number of students is dropping in some school districts — one reason is that many parents (at least 76,000) are sending their children to private schools.
An additional $48 million was given to private schools in the 2016 provincial budget.
According to a B.C. Teachers' Federation analysis: “Here in B.C., private schools have received increasingly more public funding: $311 million in 2014-15 — a whopping 61.1 per cent increase since 2005-06 — and more than triple the 19.7 per cent rise in public education funding during the same period.”
Meanwhile, high school and elementary school closures in Osoyoos are being considered. It is going to get worse because the province is downloading far too many things on school districts — including the cost of increases to provincially negotiated salaries for district staff, administrators, teachers, support staff, everyone who works in our school districts.
What is happening to education in our province is wrong and needs to be put right.
Condo owners losing power
I am about to lose my condo of 25 years. The recent amendment to the Strata Property Act states that the strata council needs approval from 80 per cent of owners to sell a building. Only two years ago, the law said 100 per cent agreement was required for the sale of a building. A year ago, it was 90 per cent. Now it’s 80 per cent. Owners have lost control.
Rather than fix up the building west of Denman St. that I own in, the council maintains they have the required 80 per cent owner approval to sell. The "projected sale amount" suggested by the council will not allow owners to buy in the same area.
I lament my helplessness in stopping the sale of the building, the obscure, fast-track strata law amendment, and the power of a strata council.
Judith M. Andrade
(A Canadian citizen born in Vancouver.)
Del Mar, Calif.
Report on local food security misrepresented
Re: Community gardens are scarce in Burnaby and Surrey, report says, March 22; and Garden led down path of red tape, March 25
Your coverage of the Burnaby Food First report, Local Food Security: Turning Policy into Action in Metro Vancouver, implies community gardens are the main issue and that the report has nothing but criticism for Burnaby and Surrey municipal governments. Neither is the case.
The report includes a wide range of issues that impact our ability to feed ourselves into the future. The section on urban agriculture also provides examples of beekeeping, backyard chickens, and the sharing of backyards for growing food. The report is meant as a resource on best local policies and practices.
The report analyses the actions that Burnaby, Richmond, Surrey, Vancouver and three North Shore communities have taken based on the five goals and 21 strategies of Metro Vancouver’s Regional Food System Strategy. Burnaby and Surrey actually led in a few of those strategies. The last sentence of the report (available at bit.ly/BFFPolicy2Action) says it all: "Several of the municipalities in this study have made significant progress, and all can learn from each other's best practices.”
Burnaby Food First
Survey on health researchers says little
Re: Young health researchers consider leaving Canada, March 26
The headline caught my attention. We physicists have always assumed medical research was lavishly funded, so I was interested in seeing the real numbers. I was frustrated by the absence of meaningful data. Surveys from 34 respondents? Out of how many invitations? Did only the disgruntled respond? Then a list of percentages expressing subjective opinions about their funding. Not one word about how many applicants there were, how much they were awarded on average, what percentage received no award, or what the maximum awards were. In short, no facts upon which to base any conclusions.
All I can guess is that it was a pretty lame survey. Is there a researcher of any sort who has never "given up the best approach to the research in favour of ones that can be done more cheaply"? Like, with the grant actually received? What a waste of ink!
Jess H. Brewer
Prof. Emeritus, UBC Physics and Astronomy, Nanoose Bay