Publication - vSKVCkylOTVtRABDgVZk1i9kUu22

Default

alloy

Nov 28, 2024
British Columbians got a first glimpse of the re-elected NDP government’s policy agenda with the appointment of a new cabinet (Executive Council). At this time, mandate letters are usually released publicly so that the government’s plans by ministry are fairly transparent. However, the NDP government is looking to the Green Party to shore up its razor-thin majority in the Legislature, so no mandate letters until January.
A productive NDP-Green alliance could herald progressive reforms in BC that would buck the trend to the hard right of the Trump administration and potentially in Ottawa after the 2025 federal election. For the foreseeable future, developments south of the border will hang over the BC economy, with large and unpredictable impacts on trade and migration, including Trump’s proposed 25% tariffs on all Canadian imports.
BC’s economy has been slowing through 2024, with unemployment at 5.8% in October (compared to an average of 5.2% last year). Recent and future interest rate cuts from the Bank of Canada may drive a rebound in 2025. While the headline inflation rate has come back down over 2024, this only means that prices have stopped rising as quickly as before, not that they have come back down. The high cost of housing and food, in particular, remain top of mind for many BC households.
A productive NDP-Green alliance could herald progressive reforms in BC.
Federal tightening of temporary immigration programs will also impact the BC economy. After a few years of exceptionally fast population growth in BC, the next two years will see much lower, and perhaps close to zero, population growth from international sources. This might ease pressure on housing and health care, but also undercuts aggregate demand and won’t address the underlying problems in these areas. In the post-secondary education sector, large reductions in the number of foreign students are driving major program and staffing cuts at BC colleges and universities, particularly those that most banked on the much-higher tuition fees paid by foreign students.
With challenging waters ahead, it matters a great deal what kind of government is at the rudder. In troubled times, the message from the right is that you’re on your own. Instead, we need to build strength and resilience by working together through the public sector. A year from now, BC may be a progressive island in a conservative North American ocean. And if we can get it right, BC could show the rest of North America a more compassionate, sustainable and just alternative pathway to that of the hard right.
Broad priorities
In the absence of mandate letters, let’s take a look at what the new cabinet picks and the reorganization of some key ministries tell us, in light of NDP and Green election promises. Ministers received an appointment letter outlining the same four broad priorities: reducing costs for families; strengthening health care; making neighbourhoods and communities safer; and building a sustainable, clean economy with good jobs.
Under “reducing costs for families,” new Finance Minister Brenda Bailey will deliver the NDP’s promised tax cut of $500 for individuals and $1,000 for households. The platform called for an increase in the basic personal amount (i.e., the threshold for paying income tax) by $10,000. This could worsen inequality in that many higher earners would receive the full benefit of the tax cut, whereas lower-income households pay little or no income tax to begin with.
Due to the time lag for a tax change, an interim rebate in 2025/26 will be used to get money more quickly into people’s hands. The rebate could cost almost $2 billion next year, adding to the baseline deficit for 2025/26 (see Alex Hemingway’s analysis here).
A more targeted approach aimed at low- to middle-income households could lower the fiscal cost. For example, the rebate should be designed as a refundable tax credit to benefit all low-income households and be capped or phased out to exclude the top 35% to 40% of earners.
A more-coherent approach could seize opportunities for progressive tax reforms.
A more coherent approach could also seize opportunities for progressive tax reforms. Some ideas from the Green platform are worth borrowing in this regard, including a full review of BC’s tax system with an eye toward reducing inequality, improving efficiency and fairness. More progressive property taxation and corporate tax reforms (including windfall profits taxes) could be considered as part of a tax system overhaul.
The commitment to “strengthening health care” falls to veteran minister Josie Osborne, who gets the Health portfolio after handling energy, mines and low-carbon innovation in the previous cabinet. She replaces the longest-serving Health minister in BC history, Adrian Dix. Both the COVID pandemic and the post-COVID population growth surge have led to a health care system under strain. The BC government has responded with boosted health care funding and a major focus on training and attracting health care professionals.
Access to primary care is a central challenge with one in five British Columbians not connected to a family doctor. The previous NDP government made substantial progress on primary care, but these reforms are incomplete. The Green Party call for a major expansion of community health centres as a central contact point for primary care should be firmly on the reform agenda.
Addictions and mental health remain underfunded challenges that are destroying lives daily. Alas, the new government’s preferred framing of “making neighbourhoods and communities safer” speaks more to cracking down on crime than developing more compassionate policy for people suffering from poverty, mental illness and addictions.
The standalone addictions and mental health ministry (since 2017) has been rolled back into the Ministry of Health. In practice, much of the programming and spending power had remained at Health, but hopefully, addictions and mental health issues do not get lost in the vast Health ministry. The controversial topic of involuntary care will rage over the coming years, and hopefully the government can step back and focus more on expanding harm reduction programs, voluntary treatment beds and affordable housing options.
Addictions and mental health remain underfunded challenges that are destroying lives daily.
Under “building a sustainable, clean economy with good jobs”, former Health minister Adrian Dix will head a newly amalgamated Ministry of Energy and Climate Solutions. Previously, climate and energy policy was split between the Ministry of Environment, which housed the Climate Action Secretariat that did policy work and set GHG targets and timelines but had little budget, while the programs and money were at Energy, Mines and Low-Carbon Innovation, including responsibility for BC Hydro and liquefied natural gas (LNG) expansion.
The new ministry can hopefully resolve BC’s contradictions on climate and energy policy, which has sought to reduce carbon emissions domestically while seeking to increase them globally through oil and gas exports.
A central challenge is the need for electrification of BC’s economy via BC Hydro, which notably provided stable electricity prices and consumer rebates during the inflation surge. The Crown corporation is now facing competing demand from new LNG and mining projects. Thus, a more coherent linkage between climate and energy may help BC live up to its good intentions on climate.
While not cracking the top four priorities, an overarching issue cited in the appointment letters is Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, to be headed by Christine Boyle, a seasoned Vancouver city councillor but legislative rookie. British Columbia has made significant strides in acknowledging Indigenous rights and titles since 2017. Challenges remain when it comes to meaningful consultation, the sharing of economic benefits and addressing the systemic barriers Indigenous communities face. There is an important opportunity to move beyond symbolic gestures and deliver real, substantive change.
Shifting priorities in ministries
Reorganizations at the ministry level also point to shifts in focus.
Having moved energy alongside climate, Mining and Critical Minerals will be a new standalone ministry. Viewed as a growth sector for minerals needed for modern electronics and vehicles, addressing First Nations rights and title will loom large over this ministry, likely with frequent meetings with new Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation Minister Boyle. Forestry remains a standalone ministry but faces unprecedented challenges from mill closures and dwindling supplies of high-quality wood set against the urgent need to conserve intact ecosystems.
Transportation and infrastructure has been divided into a Ministry of Transportation and Transit—suggesting the elevation of public transit investments and projects—and a separate Ministry of Infrastructure for large capital projects and planning for schools, hospitals and other major facilities. Both the NDP and Greens cited transit investments in their platforms (many of which reflect our February 2024 Connecting BC report), including inter-community express bus services, North Shore rapid transit and new commuter rail connections.
The Ministry of Housing has been expanded to include Municipal Affairs, a signal that housing is more than just the buildings constructed, but must also consider impacts on physical infrastructure, like water and sewer pipes, as well as social infrastructure like libraries and community centres. This added responsibility looks like a reward for Minister Ravi Kahlon’s leadership on the housing file, including implementing major housing supply reforms, the new non-profit housing model of BC Builds and the Rental Protection Fund.
These actions require further fiscal and regulatory efforts, however, as we outline in our Building Equity report. In particular, a much bigger commitment to non-market housing is needed, something that the Green Party platform rightly focuses on with a call for 26,000 new units per year (we had recommended 25,000 per year) and expanding upzoning for non-market developments.
A major housing pledge from the NDP is for the BC government to back 40% of a mortgage for certain first-time homebuyers, to be repaid after 25 years. While innovative, the reality is that only about 5,000 home purchases per year would be supported in this manner, a relatively small dent in the overall housing market. Keeping the program focused (including income and asset testing) so that unintended profiteering does not occur will be a key design consideration.
What’s missing?
The big three challenges of housing, health care and affordability are well represented in the broader government agenda outlined in the appointment letters. Following are some missing pieces for BC that will hopefully be spelled out in the January mandate letters and funded in the upcoming BC budget (scheduled for March 4, 2025).
Expansion of the $10-a-day childcare program. The current program is both very popular and massively oversubscribed, as there simply are not very many of those affordable spaces available. The Green Party platform emphasized expanding child care investments and this also has broad popular appeal within the business community. Expansion would improve affordability for many families across BC and would have beneficial economic impacts through enhanced labour market participation for women.
Poverty reduction. The Green Party election commitment to eliminating poverty is perhaps more aspirational since BC is but one province within Canada and such a move would require federal participation. Still, raising social assistance to the poverty line would make a huge difference in people’s lives and would cost about as much as the government’s promised broad-based tax cut. Essentially all of that money would be spent in the local economy.
Resilience and adaptation. Extreme weather events are becoming more common, with the damages from the 2021 extreme weather events (heat dome, wildfires and landslides/flooding) estimated at between $10.6 and 16 billion. Since then BC has put money into clean-up and has engaged in various adaptation planning exercises. But no money has flowed to major projects that would improve resilience to similar future events, such as reinvesting in dikes in the Lower Mainland and other areas vulnerable to flood.
Seniors’ care. There are more than one million people in BC aged 65 and over in 2024. While most seniors are able to live independently, aging inevitably requires increasing amounts of support and care. Three important dimensions of seniors’ care are home health care (including home support nursing), assisted living and long-term care, all of which ideally form a continuum of housing and health care for seniors.
The challenges facing BC in 2025 are immense. In recent years, the BC government has made progress in key areas like housing affordability, climate change, Indigenous relations and health care. The government’s ability to deliver meaningful change will depend on its capacity to balance addressing short-term priorities with pragmatic, long-term planning. In a province that has long been a bellwether for progressive policies in Canada, the new government has an opportunity to define a path forward and emerge from this tumultuous period stronger, more unified and more resilient.
Topics: Election commentary
You might also like:
Oct 31, 2023
Feb 14, 2022

Reading the policy tea leaves: What BC’s new cabinet appointments tell us about the government’s priorities

