Will Ontario’s plan to boost surgeries at private clinics work?

If Doug Ford’s doing it, it can’t be good so the thinking goes. But his idea deserves examination.

Private clinics