Nov 20, 2024
The 2024 living wage for Metro Vancouver has risen to $27.05 per hour, a 5.3% increase from last year. This significant increase highlights the region’s deepening affordability crisis fuelled by sky-high housing costs.
Living wages are also going up across the province as our new report shows.
While inflation has eased from record highs, essential costs like rent and food continue to rise faster than general inflation.
Government initiatives such as increases to key income-tested government benefits, ongoing child care affordability improvements and the roll-out of the Canadian Dental Care Plan have provided some relief. The savings, however, have been entirely consumed by soaring prices—especially for housing and food—leaving many households struggling to make ends meet.
What is a living wage?
The living wage is the hourly rate that each of two parents working full-time must earn to support a family of four in Metro Vancouver. It ensures a family can afford necessities, support the healthy development of their children, escape severe financial stress and participate in the social, civic and cultural lives of their communities.
People who work for low wages face impossible choices—buy groceries or heat the house, keep up with bills or pay the rent on time. The result can be spiraling debt, constant anxiety and long-term health problems. In many cases it means working long hours, often at multiple jobs, just to pay for basic necessities. Parents end up having little time to spend with their family, much less to help their children with school work or participate in community activities and we are all poorer for it.
The living wage is a powerful tool to ensure paid work results in a decent standard of living and enables a life that is about more than a constant struggle to get by. For low-wage workers, earning a living wage is a game changer. It means freedom from constant financial stress and an opportunity to plan for the future.
Gap between living wage and minimum wage widens
A strikingly large gap exists between the 2024 Metro Vancouver living wage and BC’s current minimum wage of $17.40 per hour.
The Metro Vancouver living wage has always been higher than BC’s minimum wage, but the gap narrowed considerably between 2018 and 2021 thanks to policy changes such as substantial minimum wage increases, the elimination of Medical Services Plan (MSP) premiums, introduction of the BC Family Benefit and significant new federal and provincial child care investments.
However, since 2021, soaring costs of living—especially for housing—have outpaced these affordability improvements. The gap has widened again, leaving many families earning less than it takes to get by.
Recent increases to the minimum wage have been welcome, but clearly far from sufficient and more must be done urgently to better support the nearly half a million workers in Metro Vancouver who earn less than the living wage (37% of all paid employees in the region).
What about other family types?
While the Metro Vancouver living wage calculation is based on the needs of two-parent families with young children, it is also meant to support all workers so that young adults are not discouraged from having children because of low wages and older workers have extra income as they age. This was the case when the BC living wage methodology was originally developed in 2008.
However, as governments have taken important steps to better support families with children in the last eight years, questions have arisen about whether this wage is sufficient for other groups.
This year, we produced preliminary estimates of living wages for two additional family types: a single working-aged adult and a single parent with a young child. These preliminary estimates suggest that the living wage for Metro Vancouver may not be sufficient to support a single person (who would need a wage of $27.36) or a single parent ($30.63).
However, in other communities with a lower cost of living, the living wage may be sufficient for other family types. Over the next year, we will refine these calculations in consultation with community partners, academic and policy experts, low-wage workers, unions and living wage employers to ensure a more inclusive methodology.
Getting to a living wage for all BC workers
The living wage movement calls on employers to pay wages sufficient to support families. And a growing number of BC employers are stepping up. Over 450 employers, including many small businesses, 10 municipalities, three First Nation Councils and three school boards have committed to pay their employees and contractors a living wage. In 2022, YVR became Canada’s first living wage airport.
However, voluntary action alone cannot solve BC’s serious affordability crisis. Coordinated government efforts at all levels are needed to both lift wages and lower the cost pressures people face so that all workers can thrive.
As a start, the BC government should raise the minimum wage to $20 per hour to narrow the gap between the minimum wage and the living wage. This would benefit over 400,000 people of all ages, working in every region of the province.
In addition to higher minimum wages, BC workers need pay equity legislation, stronger protections from wage theft and other workplace rights violations and meaningful access to collective bargaining so they can exercise the right to come together to negotiate better wages and benefits if they so choose.
The provincial government should also establish a living wage policy for both its direct employees and contractors and encourage all public bodies to follow suit (e.g., universities, hospitals, school boards).
Affordability depends not only on our earnings, but also on the benefits and government income supports we receive and the public services we can access.
More-generous government transfers can put money directly into the pockets of low- and middle-income households, as provincial and federal child benefits do for families with children.
Government benefits could do more to moderate the increase in the living wage amid a sharply rising cost of living. Many benefits, however, are clawed back steeply or eliminated at family income levels close to the Metro Vancouver living wage ($85,000 to $100,000 per year), which is considered too high for government support, yet in reality can barely provide a decent standard of living in BC’s largest urban centre.
Provincial and the federal governments must review all low-income transfers and credits regularly to ensure they are not clawed back at income levels that leave many families struggling.
In addition to direct government transfers, accessible public services and infrastructure can reduce out-of-pocket costs for families and thus lower the wage needed to afford a decent standard of living. These include affordable housing, universal access to low-cost child care, free transit for youth 18 and under and an expansion of publicly funded pharmacare and mental health services.
Without urgent government action to address the affordability crisis, the living wage will continue to climb. This means many BC employers will be unable to pay their workers a living wage, leading to thousands trapped with low wages and earning less than it actually costs to live in our province.
A coordinated effort to raise wages, expand public services and adjust government supports is essential to ensuring all BC workers can thrive, not just survive.
Help amplify the impact of this report by sharing it with your colleagues, friends and family!
P.S. We are on Bluesky now! 🦋 Please give us a follow to stay in touch. We’re also on Threads and Instagram.
Topics: Economy, Employment & labour
You might also like:
Nov 17, 2022
Living wage increases highlight urgent need to expand government efforts on housing affordability
Jun 9, 2022

Soaring cost of living—especially for housing—causes living wages to increase across BC

May 30, 2024
On June 1, BC’s minimum wage is going up to $17.40 per hour. Despite this welcome pay raise for the 240,000 lowest-paid workers in the province, the minimum wage remains over $3 per hour lower than the lowest living wage in BC ($20.64 in Dawson Creek). In BC’s largest cities, Metro Vancouver and Greater Victoria, the gap between the minimum wage and the living wage is $8 per hour.
New data obtained by CCPA-BC from Statistics Canada reveals that one third of BC’s paid employees earn less than the living wage in their community—more than 740,000 people.
Over 400,000 people earn less than $20 per hour, a wage lower than the lowest living wage calculated in the province. Even with the minimum wage increase, far too many workers will remain trapped in the low wage gap, earning less than it costs to live in our province. These workers face impossible choices—buy groceries or heat the house, keep up with bills or pay the rent on time. The result can be spiraling debt, constant anxiety and long-term health problems. It often means working long hours, sometimes at multiple jobs, just to pay for necessities.
BC is in a serious affordability crisis. Renters continue to face rapidly increasing rents, especially when they have to move. The combination of sky-high rents, elevated food prices and low incomes explains the surge in demand for charitable services, with increasing numbers of workers forced to turn to food and rent banks.
The living wage is the hourly rate that full-time workers need to earn to support a family. It covers the necessities, offers an escape from severe financial stress and allows participation in the social, civic and cultural lives of their communities. It is based on the actual costs of living in a particular community and affords a decent, if still very modest, standard of living without the extras many of us take for granted. The living wage does not cover credit card, loan or other debt payments, savings for retirement, or for a downpayment on a home or the extra costs of caring for disabled, seriously ill or elderly family members. Across BC, the living wage ranges between $20.64 in Dawson Creek and $26.51 in Clayoquot Sound.
We examined the over 400,000 British Columbians who earn less than $20 per hour and the 650,000 people who earn less than the living wage in seven of the province’s largest urban areas using data obtained through a custom tabulation from Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey.
Our analysis reveals large wage inequalities based on gender and race in BC. Shockingly, half of the racialized women working in Metro Vancouver earn less than the region’s living wage of $25.68 per hour.
Who earns less than $20 per hour in BC?
413,100 BC workers earned less than $20 per hour in 2023 (18% of all paid employees in the province, or nearly 1 in 5).
The majority of workers earning less than $20 per hour are women.
244,700 workers earning less than $20 per hour are women (59%).
The majority of workers earning less than $20 per hour are 25 or older, not teenagers and young adults as often claimed.
183,800 workers earning less than $20 per hour are between 15 and 24 years old (44%).
229,400 workers earning less than $20 per hour are 25 or older (56%).
123,400 workers earning less than $20 per hour are between 25 and 44 years old (30%).
81,500 workers earning less than $20 per hour are between 45 and 64 years old (20%).
24,500 workers earning less than $20 per hour are 65 or older (6%).
More than half of workers earning less than $20 per hour are racialized although only 38% of paid employees in British Columbia are racialized.
213,800 workers earning less than $20 per hour are racialized (52%).
Racialized workers are more likely to be paid less than $20 per hour than their counterparts (22% of all racialized workers earn less than $20 per hour compared to only 15% of non-racialized workers)
6% of workers earning less than $20 per hour identify as Indigenous (22,900 people).
Low-wage work is widespread across the province. In most large urban communities, roughly 18% of all workers earn less than $20 per hour with the notable exception of Nanaimo and Chilliwack-Hope (Statistics Canada designation), where a larger share of workers earn less than $20 per hour and Greater Victoria, where a smaller share of workers earn less than $20 per hour.
Share and number of workers earning less than $20 per hour by city
Looking at BC’s seven economic regions, low-wage work (under $20/hour) was more prevalent in the Thompson/Okanagan and the Northeast than in other regions (20% of workers). The two regions with the lowest share of low wage workers were the Kootenays and the North Coast/Nechako (15% of workers).
Share and number of workers earning less than $20 per hour by economic region
Of course, $20 per hour is less than the living wage anywhere in BC and many more workers earn $20 per hour or more but still less than the living wage in their community. Across BC, more than 740,000 people earn less than the local living wage (32% or one in three workers).
Who earns less than the living wage in Metro Vancouver?
Nearly half a million workers in Metro Vancouver – 495,600 or 37% of all paid employees in the region – earn less than the living wage of $25.68 per hour.
The majority of workers earning less than $25.68 per hour in Metro Vancouver are women.
283,100 workers earning less than $25.68 per hour are women (57%).
The majority of workers earning less than $25.68 per hour in Metro Vancouver are 25 or older.
163,600 workers earning less than $25.68 per hour are between 15 and 24 years old (33%).
331,900 workers earning less than $25.68 per hour are 25 or older (67%).
184,900 workers earning less than $25.68 per hour are between 25 and 44 years old (37%).
125,000 workers earning less than $25.68 per hour are between 45 and 64 years old (25%).
22,000 workers earning less than $25.68 per hour are 65 or older (4%).
Nearly two thirds of Metro Vancouver workers earning less than $25.68 per hour in Metro Vancouver are racialized although only 55% of paid employees are racialized.
317,200 workers earning less than $25.68 per hour in Metro Vancouver are racialized (64%).
Racialized workers are more likely to be paid less than $25.68 per hour than their counterparts (44% of all racialized workers earn less than the living wage compared to only 30% of non-racialized workers)
Half of all racialized women working in Metro Vancouver earn less than the living wage of $25.68 per hour.
49% of racialized women working in Metro Vancouver earn less than the living wage, 181,500 people. In contrast, 38% of racialized men earn less than the living wage, as do 35% of white women and 25% of white men.
BC can and should close the gap between the minimum and living wages. Here’s how:
Despite the minimum wage increase to $17.40 per hour, a strikingly large gap remains between the minimum wage and living wages in communities across BC. This gap has grown significantly in the last few years, leaving hundreds of thousands of workers struggling to make ends meet in every part of the province. Closing this gap is key to address the affordability crisis that workers face across BC.
Over 400 BC businesses have stepped up to be living wage employers, paying both direct and contract employees a living wage. We commend these employers for doing their part to reduce working poverty and encourage others to follow their lead.
However, voluntary action alone cannot solve the affordability crisis. The BC government needs to take steps to both lift wages and lower the cost pressures people face so that all workers can thrive.
The large gap between the living and the minimum wages represents a challenge for everyone. For employers who want to do the right thing, paying living wages that are much higher than the minimum wage their competitors pay can be challenging, which unfortunately incentivizes competition based on low wages.
A strikingly large gap remains between the minimum wage and living wages in communities across BC.
The BC government should raise the minimum wage to $20 per hour to narrow the gap between the minimum wage and the living wage, benefitting over 400,000 people of all ages, working in every region of the province. A $20 minimum wage would also help to reduce BC’s large gender and racial pay inequities.
Boosting the earnings of low wage workers will stimulate the local economy because these workers are likely to spend almost all of their extra income in their communities, for example, supporting local businesses by eating out once in a while and participating more actively in community activities.
The BC government should also follow the example of many businesses and municipalities and become a living wage employer, embedding living wage policies in its own procurement systems.
In addition to higher minimum wages, BC workers need pay equity legislation, stronger protections from wage theft and other workplace rights violations, and meaningful access to collective bargaining so they can exercise the right to come together to negotiate better wages and benefits if they so choose.
Of course, at $20 per hour the minimum wage would remain lower than the lowest living wage in any BC community, and living wages will continue to outpace inflation unless we get a handle on runaway rent costs, the most expensive item in most household budgets.
Recently, the federal and provincial governments have made efforts to address the shortage of homes, especially affordable ones. Public investments to create affordable housing must be scaled up and coupled with stronger rent controls because easing the overall housing shortage will take time and current sky-high rent increases between tenancies are putting an increasing number of lower-income renters at risk of homelessness (read more in Time to scale up: next steps for non-market housing in BC and Vacancy control: taking the next step on housing affordability).
Additionally, BC needs to tackle the growing issue of food unaffordability and food insecurity, for example through an affordable food strategy combined with more generous income supports to alleviate financial pressure on low- and middle-income earners.
An expansion of BC’s transit network to provide publicly operated, low-cost transit options in rural areas, an inter-community express bus service and free transit to youth 18 and under would significantly reduce transportation costs for many households (read more in Connecting BC: A 10-year vision for public transit throughout BC). This would build on recent public investments in services that make life more affordable for everyone, such as expanding access to low-cost child care, and the introduction of a public dental care plan and pharmacare.
Far too many workers struggle to make ends meet. As the next provincial election looms, it is imperative that all political parties put forward tangible strategies in response to the affordability crisis that workers continue to face across BC.
Regional fact sheets
Click on the regions below to download their respective fact sheets:
Metro Vancouver
Greater Victoria
Kelowna
Nanaimo
Prince George
Abbotsford-Mission
Chilliwack Hope
This research is co-published by Living Wage for Families BC. Funding was also received from CUPE Metro.
It is also part of Understanding Precarity in BC (UP-BC), a research and public engagement initiative investigating precarious work and multi-dimensional precarity in British Columbia. UP-BC is jointly led by Simon Fraser University’s Morgan Centre for Labour Research and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives BC Office, and brings together four BC universities, 26 community-based organizations and more than 80 academic and community researchers and collaborators. The partnership is supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). For more information about UP-BC visit understandingprecarity.ca.
Topics: Economy, Employment & labour, Poverty, inequality & welfare

Trapped in the wage gap

Jun 18, 2024
Source: made using Canva stock images
On June 3, 2024, Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced new migrant care worker pilot programs, which take important steps to address some of the concerns raised by workers and advocates. Unfortunately, Canada has a long track record of broken promises to migrant care workers and it is not clear how the new pilot programs would accomplish what they set out to do when previous rounds of pilots did not.
When the federal Home Care Provider Pilot and Home Support Worker Pilot programs were launched in 2019, they were supposed to provide a “clear, direct pathway to permanent residence”.
Unfortunately, the pilot programs that ended on June 17, 2024 have largely not delivered on their promises, failing thousands of migrant care workers and their families in the process.
Far from offering a clear or direct pathway to permanent residence (PR), these programs have achieved the opposite. Migrant care workers find themselves ensnared in a slow, unnecessarily convoluted bureaucratic maze. Even after years of living and working in Canada, a path to PR remains unclear for most who applied.
Amid the changes to the migrant care worker programs since 2014, including the introduction of two rounds of pilot programs, many care workers have been unable to transition into these pilot programs due to shifting program and PR application requirements. As a result, many migrant care workers have fallen out of regular status and become undocumented.
Unfortunately, the pilot programs have largely not delivered on their promises.
According to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s (IRCC) most-recent announcement, only 5,700 care workers and their families have become permanent residents in the program’s five-year existence. The pilot programs were supposed to provide a path to PR for 5,500 workers per year or 27,500 workers over their five-year span.
The announcement also indicates that approximately 600 applications remain in the current backlog from the Live-in-Caregiver Program, which closed ten years ago. This means 600 families, including many workers’ children, have been in limbo for over a decade. The children of these workers age out of the dependent category for immigration purposes at age 22, which can be devastating for separated families who lose hope of a long-awaited reunification. While these migrant care workers attend to Canadian families, they cannot physically be with their own.
The IRCC has much work to do to ensure the most-recent announcement is not simply the latest in a series of failed pilot programs. After all, in 2019, the announcement also sounded like an improvement, promising permanent residence to 5,500 workers per year with a processing time of 12 months. Five years later, those promises have not been delivered upon.
Unprocessed Applications, Long Wait Times
Our investigation into the 2019-2024 federal care worker pilot programs uncovered startling delays within Canada’s immigration system. Despite committing to a 12-month processing service standard at the outset, data accessed through Access to Information requests reveal that the IRCC has processed a shockingly small percentage of PR applications submitted by care workers and their dependents. Of the applications received between the launch of the programs on June 18, 2019 to January 31, 2023, only 6,125 out of 37,568—just 16%—were processed by March 21, 2023 (see Table 1).
In addition to slow processing, these pilot programs had relatively high rates of refusal. IRCC data show that of all processed PR applications as of March 21, 2023 (excluding withdrawals), only 57% were approved.
Based on data supplied to us from the IRCC, from January 1, 2019 to January 31, 2023, only 2,581 PR applications were approved under the care workers pilot programs, representing about 7% of the 37,568 applications received. In June 2024, the IRCC announced that as of April 30, 2024, it granted permanent residency to “nearly 5,700” workers and their families across the five years of the pilot programs. This figure is astonishingly low, amounting to just one-fifth of the annual 5,500 application cap initially proposed upon announcement of the 2019-2024 pilots. Both numbers suggest that the IRCC has consistently failed to meet its targets and promises.
Not only was the number of approvals extraordinarily small, but processing times also lengthened each year. The IRCC currently reports an average wait time of 31-36 months for care worker PR, about triple the target processing time of 12 months set for these pilot programs. The sole exception is applications submitted under the Home Child Care Provider Pilot by workers who had already completed the required months of work experience at the time of application. These workers can expect an average 26 months processing time.
The wait times for care workers are currently longer than those for any other economic class of immigration applications with the exception of the start-up visa program (37 months) and the Quebec business class program for investors and entrepreneurs (48 months).
The result is an overwhelming majority of care workers who applied did not see PR within the lifetime of the pilots.
“So, I’m confused when I will get PR. It’s been so long. It took three years. And they said processing is sometimes 12 months, and then it became 24 [months] and then it became 36 [months] and now it’s the three-year anniversary this August for the application. Today is the 37th month of my [submitted] PR [application] and now it’s difficult because…it’s very limited what you’re able to do here if you’re just a live-in caregiver.”
The incredibly low processing rates of PR applications, coupled with the relatively high rate of denials and prolonged wait times starkly contradict the consistent demands of care worker activists for permanent residency for these workers. This situation also falls far short of the “clear direct pathway to permanent residence” that the federal government promised in 2019.
As of January 2023, over 30,000 people remained in “inventory”. As the government celebrates another new pilot program, we still do not know what will happen to those left in processing limbo or those who have become undocumented.
Care Workers Still Caught in a Familiar Cycle of Exploitation
The devaluation of migrant women care workers can be traced through white supremacist systems of “empire settlement” (Tungohan 2023, 22). White European women were granted permanent residency for their care work in the early twentieth century, but beginning in the 1950s, Caribbean and Asian women have largely been denied this recognition and security, entering Canada temporarily to perform work deemed “low-skilled” and low-waged.
Despite the government’s promise to offer permanent residency to migrant care workers applying to the new pilot programs, there currently remains a large number of unprocessed applications from migrant care workers who will continue to be drawn from the Global South and classified as temporary labour. Canada’s care worker programs have largely drawn from the Philippines in the past two decades. Exacerbated by long PR processing times, these workers face chronic uncertainty, prolonged family separation, continual precarious employment and economic insecurity.
Our investigation found that despite the elimination of the live-in requirement in 2014, many migrant care workers who arrived under the 2019 pilot programs are still economically compelled to reside with their employers.
In regions like BC’s Lower Mainland, where the median wage for these workers hovers barely above minimum wage and rents are sky-high, workers have little choice but to live with their employers and often find themselves trapped in cycles of underpayment and mistreatment. This is reminiscent of the former Live-In Caregiver Program that care worker advocates and their allies fought so hard to overhaul. For example, workers told us about employers promising to meet the legal wage requirements on paper but paid less behind closed doors, and contract violations including not being appropriately compensated for overtime or being asked to do unpaid overtime.
“I try to find a family [to employ me] and I talk to many family… It’s hard when they offered me, they want to hire me but you know what? They say like, ‘If I hire you…I’m going to show to the government like minimum wage but I can pay you less than minimum wage.’ So tricky.”
Care workers who are fired or who quit abusive employment told us they have found it challenging to secure new positions under fair conditions that recognize their worker rights.
The enforcement of employment standards—ensuring workers are paid at least the minimum wage for all their hours of work, that overtime work is paid appropriately, that working hours are not excessive and that other basic rights are followed—is notoriously lax in this sector. Without adequate enforcement, employment standards violations often go unnoticed due to the isolated nature of the work in a private home, the power imbalance between employers and employees, the lack of education among care worker employers about their responsibilities and the precarious immigration status of the workers.
Two Paths Forward
Combined, painfully slow processing times and persistently poor working conditions underscore the systematic failure of Canada’s 2019 care worker pilot programs. The recently announced 2025 migrant care worker pilot programs could be a major step forward in eliminating PR application barriers, but it remains to be seen whether these changes will produce equitable improvements or if these programs will continue, by design, to abandon care workers.
Canadians’ need for at-home care is only increasing with our aging population. In light of the failures of the last ten years of migrant care worker pilot programs, we offer the following recommendations to ensure the failures of the past are not repeated for the newly proposed programs. Our recommendations align with the government’s stated intention to provide a one-step PR upon-arrival process—an approach we strongly support as both necessary and overdue.
1) Expediting processing PR applications for all care workers, and their family members, who applied for PR through any prior care worker program.
2) Ensure that applicants to the new migrant care worker pilot programs are processed and approved in a timely manner, before arrival in Canada.
3) Provide PR to migrant care workers who have become undocumented due to the overly stringent and/or shifting PR application requirements over the course of their time providing care work in Canada.
4) Coordinate with provincial governments to improve enforcement of employment standards and protections for migrant care workers.
5) Transition the migrant care worker pilot programs to a permanent immigration program by 2025, preventing changing immigration policies from unduly burdening migrant care workers.
Granting permanent status upon arrival for all migrant workers recognizes the decades-long call from organizations like the Vancouver Committee for Domestic Workers’ and Caregivers’ Rights (CDWCR), Toronto’s Caregiver Connections Education and Support Organization (CCESO), Migrant Workers Alliance for Change (MWAC), Migrante Canada, Gabriela-Ontario and other migrant-led organizations in the cross-Canada migrant justice alliance called the Migrant Rights Network (MRN). Referred to as “status for all,” this type of immigration reform is the most-effective policy change to reduce precarity for migrant care workers while enhancing stability and availability of valued workers to meet important labour needs in Canada.
As the federal government looks to implement its new migrant care worker pilot programs strategy, we call upon the IRCC to meaningfully follow through by implementing the recommendations of the Migrant Rights Network and live up to its own “commitment to improve the lives of caregivers and their families who come from around the world to care for our loved ones.”
This brief is based on the research project, “Exploring the Intersections of Immigration Policy, Racism, and Precarity for Migrant Care Workers”, undertaken as part of the Understanding Precarity in BC Partnership. We analyzed thousands of pages of IRCC internal documents and statistics to understand the operational dynamics behind the federal care worker pilot programs. Requests for 2023-2024 statistics were not fulfilled by IRCC in time for this publication. The qualitative research portion of the project included interviews with 30 care workers in BC to understand their experiences with the care worker pilot programs. We found that not only had old problems familiar from the now-defunct live-in caregiver program persisted, but new ones emerged. Our full research report is forthcoming in summer 2024.
Noemi Rosario Martinez, Rincy Dominic Calamba, Kassandra Cordero, Alice Mũrage and Cenen Bagon contributed to this article.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful for research funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada through the Understanding Precarity in BC partnership grant.
Further Reading
Caregivers’ Action Centre. 2020. “Behind Closed Doors: Exposing Migrant Care Worker Exploitation during COVID-19.”
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. 2019. “Canada Caring for Caregivers.” News release. June 15, 2019.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. 2024. “Canada announces new pilot programs to support caregivers and Canadian families, intends to make the caregivers program permanent.” News release. June 3, 2024.
Tungohan, Ethel. 2023. Care Activism: Migrant Domestic Workers, Movement-Building, and Communities of Care. First Edition. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
This article is part of Understanding Precarity in BC (UP-BC), a research and public engagement initiative investigating precarious work and multi-dimensional precarity in British Columbia. UP-BC is jointly led by Simon Fraser University’s Morgan Centre for Labour Research and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives BC Office, and brings together four BC universities, 26 community-based organizations and more than 80 academic and community researchers and collaborators. The partnership is supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). For more information about UP-BC visit understandingprecarity.ca.
Topics: Economy, Employment & labour, Immigrants & refugees, Law & legal issues, Racism & racial justice, UP–BC, Women

Canada’s broken promises to migrant care workers

Jun 27, 2024
When BC first introduced a carbon tax in 2008 the point was to apply it to all emissions causing climate change, but start at a low rate and increase it over time. Yet, as the carbon tax has increased for households at the gas pump and to heat homes, large industrial players—including the oil and gas industry that is causing climate change—have steadily evaded their carbon tax.
When the NDP government came into power in 2017 and committed to raising BC’s carbon tax it made special provisions for industry. Their increased carbon taxes would be fully returned to best-in-class companies and through supporting projects advancing industrial decarbonization.
As of April 2024, a new system—output-based pricing system (OBPS)—is in place. The name is somewhat confusing—it is not about output but emissions—but the key point is that it is a system of managing carbon pricing for big polluters by exempting a portion of emissions from taxation. In doing so, companies still have an incentive to reduce emissions “on the margin” but the exemptions preserve the “competitiveness” of operations vis-a-vis other jurisdictions.
Large industrial players have steadily evaded their carbon tax.
Why we should be concerned about the competitiveness of the oil and gas industry, whose business model involves overheating the planet, is never discussed.
This new system exempts 65% of industrial emissions from the carbon tax. In other words, the oil and gas industry will only have to pay the carbon tax on just over one-third of its carbon emissions. Higher exemption rates, up to 95% of emissions, have been specified for a few areas like aluminum and cement because their emissions are from industrial processes not burning fossil fuels.
Of what’s left to pay in carbon tax, up to half can instead be met through loopholes called “compliance mechanisms.” Companies can use banked credits from previous years, credits purchased from other companies, and most problematically, carbon offsets.
Carbon offset projects are a license to pollute. Companies can spend much less (than they would otherwise pay in carbon tax) on cheaper projects that allegedly reduce emissions elsewhere, including forest conservation and agriculture projects. Some of these reflect worthy objectives, but it’s not clear that they actually reduce emissions as claimed.
Indeed, offset projects have proven to be a form of greenwashing. A decade ago, BC’s Auditor General slammed the government for claiming offsets for projects that would have happened anyway through bona fide emissions reductions. A more recent inquiry into global offset projects found that a large share of corporate projects were “likely junk.”
On the plus side, the ability of large industries in BC to use compliance mechanisms will drop from 50% of carbon tax owed this year to 40% next year and 30% in 2026. And the system is designed to get tougher on polluters over time, through a “tightening rate” of 1% annually that lowers the emission limit for each company before the carbon tax must be paid.
Exactly how the tightening rate will be implemented is not stated, but presumably, the 65% of emissions exempted this year will then drop to 64% next year and so forth. Fifteen years from now, one-half (50%) of emissions will still be exempted. So the regime does get tougher on emissions but takes its time doing so.
Offset projects have proven to be a form of greenwashing.
The new BC system was inspired by a similar federal system that has been in place since 2018. BC industrial emitters were seeking to join the federal system but seemingly have gotten a better deal with a “made in BC” OBPS. The specs of the BC system were substantially watered down relative to the initial proposals tabled last year.
Indeed, they dovetail with a recent story in the National Post about a former NDP staffer working for TC Energy bragging about the company’s “influence tactics” with senior BC civil servants. According to the Post, “the company’s efforts “dramatically” influenced BC’s carbon-tax rate adjustment in February 2023 and ultimately halved the operation costs of the province’s carbon tax on its projects.”
Gas production numbers also speak volumes. There was a 44% increase in BC’s gas production between 2017 and 2023, and this will rise even more when the new LNG Canada export facility opens up next year in Kitimat.
The BC government must stop pandering to lobbying by the oil and gas industry.
It’s no surprise that big polluting companies are not happy about annual carbon tax increases. But it is unfair that British Columbians must pay the full carbon tax when the oil and gas industry—whose production is responsible for more than one-quarter of BC carbon emissions—gets a carbon tax break.
The new system will also have a negative impact on BC’s carbon tax revenues. In 2024/25, carbon tax revenues will be about $500 million lower than they would have been under the old system. This revenue loss means fewer dollars to pay for climate action.
These changes point to a BC government that is far too cozy with the oil and gas industry. And they make no sense given the urgency of acting on climate change. Disasters in 2021 alone caused between $11 and 16 billion in damages to the BC economy.
If BC really wants to be a climate leader, the BC government must stop pandering to lobbying by the oil and gas industry that is causing climate change and act in the interests of all British Columbians.
Topics: Climate change & energy policy
You might also like:
Aug 3, 2022
Jul 25, 2023

How BC’s oil and gas industry sidestepped carbon pricing

Jul 23, 2024
Provincial governments made substantial changes to BC’s personal tax system over the past 25 years. Both the BC Liberal government that took power in 2001 and the BC NDP government that took power in 2017 reshaped the tax system—but with very different effects on inequality and fairness.
In a fair tax system, people would pay based on their ability to contribute—the higher your income, the higher your overall tax rate. When that doesn’t happen, we allow high levels of economic inequality to take hold, which hurts economic growth, distorts our democracy and is linked to worse performance on a wide range of health and social outcomes. Moreover, failing to impose higher tax rates on the increasingly concentrated income and wealth shares of the rich leaves money on the table, depriving governments of revenues for critical public services and infrastructure.
The good news is that tax changes enacted since the BC NDP formed government in 2017 have benefitted low- and middle-income earners the most, while the richest 1% saw their provincial tax rate increase. While this is an improvement in tax fairness, the system remains less fair than it was in 2000.
In contrast, tax changes from 2000-2016 under the previous BC Liberal government overwhelmingly benefitted the richest 1% of British Columbians, who saw their tax rate fall sharply, while modest- and middle-income households benefited the least. That is, tax fairness was diminished.
Despite the progress made on tax fairness in BC since 2017, we are still living in an era of extreme economic inequality. The richest 1% control 25% of the wealth in Canada, CEO pay has hit new heights, and the 87 richest families hold more wealth than the bottom 12 million Canadians combined. In BC, while the richest 1% saw their total tax rate rise after 2017, it remains much lower than it was in 2000.
Further tax measures aimed at the rich are needed to reduce this inequality, and added revenue could help fund badly needed public services and infrastructure at a time when BC is facing big challenges.
How we crunched the numbers
This report tracks changes to BC taxes paid by households, including income tax, Provincial Sales Tax (PST), Medical Services Plan premiums (which were eliminated in 2020), carbon tax, tobacco tax and property tax. I compare the effective tax rate—tax paid as a share of total income—for BC households at different income levels at different points in time.
In the analysis, BC households are divided into 10 income groups—called deciles—from the poorest to the richest 10% (based on their total income, which includes employment income, investment income and government benefits like income assistance and child benefits).1 I also break down the top decile so we can see what’s happening for the very richest 1% and those just below them on the income scale.
I compare tax rates across two periods: between 2016 (the last full calendar year before the BC NDP took office) and 2023; and between 2000 and 2016 (covering tax changes under the BC Liberals).
This analysis uses a Statistics Canada tool that captures what households actually pay in taxes after credits and deductions: the Social Policy Simulation Database and Model (SPSD/M).2 Taxes not paid directly by households, such as corporate taxes, are not part of the model. For example, large tax cuts for corporations in the 2000s (and recent small increases) are not analyzed. Since corporate ownership is concentrated among the affluent, corporate taxes tend to improve the fairness of the tax system. In this respect, this analysis likely understates the erosion of tax fairness from 2000-2016 (when corporate rates were cut) and the improvements to tax fairness from 2016-2023 (when they slightly increased).
Low and middle-income earners benefit most, richest 1% paying more
Under changes to BC’s personal tax system since 2017, the vast majority of households have seen their effective provincial tax rate fall, while only the top 1% have seen the rate rise (see Figure 1).
For the bottom 99% of households, on average, the effective provincial tax rate (total taxes paid as a share of income) fell from 12% to 10.3%, whereas for the richest 1% it rose from 10% to 11.1%. As Figure 1 shows, the further down the income ladder we go, the larger the reduction in the tax rate, indicating improved tax fairness.
One of the key policy changes driving reduced effective tax rates in the middle of the distribution was the elimination of Medical Services Plan (MSP) premiums in 2020. MSP premiums were a highly regressive health care tax in place for decades—and significantly increased during the 2000s—which cost individuals up to $900 a year and families up to $1,800. These premiums were charged at a flat monthly rate per person, meaning the higher your income, the smaller the share of income in MSP you paid (except those with very low incomes who received assistance to offset the premiums).3
Increases to the Climate Action Tax Credit were another factor that decreased the effective tax rate of lower-income earners over this period, as was the creation of the BC Family Benefit for families with children.4
In turn, the creation of new top income tax brackets—16.8% on individual taxable income over $181,232 and 20.5% over $253,752—account for the increased effective tax rate we see for the richest 1% of households.5
Another notable area of tax policy change in BC relates to property and real estate. However, limitations to the Statistics Canada data and model mean that property taxes are only partially captured in this analysis. The SPSD/M model includes household property taxes paid on principal residences but not on other real estate holdings.6 This analysis therefore only partially captures the effects of the creation of the Speculation and Vacancy Tax and the provincial School Tax bracket on properties over $3 million. In this respect, the results presented here may underestimate the improvements to tax fairness since 2016, since these new real estate tax measures are narrowly targeted at more affluent landowners who own very expensive properties or own secondary properties left vacant. Indeed, land and property wealth are highly concentrated among the wealthiest households in British Columbia to begin with.7
In contrast, the changes to BC’s tax system between 2000-2016 show the opposite pattern. Large across-the-board income tax cuts in the early 2000s benefited the top 1% most and middle- and modest-income earners least (see Figure 2).8 Notably, these tax cuts were paired with deep cuts to public services, harming all those who rely on them—especially the most vulnerable.
What about people whose MSP premiums were covered by their employer?
Before the elimination of MSP premiums, roughly 40% of British Columbians had them covered by an employer, according to the best available estimate. For this group, the elimination of MSP premiums would not have translated into immediate pocketbook savings even though it constitutes a cut in their total provincial tax bill. Of course, these workers still benefit from never having to pay MSP premiums again including when their employment situation changes.
The upshot is that Figure 1 above represents an upper estimate of the size of the 2016-2020 savings from tax changes since it assigns the full savings from eliminating MSP premiums to households. But the share of the gains shown flowing to modest- and middle-income households may actually be greater since we expect that employers in lower-wage sectors were less likely to cover MSP premiums. In this respect, the analysis here may underestimate how much eliminating MSP improved tax fairness.
The changing landscape of tax fairness in BC
Looking back at the state of BC’s personal tax system in 2000, it was modestly progressive at the top end, with the top decile (and top 1%) paying a larger share of income in taxes than households in the middle (see Figure 3). By 2016 this progressivity vanished, with middle-income earners paying a slightly higher effective rate than those at the very top. Finally, by 2023, this change was partly reversed, with the top 1% again paying a modestly higher effective rate than those in the middle of the distribution.
In all three years, the model shows the poorest deciles paying a higher effective tax rate than middle or upper deciles, as these households pay a significant share of their (low) incomes in commodity taxes like the PST. These types of taxes take up a bigger share of the income of households in the lower-income deciles (see Figure 4). However, the model results in the bottom deciles should also be interpreted with caution, as their tax bills are composed largely of these commodity taxes, which are the least precisely modelled parts of the SPSD/M.9 Generally, a bigger role in our tax system for taxes tied to income and wealth—and a smaller role for commodity taxes—would help improve tax fairness.10
Notably, each period of time examined above saw a major cut to effective tax rates across almost the entire income distribution (with the exception of the top 1% in the most recent period). Every income decile—including the top 1%—was paying a lower effective tax rate in 2023 than they did in 2000.
In fact, in 2023, the richest 1% were paying an effective tax rate of 11.1%—substantially down from 14.4% in 2000 (since the addition of two new top tax brackets after 2017 only partly undid the huge tax cuts that the richest received in the early 2000s).11
But these two sets of tax cuts differed in some important ways. First, as already discussed, changes between 2000-2016 disproportionately benefited the richest 1%, while changes from 2016-2023 resulted in the largest benefits flowing to low- and middle-income earners and the richest having part of their previous tax cuts reversed.
Second, the big personal tax cuts of 2000-2016 were not offset by increases in other revenue sources like corporate taxes (which were cut, too) but rather “paid for” through devastating cuts to public services —and through increases to the deeply unfair MSP premiums.
Tax changes since 2017 have been a different story. While eliminating MSP premiums was one of the largest personal tax cuts in the province’s history, this loss of revenue was partly offset by the introduction of an Employer Health Tax (applying to businesses with payrolls over $1 million).12 This followed the lead of many other provinces that had long since replaced individual health premiums with payroll taxes. Other new revenue-raising measures included a one-point increase to the corporate tax rate, the new top income tax brackets and taxes on vacant and high-end real estate.
As a result of these revenue measures, it’s been possible for the current provincial government to lower the effective tax rate of most BC households and improve the fairness of the personal tax system while also reinvesting in—rather than cutting—public services like health care, education and child care.
Tax the rich to reduce inequality and invest in the common good
Still, much more action is needed to improve tax fairness and tackle extreme inequality, as well as to raise revenue that can be reinvested in vital public services and infrastructure. In fact, BC is still investing a smaller share of our economic pie in the public good than we once did. As a share of our total economic output, provincial government revenue remains substantially lower than it was a quarter-century ago, falling from 21.4% of GDP in 1999/00 to a projected 18.9% in 2023/24. Similarly, provincial operating spending fell from 21.5% of GDP to 20.4% over the same period.13
To improve tax fairness and raise more revenue, obvious places to start would be tax increases focused on large corporations, wealthy landowners and those with the highest incomes. We face big challenges in BC—unaffordable housing, a strained health care system, toxic drug deaths and climate crisis (among others). Taxing the rich to invest in the common good can help us meet those challenges head-on.
Footnotes
1 We use deciles rather than fixed nominal income groups because they provide a more appropriate comparison over long periods of time since inflation and real wage growth gradually move family incomes upward. For reference, the decile thresholds in dollars for the 2023 year are provided in the Technical Appendix. [Back to the top]
2 For more details, see the Technical Appendix. [Back to the top]
3 See the next section for a discussion of the implications of some MSP premiums being covered by employers. [Back to the top]
4 In this analysis, these items are included in total income as government transfers instead of being subtracted from the total amount of taxes paid, since they are unconditional transfers. They can reduce effective tax rates by increasing the denominator (income) rather than reducing the numerator (taxes). [Back to the top]
5 These income tax bracket thresholds are for the current 2024 tax year (they rise each year to adjust for inflation). [Back to the top]
6 To estimate property taxes paid, the model uses Statistics Canada’s Survey of Household Spending, which encompasses the full property tax bill for principal residences including both provincial and municipal portions. [Back to the top]
7 Tax fairness with respect to the wealth distribution is distinct from fairness with respect to the income distribution, but both are important. The SPSD/M model used here only allows us to examine income deciles. [Back to the top]
8 The bottom decile also had one of the larger percentage decreases in taxes, though this is as a share of their very low incomes (and as a result, in dollar terms the benefits were very small). Results for the poorest 10% should be interpreted with caution. This group’s tax bills are composed almost entirely of commodity taxes, which are the least precisely modeled parts of the SPSD/M and may be particularly sensitive to changes in the System of National Accounts that affect commodity tax comparability before and after 2009. See the Technical Appendix. [Back to the top]
9 Plus, some families in the bottom deciles have low declared incomes because of capital losses (in investments or small business) while actually having higher disposable incomes and thus are not truly poor. [Back to the top]
10 However, commodity taxes that would otherwise be regressive can be made much fairer with credits or rebates that flow disproportionately to lower-income households, as seen with the Climate Action Tax Credit. [Back to the top]
11 If the modelling in this analysis was able to incorporate the full effects of the Speculation and Vacancy tax and School Tax on properties worth over $3 million (on properties other than principal residences, which are already captured), this might offset those cuts a little further but would be unlikely to close the gap. [Back to the top]
12 Some businesses may have tried to pass on this new employer-paid tax to their employees in the form of lower wages (especially if they weren’t already covering the now-eliminated MSP premiums for their employees), but this is difficult to measure and would depend on labour market conditions. Low-wage employers would have been constrained in their ability to do so over this period of time due to significant increases in the minimum wage. Businesses with payrolls less than $1 million are exempt from the Employer Health Tax. [Back to the top]
13 This is one strong indication that BC has the economic capacity to raise additional revenue and increase investments. As the credit rating agency Moody’s has noted repeatedly, the province has the “flexibility to raise taxes if necessary while still remaining competitive with other jurisdictions.” [Back to the top]
Topics: Economy, Provincial budget & finance, Taxes
You might also like:
May 1, 2024

BC’s tax system has become fairer since 2017, richest 1% paying more

Jul 29, 2024
Sheila Malcolmson, Minister of Social Development and Poverty Reduction. © BC Government.
Last week, the BC Government released the first update to the Poverty Reduction Strategy since the inaugural plan in 2019. As organizations long committed to ending poverty in BC, we hoped to see plans for how the government would achieve the targets that they set in the spring—reducing the overall poverty rate in the province by 60% over the next 10 years. Unfortunately, the 2024 Poverty Reduction Strategy is less of a strategy and more of a report card on the work already happening.
Context
CCPA-BC has been advocating for a comprehensive poverty reduction strategy in BC since 2008 and co-founded the BC Poverty Reduction Coalition (BC PRC) in 2009 to push the province to develop one. CCPA-BC is also a co-founder of Living Wage for Families BC, a program born out of work on reducing child poverty.
British Columbia was one of the last provinces to implement such a strategy, with its first poverty reduction plan introduced in 2019. The Poverty Reduction Strategy Act mandates the government to develop and update a poverty reduction plan every five years and produce annual reports on the strategy’s progress, overseen by an independent advisory committee.
What has been achieved to date
It is important to recognize and give credit for the meaningful changes that have lifted many individuals out of poverty and kept others from slipping into poverty over the past five years.
These include reforms to archaic and stigmatizing welfare rules that delayed and denied access to assistance, the introduction of free post-secondary education for former foster care children, the Get On Board program, which provides free transit to kids 12 and under, improvements in access to legal aid, substantial investments in child care affordability, increases to the minimum wage, and notable increases in the BC Family Benefit and the BC Climate Action Tax credit for single individuals. The list of accomplishments in the report is extensive, and the impact of these changes should not be understated.
New targets
In March 2024, the government announced new targets to reduce poverty by 60%, child poverty by 75% and a new target to reduce seniors’ poverty by 50% by 2034. We are glad to see the new focus on seniors’ poverty and attention paid to what will surely be an increasingly pressing issue.
Although we welcome these targets, they should have been more ambitious with clearer short-term targets alongside long-term goals. We advocated for a strategy that would ensure all residents of the province have incomes and supports that reach at least 75% of the official poverty line. Unfortunately, the 2024 strategy does not include any concrete plans to reach this bar.
Statistics Canada data shows that half of Canadians living in poverty are in deep poverty, yet there remains no target for reducing deep poverty in the province. The strategy also lacks attention to single individuals without children who represent the largest group experiencing poverty.
Further, the rates for social assistance, though raised incrementally over the past five years, remain well below the poverty line and will continue to keep people there. People on assistance still have to navigate clawbacks and complex income restrictions that make exiting poverty nearly impossible.
Good ideas, vague on detail
The 2024 Poverty Reduction Strategy presents a comprehensive picture of the cycle of poverty, its systemic causes, and key interventions to break this cycle. This poverty reduction plan pays increased attention to important areas for intervention, such as Indigenous sovereignty, food security, issues faced by people with disabilities, and the role employment can play in lifting people out of poverty.
The 2024 plan articulates a strong understanding of some of the systemic root causes of poverty. It explicitly includes the need to address racism, discrimination, and colonialism as essential components of poverty reduction.
Indigenous Sovereignty
It is an important step forward for the poverty reduction strategy to put clearly that colonization is at the root of Indigenous poverty. The plan acknowledges that the ongoing violence of settler colonialism is at the core of the persistent and disproportionate poverty rates for Indigenous people and reaffirms a commitment to Indigenous self-determination and self-government, including also Indigenous Food Sovereignty measures. Addressing the recommendations from the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMWIG) Final Report could also have significant positive impacts if fully implemented.
However, it would have been good to see more specific targets around land back, as well as an Indigenous-specific Poverty Reduction plan for the province, given the deepened impacts and higher rates of poverty for Indigenous Peoples.
Persons with Disabilities
The plan acknowledges that people with disabilities are more likely to experience poverty. However, until the disability rates are raised, most people with disabilities in BC will continue to experience deep levels of poverty. The existing clawbacks on Persons With Disabilities (PWD) also impede opportunities to earn a living wage. The strategy indicated that the Ministry is considering removing the spousal cap and indexing the rates for inflation. Both would be excellent if implemented, but more immediate, substantive support for persons with disabilities is needed to tackle deep poverty.
Food Security
Food security is a particularly pressing issue right now, given the accelerated rates of access to food banks and other non-profit food hubs. Hunger and the cost of grocery prices remain a challenge for tens of thousands of families in BC right now. To date, the government has used food banks as a tool to address food insecurity, when this is a band-aid to a bigger and more systemic issue. The investments in Indigenous food systems, food security, and additional non-profit food hubs are critical and acute measures to keeping people fed.
Transit for rural communities
We also welcome the commitment to improving transit in rural areas. This will not just make it easier for people to get around but could also save lives, as heard in the MMWIG report. However, expanding the BC Bus Program to all families on all social assistance, including income assistance, and expanding the Get on Board program to include teens up to 18 would be an impactful strategy not yet realized. Further, inter-community transportation options remain limited, and more must be done to address the shortages of public transit infrastructure across BC.
Access to Employment
One of the critical action areas the strategy points to for breaking the cycle of poverty is to provide people with pathways to employment. It is vital that any new job from this scheme is a job that pays a living wage and provides stability for workers. This is particularly important for addressing the intersection of race, gender, immigration, and low wages. 1 in 3 workers in BC don’t earn a Living Wage, and the majority of these workers are women and racialized workers.
We welcome the tying of the minimum wage to inflation; however, BC’s minimum wage remains far below a living wage.
We can’t afford to wait
There were several measures that we were hoping to see in this year’s strategy, specifically a clear plan to:
raise social assistance to the poverty line,
remove earnings exemptions and other clawbacks so that people with disabilities are not discouraged from earning a living wage,
make public transit fare-free for teens and available across BC, and
close the gap between the living wage and the minimum wage
Though the new strategy’s vision is commendable, without these tangible, immediate measures, hundreds of thousands of people in BC will continue to be needlessly trapped in a cycle of poverty, unable to afford the very basics for themselves and their families.
The Minister claims that the strategy is light on concrete detail because the initiatives need to be tied to a budget. We agree. This strategy was supposed to come out in the spring when it could have been tied to Budget 2024. Instead, Budget 2024 paid little attention to poverty. The strategy was delayed, and now we must hope that the election will provide some promises to help lift more people in BC out of poverty.
But people in poverty can’t afford to wait for the next election, the next budget, the next round of consultations. Single mothers are struggling today to put food on the table for their families. People with disabilities are struggling to pay for care costs. And Indigenous women in the north are risking their lives every day because there is no affordable and reliable inter-city bus service for them to use.
In a province as wealthy as BC, poverty is preventable. A poverty-free BC is possible now, and given the challenging times we are in, people in poverty deserve no less.
Topics: Poverty, inequality & welfare

People in poverty need policy solutions, not a report card

Jul 31, 2024
Made in Canva using Shutterstock photos.
A final investment decision in June 2024 by Cedar LNG highlights the challenges and contradictions of BC’s climate and energy policies. For the BC government, this is the model industrial project: it creates jobs and development in the North, has a major Indigenous partner in the Haisla Nation and will meet the low-emissions target established last year for new LNG plants.
The main problem is the planet is burning. Cedar LNG would lock in substantial carbon emissions globally for decades into the future at a time when the world is reeling from climate change. Through 2024, we have seen heat records topple in Asia, Latin America and Africa, while floods and other extreme weather events that used to happen only rarely are daily news.
BC has had its share of extreme weather events related to climate change, which we estimated to be between $11 and $16 billion in damages in 2021 alone for three extreme weather disasters (heat dome, wildfires and flooding) and more than 600 lives lost. Wildfires in the summer remain a threat despite cooler, wetter weather in recent weeks.
The ostensibly low-emissions profile of Cedar LNG is restricted to the LNG plant itself. By using cleaner BC Hydro grid electricity, Cedar LNG can mostly avoid burning gas to power its facility.
This points to another challenge: meeting new electricity demand from Cedar LNG and others. In addition to the Site C dam coming online in 2025, BC Hydro has issued calls for new electricity generation and is planning new transmission capacity for mining and LNG development in the North.
The main problem is that the planet is burning.
Importantly, these new projects will occur on First Nations lands and must have a minimum 25% stake from local First Nations.
New electricity supply will be costly and at rates higher than prospective LNG players will want to pay. A likely consequence is that other BC Hydro ratepayers will pay more so the province can provide subsidized electricity to LNG and mining operations.
Meanwhile, these projects will compete with the need to supply clean electricity for transportation, buildings and industry in the South.
Electrification of the LNG plant does not change the fact that Cedar LNG is a fossil fuel project. Economic benefits in the North must be set against the global urgency—as set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement—to shrink and then eliminate the use of energy from fossil fuels.
Outside the LNG terminal there will be carbon emissions and other environmental impacts in the Northeast of BC where fracked gas will be sourced. Some 1.25 million tonnes of CO2 will be added to BC greenhouse gas inventory, representing a 2% increase over current levels. While this increase is modest, it’s yet another step in the wrong direction.
Not counted in BC’s GHG inventory are the emissions from the export of LNG and its final combustion in another country. Based on standard emission factors, the planned 3 MT of LNG exported per year from Cedar LNG is equivalent to downstream emissions of 8 Mt of CO2 per year.
True economic development and reconciliation, however, does not need to be anchored in fossil fuel projects.
While it is plausible that LNG from BC could displace coal use in other jurisdictions like China, this is not guaranteed. In any event, over the lifecycle from extraction through to final combustion, research suggests there is no benefit to the transition from coal to gas.
Failing to challenge the growth of the oil and gas sector is a big part of why BC is set to miss its 2025 and 2030 targets by a wide margin. Extraction and processing of fossil fuels comprises more than one-quarter of BC’s GHG emissions. Since 2017 production of natural gas in BC is up 44% and more than 140% since BC first legislated greenhouse gas reduction targets in 2007.
The federal government is also providing subsidies to Cedar LNG. Through Export Development Canada, the project will receive up to $500 million in low-cost financing.
Continuing to promote the expansion of the sector is completely at odds with BC’s GHG reduction targets. Projects like Cedar LNG and LNG Canada, with decades-long lifespans, will make it virtually impossible to meet our longer-term 2040 and 2050 targets.
The final investment decision is historic for the Haisla Nation, which will own 50.1% of the Cedar LNG project. True economic development and reconciliation, however, does not need to be anchored in fossil fuel projects.
A stronger push towards clean energy supply projects (as in the case of BC Hydro) and regenerative economics could be truly transformative. To get there, the BC government needs to stop acting like a petro-state and instead be a true climate leader.
Topics: Environment, resources & sustainability, Fracking & LNG

Cedar LNG: Chronicles of a petro-state in the age of climate change

Sep 2, 2024
There is renewed attention on Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) in the wake of the recent damning report from the UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery that calls the program “a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.”
Yet, the central critiques and recommendations made in the UN report are being ignored by too many.
Some pundits have been stoking racism and xenophobia by linking Canada’s affordability crisis to the spike of temporary foreign workers entering the country in recent years. The federal government has responded by reducing the share of temporary workers that companies in certain industries can hire.
But this focus on the number of people engaged through the TFWP dangerously oversimplifies the problem.
It turns a blind eye to the impact of growing corporate speculation and profits on the cost of housing and groceries and ignores the systemic racism and exploitation embedded within the program’s design. As the UN report notes, “the recent policy shift to reduce the number of temporary residents will not address the challenges faced by those who continue to enter through the same programmes.”
So what mechanisms of the TFWP does the UN report condemn and what policy changes does it propose?
The problem is not the numbers—it’s the system
The core issue underscored in the UN report is how the TFWP program is structured to disadvantage and exploit racialized workers from the Global South.
The TFWP “institutionalizes asymmetries of power that favour employers and prevent workers from exercising their rights,” the report explains. Insecure status and closed work permits that tie workers to a single employer prevent workers from exercising basic rights such as changing jobs without facing severe repercussions up to deportation. The program’s design, along with federal and provincial government neglect, makes workers reliant on these employers for housing, access to healthcare and essential information about their rights and services available to them.
The result is a workforce that is vulnerable to abuse, with little to no recourse for justice.
Migrant workers, researchers and organizations that provide support to migrant workers have been documenting these systemic abuses for decades. Our colleagues recently published a study on the adverse health impacts of inadequate employer-provided housing on migrant workers in Ontario and BC.
The program’s design makes workers reliant on employers for housing, access to healthcare and essential information about their rights.
The program’s design flaws are not an accident but a feature that serves the interests of employers, particularly large-scale corporations.1.
Undergirding the program is a globalized capitalism that relies on depleting the Global South of its resources and devaluing the labour of its racialized populations. The TFWP perpetuates these global racist dynamics by allowing businesses in Canada to tap into this ‘cheap labour’ through captive and insecure conditions while minimizing their obligations to these workers.
The growing misuse of the TFWP may contribute to a ‘race to the bottom’ in some of the sectors that use it most, but that downward pressure on wages is most felt by the predominantly racialized recent immigrants overrepresented in these sectors. The new federal restrictions on the number of TFWs will do little to address these impacts and do nothing to reduce abuses workers’ face.
Migrant workers do not depress wages, employers do. Governments allow stagnating wages, systematic underfunding of public services, speculation and corporate greed to fuel the affordability crisis. Migrant workers are made the scapegoats.2.
Moving forward: five key policy recommendations in the UN report
The UN report includes recommendations for overhauling the TFWP that echo changes advocates and migrant workers have long been calling for.3. These include:
1. Ending the use of closed work permits: “Allowing all workers the right to choose and change their employers in any sector without restriction or discrimination” would go a long way to mitigate the power imbalance that currently allows for workers’ exploitation.
2. Offering permanent residency: All workers should have permanent residency from the time of their arrival in Canada. This would acknowledge the permanent need for their labour and provide them with the security to fully exercise their rights. This process must include regularizing workers who have lost status.
3. Improving oversight and accountability: The lack of clarity on which federal or provincial body is responsible for providing support to migrant workers and overseeing their fair treatment leaves workers vulnerable to abuses. The report recommends “ending interjurisdictional neglect by mandating or creating a single coordination body with full oversight of migrant workers’ rights and conditions and ensuring that all federal, provincial, territorial and municipal actors are regularly engaged and sensitized about their responsibilities.” This includes ensuring rigorous, proactive surprise inspections are regularly conducted.
4. Ensuring equal access to social services: Migrant workers must have equal access to public services, including settlement services and healthcare. These services should be provided without discrimination and tailored to the needs of migrant workers. This includes, “providing equal access to adequate housing without discrimination, in line with the National Housing Strategy Act.”
5. Protecting workers’ right to unionize: “All workers should have trade union rights,but barriers exist for migrant workers,” the report states. Workers must have access to collective organizing rights and union representation in addition to being protected by federal, provincial and territorial labour rights and occupational health and safety.
The UN Special Rapporteur finds that while Canada enjoys a reputation for welcoming immigrants, this is not the reality for TFWs. It notes the program provides a legal framework for the mistreatment of a racialized migrant workforce. Canada is failing to uphold international human rights, including our failure to sign onto the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.
British Columbia’s role in addressing exploitation
While the racist design of the TFWP is a federal responsibility, provinces have a critical role to play in protecting migrant workers from exploitation. Oversight of working conditions falls primarily to provincial governments and in BC this oversight has been alarmingly inadequate. The province has failed to enforce labour, housing and health standards effectively, leaving workers in dangerous situations.
As BC employers’ increasingly use the TFWP, outdated provincial policies keep wages low, limit employment protections and hinder access to collective organizing in the sectors that rely on the program most. These policies contribute to undervaluing the labour of those who work in these sectors regardless of their status.
BC and the federal government must work together to ensure that all workers are allowed to “enjoy the full spectrum of their human rights, while continuing to contribute to Canadian society,” the Special Rapporteur’s report says.
Notes
1. Henway, Mostafa (August 18, 2024), “Liberals and Tories perfected the exploitation of migrants for big business,” The Breach, https://breachmedia.ca/liberals-and-tories-perfected-the-exploitation-of-migrants-for-big-business/.
2. Hussan, Syed (August 16, 2024), “The anti-immigrant backlash arrives in Canada,” The Breach Show, https://breachmedia.ca/theshow/.
3. See, for example, Jamaican migrant farmworkers’ 2022 open letter, the Migrant Worker Health Expert Working Group’s 2023 open letter, the Migrant Workers Centre’s 2023 open letter, Justicia for Migrant Workers’ open letter, the UFCW’s annual report on the status of migrant workers, the Worker Solidarity Network’s climate and labour campaign and the CCPA-BC’s own reporting, among many other campaigns and reports.
Topics: Employment & labour, Immigrants & refugees, Racism & racial justice

Addressing the racism of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program

Sep 11, 2024
Made using Canva
Canada’s treatment of migrant workers is drawing international scrutiny after UN investigator Tomoya Obokata warned that its Temporary Foreign Worker Program “serves as a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery, as it institutionalizes asymmetries of power that favour employers and prevent workers from exercising their rights.”
Migrants, activists, and researchers, however, have known for decades that this program makes workers readily exploitable and deportable by design.
When we speak with racialized, low-wage migrants from the Global South, they often tell us their greatest concern is overcrowded and substandard housing. In our latest study, we interviewed over 150 migrant agricultural workers in Ontario and BC about how their housing impacted their health.
These workers explained that because their boss is typically also their landlord, they felt obligated to silently tolerate poor housing conditions. Consequently, workers have little choice but to live amid such things as rodent infestations, a lack of cooling and ventilation during extreme heat and nearby pesticide storage. Complaining could not only cost them their job, but could lead to eviction, deportation and loss of future employment in Canada.
Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program makes workers readily exploitable and deportable by design.
Typically, migrant farmworkers are housed on farms, where their employer may also live and work. This gives employers arbitrary power to implement paternalistic ‘house rules’ like prohibiting alcohol or visitors. It also makes workers in remote rural areas highly dependent on bosses for transportation to buy groceries and visit the doctor. For that reason, some workers delay or avoid medical treatment because they don’t want to divulge their private health information to their bosses.
For example, Devon, a farmworker from Jamaica who was interviewed for our study, described how he tried to advocate for his housing and health, only to face a condescending, victim-blaming attitude from his employer.
“If you’re sick, you cannot tell the boss because if you do tell him that you’re sick, he comes and he tells you, ‘Oh you’re dirty. You’re cooking dirty food,’ and all that stuff. So, they discriminate [against] you as a Black person working. I mean, a lot of discrimination,” Devon said.
Workers like Devon are often under intense pressure to support their families back home, where unemployment and poverty loom large.
Yet farmworkers in our study did not see themselves as passive victims and they didn’t want charity. They wanted the practical ability to reject substandard housing and dangerous working conditions.
However, they are up against well-organized industry lobby groups that refuse to treat migrants like their peers or equals and prevent them from having a collective voice on decisions like contract negotiations.
Ontario farmworkers cannot legally join a union. And in BC, farmworkers who were seen as being ‘union sympathizers’ have historically faced backlash. That said, a recent wave of unionization at BC mushroom farms is a promising sign of change for workers who contribute vitally to Canadian food security.
Workers wanted the practical ability to reject substandard housing and dangerous working conditions.
Farmworkers also can’t count on government officials to support their rights. In our research, workers told us bosses were sometimes alerted in advance about inspections, which gave them time to generate the façade of decent housing.
To prevent migrants from being treated like second-class citizens, the federal government could grant permanent immigration status on arrival. Provincial governments can strengthen inspections of housing and workplaces, making them more frequent, rigorous and unannounced.
Canada needs a consistent standard for migrant farmworker housing that significantly raises the bar, ensuring there is potable water, an adequate ratio of workers to washrooms and off-farm accommodation that is closer to municipal services.
Ultimately, migrants also need solidarity from everyday Canadians. We have seen that some politicians scapegoat migrants and tap into ugly expressions of xenophobia. But most Canadians recognize that migrants are vital members of our communities who deserve fair treatment like any other worker.
Topics: Economy, Employment & labour, Immigrants & refugees, Racism & racial justice
You might also like:
Jun 18, 2024
Sep 15, 2023

Exploitable and deportable by design: Why migrant workers’ housing is harmful to their health

Sep 12, 2024
The BC Green Party made the first big splash of the 2024 provincial election campaign with a major commitment to expand public transit, including a promise of “free public transit, province-wide” that has been widely criticized as being too costly.
While shifting to free transit for everyone, everywhere could be fiscally and logistically challenging in the short run, BC needs bold solutions to address the congestion clogging up our cities, shrink our societal dependence on cars and improve affordability of transportation.
Free transit would need to be combined with major transportation investments to bolster local transit systems and interconnect them across the province, as recommended in our recent Connecting BC report. In that report we call for doubling the number of buses in BC within five years and tripling within 10 (both of which are echoed in the Green Party platform), in addition to new rail and ferry infrastructure and expansion of free transit.
BC needs bold solutions to address the congestion clogging up our cities, shrink our societal dependence on cars and improve affordability of transportation.
We have already made transit free at certain times such as New Year’s Eve or for ticket holders during the 2010 Olympics. At a minimum free transit could be expanded to include more people, including youth, seniors and low-income households. For example, the BC Bus Pass Program already exists for low-income seniors (over age 60) and some people on disability assistance and could easily include others on income assistance.
In September 2021, the BC government expanded free transit for six to 12 year olds at an estimated cost of $29 million over three years. The Centre for Family Equity advocates expanding free transit to youth aged 18 and under. Making transit more accessible for youth could shape their lives forever, reinforcing a pattern of less car ownership among young adults.
This would also bridge the gap to the U-pass available to university and college students. Under the U-pass, costs are paid upfront in school fees and spread among all potential users, with the result being a zero marginal cost for each transit trip.
Fares in BC are discounted for all seniors over age 65 and some people with disabilities (HandyCard holders). Free transit could be contemplated for seniors during off-peak hours when there is abundant capacity.
In Metro Vancouver, TransLink is advocating that the BC government fund a low-income pass program at a cost of $60 to $70 million per year. This is modeled on programs in Calgary and Edmonton funded by the Government of Alberta.
Such a program in BC would offer fare discounts to 43,000 transit users and would save low-income households thousands of dollars per year depending on the number of people and distance travelled. In Metro Vancouver, a monthly pass is $1,259 to $2,273 per year for one and three zones, respectively.
But why stop there? Some cities have taken the next step and made transit free system-wide or in the downtown core.
Free transit could be contemplated for seniors during off-peak hours when there is abundant capacity.
After free transit was introduced in Kansas City, Missouri, in 2019, it led to mobility and transit benefits for riders, increased safety for drivers and had much faster recovery of ridership from COVID-19 than other transit systems. Alexandria, Virginia, made transit free in 2021 and has set new ridership records. In 2022, Montreal made transit free on weekends downtown and in Luxembourg all forms of transit have been free since March 2020.
A historical concern with free transit is that too many people would use it, overwhelming services. But this is precisely what we want: a major shift of people onto transit would contribute to meeting BC’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets.
The key challenge is cost and the current fiscal environment for TransLink and BC Transit. Free transit would require substantial operating subsidies from the BC government and would compete with service expansion.
Based on current transit fare collection, free transit would require a provincial subsidy of only $750 million per year. However, a model of free transit plus major transit service expansion would require several billion dollars per year of public support.
On the other hand, BC’s economy is about $400 billion. Delays due to congestion are already costing businesses and households billions.
Current expenditures by households and governments on automobile-dominated transportation are also massive. British Columbians spent over $10 billion on new vehicles in 2022 and about the same on gasoline.
All transportation is subsidized. It’s just that drivers typically don’t appreciate by how much.
Substantial public costs exist for building and maintaining roads, for bridges, policing and related services and providing parking spaces. Free transit would not be so much a new cost to society but a reallocation of existing private spending on transportation.
Indeed, all transportation is subsidized. It’s just that drivers typically don’t appreciate by how much. For example, in the 2023 BC Budget, fuel taxes will raise $1 billion in 2023/24, but the government will spend more than $3 billion for operating and capital expenditures for car- and truck-oriented highway infrastructure.
Moreover, driving imposes other costs on society, including GHG emissions, environmental costs of raw materials, as well as congestion, noise and public space for parking. These external costs can account for about 35% of the total cost of driving, according to a review of transportation costs in North American cities.
Every additional car on the road adds to these problems.
Public transit is essentially the opposite: more people using transit reduces the number of cars on the road, benefiting drivers and freight transport. As BC’s population grows and we need to drive down GHG emissions, a major shift to public transit is needed.
Free transit could be the ticket to making that shift.
Topics: Municipalities, Public transit
You might also like:
Mar 28, 2024
Feb 16, 2024

Time to get on board with free public transit

Sep 16, 2024
Kevin Millsip, CCPA–BC Director
Hello,
My name is Kevin, and I’m the new/old guy at the BC Office. New, in that I joined this September as Director, and old in that I served on the BC Office steering committee for nearly 10 years, about 8 of those as Chair, and I’ve rented desk space from the BC Office over the years as well.
In fact, during my first Zoom call with the BC Office team this summer, I was sitting at my old desk with the same view into senior economist Marc Lee’s office. That desk was piled high, as it always was, with reports Marc has been working through, showing the same commitment to deep analysis, research and understanding.
In short, I have some roots with this wonderful organization.
Collective effort also underpins the work of the BC Office—one organization working in concert with others to advance bold and progressive ideas and agendas that ultimately help us to better care for one another and the planet.
One thing that the other projects I’ve worked with over the years—Katimavik, Check Your Head, Next UP, the Vancouver School Board, the BC Libraries Co-op and the Columbia Institute—have had in common is an element of capacity building. They all aim to support and help build the capacity of others, who are working to better their communities.
That same throughline of capacity building applies to the BC Office: building the capacity of those working for social and environmental justice by providing the research, analysis and policy pathways that those on the front lines can use, to build a more just and sustainable society.
For the last few years, I’ve been working in the library and co-operative sectors. That work has seen some strong results in terms of enhanced investments from the BC government, including $56M in one-time funding for public libraries and related services, and a new federal funding program committing $21M over three years for services for people with print disabilities. These successes only came about through the focused and joint efforts of different organizations working in coalition for a higher purpose.
Collective effort also underpins the work of the BC Office—one organization working in concert with others to advance bold and progressive ideas and agendas that ultimately help us to better care for one another and the planet.
It’s an honour to be here, working with this great group of people, in service to this work at this time.
Some questions I hope to explore in my work with the BC Office include: What sort of impact does the BC Office have, and how can we enhance that impact? What’s the role of a shop like this in a time of growing instability and uncertainty, with multiple crises demanding bold and rapid action? As the need for bold action increases, how do we respond with thoughtful research that keeps both long-term needs and shorter-term concerns in mind? Where can we push more, and how can we best do that? And finally, how do we support and build cooperative efforts to tackle our most pressing issues?
In 2006, I went to Denmark to visit an alternative business school called KaosPilots. The school’s tagline at the time was “Navigators for turbulent times.” The more I think about it, the more I believe that line also applies to the work of the BC Office—trying to help us collectively map paths forward through a time of deepening uncertainty, in ways that enhance justice, equity and ecological sanity.
It’s an honour to be here, working with this great group of people, in service to this work at this time.
Thanks for taking the time to give this a read, and thank you for the work that you do. I look forward to connecting with you.
Best to all,
Kevin Millsip, BC Office Director
Topics: Uncategorised
You might also like:
Dec 15, 2023
Oct 5, 2023

Meet the CCPA–BC’s new Director! Kevin Millsip

Sep 18, 2024
Shutterstock
No topic has dominated the headlines in recent years more than housing, or the growing lack of affordable options in Metro Vancouver and other cities in British Columbia. Scarce and expensive housing is eroding the province’s liveability and economy and large price rises have become a source of enormous wealth inequality.
Our new report analyzes policy changes introduced by the BC and federal governments in recent years—including speed bumps to slow more speculative forms of investment, regulatory changes to municipal zoning and rental markets and new public investments in affordable housing stock—and looks to next steps for a solutions agenda. It summarizes lessons from the Building Equity research project, a four-year CCPA-BC investigation into housing affordability in Metro Vancouver supported by the Vancouver Foundation, and extends them province-wide with a range of policy recommendations.
Supply and demand revisited
The soaring prices of homes in the ownership market point to housing supply that has not kept pace with demand. On the demand side, a prolonged period of low interest rates since 2008 increased the ability of households to borrow and contributed to soaring housing prices in BC. The emergence of higher interest rates since 2022, as central banks sought to combat inflation, has similarly cooled the housing market in terms of transactions and prices. Demographic factors, including Canadians and new immigrants moving to BC, are also central drivers of housing demand.
In recent years, speculative behaviour from real estate investors has been top of mind as home prices rise beyond the reach of many households, and several policies have sought to address this aspect of the crisis. This started with the Foreign Buyer Tax in August 2016, followed by additional tax reforms in 2018 and 2019. For the most part these measures have been aimed at foreign buyers and the high end of the housing market, rather than domestic investors. These changes have reduced foreign purchases to about 1.2% of transactions in BC in recent years.
On the supply side, BC faces a severe shortage of both non-market housing and overall housing supply. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation estimates that BC needs to build 610,000 more homes by 2030 above current building trends. Surging rents are an artifact of ultra-low vacancy rates for rental housing stock. In Metro Vancouver, vacancy rates around 1% have prevailed for more than a decade with the brief exception of the 2020 COVID-19 shock. In comparison, housing experts generally see a healthy vacancy rate as 3% to 4%, which would represent a more balanced housing market.
BC faces a severe shortage of non-market housing and overall housing supply.
In the context of a housing shortage, allowing new non-market and market rental apartments is crucial, particularly in the large land areas currently reserved exclusively for expensive, low-density housing. Where possible, land value increases from upzoning should be used to meet affordable housing objectives in both public and private developments, while ensuring projects remain economically viable so they actually get built.
The harsh reality is that it is expensive to build housing and the upfront costs of construction, acquiring land and various development charges/fees must inevitably be covered by sale prices for ownership housing and by rental income for rental housing.
Shifting from for-profit to non-profit projects can lower break-even rents in non-market developments by removing the developer/landlord profit margin. Nonetheless, we estimate the costs of construction dictate minimum monthly break-even rents of $2,035 for a one-bedroom unit, $2,853 for two-bedrooms and $3,671 for three-bedrooms in a non-market rental project with public land contributed, waived municipal development charges, lower-interest rates and a longer (50-year) amortization period.
Some lower rents could be achieved through cross-subsidization, i.e., if some of the units pay higher market rents and the difference is used to subsidize other units in the development at below break-even rents.
Public and non-profit models of housing development are much needed to deliver genuine affordability in the short run and to maintain affordability over time. Both the federal National Housing Strategy and the provincial Building BC program have been slow to deliver the type of community or social housing that was built from the 1960s to 1990s and that remains a cornerstone of housing affordability several decades later.
Directions for local governments
The BC government has implemented housing supply targets for local governments, while establishing minimum densities across the province. Municipalities were required to allow at least three- to six-unit multiplexes in lower-density areas and much-higher minimum housing densities close to SkyTrain stations or other specifically designated transit exchanges. However, rather than embrace these new requirements as minimum standards to be met and exceeded, many cities have sought to find loopholes or otherwise dilute the effect of these reforms.
We recommend local governments:
Legalize multiplexes and small apartment buildings in detached-housing neighbourhoods: zoning should allow, as of right, the development of multiplexes to small apartment buildings with triple or more the current permitted Floor Space Ratio (FSR)—that is, at least 2.1 FSR.
Reform public hearings: We recommend using deliberative mini-publics (also called citizens’ panels and citizens’ assemblies) as a more democratic and representative form of public engagement on land-use questions.
Ensure market development contributes to dedicated affordable housing: In exchange for density that creates new market value, set out, in advance, requirements that a certain percentage of units be made affordable and that will constrain developers from bidding up land prices too much. These requirements must be set at levels that ensure projects remain economically viable so they actually get built.
Implement renter protections: A robust system of renter protections should include strong rights and a fair process for renters adversely affected by redevelopment, whether on existing apartment sites or in detached-housing neighbourhoods (in particular, for secondary suite renters).
Support public and non-profit housing developments: Local governments should implement simplified and faster permit approval processes for non-profits seeking to develop non-market projects at increased densities. Local governments could also act as public sector developers and/or contribute public land toward new non-market housing.
Directions for the BC government
The BC government has introduced a number of measures to boost market supply as well as a range of other supports for rental housing, including restrictions on short-term rentals, a new Renter’s Tax Credit and a Rental Protection Fund. However, a major gap still exists around the amount of planned public and non-market housing as existing programs are undersized relative to the housing affordability challenges facing low- to middle-income households. We recommend the BC government:
Increase housing supply targets: Current housing supply targets established for 30 local governments are an important innovation, but are not particularly ambitious given the scale of the housing crisis and relative to past building.
Expand reforms to end exclusionary zoning: More province-wide upzoning—perhaps at double or triple the allowable densities in any given area —for non-market housing would take zoning out of the equation as a constraint when competing with private market developers for land. Moreover, low-rise rental housing—non-market and market alike—should be allowed throughout low-density single-family areas, including the wealthiest enclaves.
Commit to 250,000 non-market rental units: Progress on the 2018 Building BC program for non-market housing has been very slow relative to need, with only 16,777 units completed at the end of 2022, plus another 14,186 under construction. A bold BC-wide plan to build a new supply of dedicated, non-market affordable housing should aim for a quarter of a million homes over the next decade.
Expand the Rental Protection Fund: The government’s $500-million Rental Protection Fund will help non-profits purchase and maintain more than 2,000 existing affordable homes. However, this is but a drop in the bucket of the existing rental homes needed across BC. New financial commitments should bolster the Fund as it is depleted.
Create a new housing benefit: Amalgamate the Home Owner Grant and the Renter’s Tax Credit into a single income-tested housing grant for renters and owners alike. This would be in addition to existing provincial rental housing supports (Rental Assistance Program and Shelter Aid for Elderly Renters) as well as the shelter component of social assistance.
Reform property taxation: Property tax reforms should tackle the extreme inequality of property wealth, raise revenue for public investments including affordable housing and make real estate a less-lucrative target for passive, non-productive investment. BC’s Property Transfer Tax could also be reformed to address speculative behaviour in the housing market.
Update rent controls: In BC, a lack of security of tenure has been a significant challenge for renters in recent years, particularly those living in secondary suites and rented condos. To better protect renters, we recommend vacancy control to limit rent hikes between tenancies, which would tie rent controls to the unit and not to new renters as is the current practice.
Directions for the federal government
The federal government’s 2017 National Housing Strategy (NHS) has to date delivered relatively little of what Canadians might consider to be affordable or social housing. More of the strategy’s efforts have provided low-cost financing to private (both non-profit and for-profit) rental projects. Very little NHS funding has flowed to BC.
With access to nationwide taxation powers and borrowing capacity, the federal government needs to be a key player in building affordable housing and eliminating homelessness. This commitment will require higher levels of funding support. The federal government is also uniquely poised to reform the tax system, which is heavily tilted in favour of homeowners over renters. We recommend the federal government:
Recommit the National Housing Strategy to build non-market housing and end homelessness: Through a mix of making direct investments, providing public land and ensuring low-cost financing, the federal government should make a generational investment to dramatically increase non-market housing supply, end the homelessness crisis and help reduce the upward pressure on rents in the for-profit rental market. This could include a significant expansion of the existing Canada Housing Benefit.
Scale up the non-profit housing sector: Like BC, the federal government can support the non-market housing sector to acquire existing for-profit rental buildings. In addition to non-profit development on existing federal land, the federal government should acquire new public land for non-market housing. Non-profit housing developers could also be provided a lower interest rate than for-profit developers.
Reform taxation of capital gains from housing: Ending the principal residence deduction, or at least putting limits on the amount of untaxed capital gains from the sale of these homes, should be on the table to rebalance the situation of renters vis-à-vis owners. The federal government should also end various first-time homebuyer incentives that serve only to inflate the housing market.
Conclusion
In a short time, the BC government has made significant reforms to the province’s housing market, with an emphasis on enabling supply-side solutions from the private sector. In addition to the deepening of zoning reforms to address the housing shortage, a key remaining gap is scaling up public efforts to develop new non-market housing and to support the non-profit housing sector. BC has a legacy of affordable housing from its shared investments (alongside the federal government) in non-market housing from the 1960s to 1990s. Renewing and bolstering non-market housing is central to the needs of low- to middle-income households.
Ultimately, tackling the housing crisis requires an all-of-the-above approach, including making large increases in non-market housing investment, accelerating zoning reform and increases to the supply of homes overall, taxing ballooning land wealth, providing cash transfers to low-income renters and strengthening tenants’ rights through stronger legal and regulatory protections.
This post is a part of an ongoing research project into affordable housing funded by the
Vancouver Foundation. | Download the full report (PDF, 44 pages) here.
Topics: Housing & homelessness, Municipalities, Provincial budget & finance

Audio Catalogue.

Listen to the stories from My Project Name

https://policynote.ca

Reading the policy tea leaves: What BC’s new cabinet appointments tell us about the government’s priorities

November 28, 2024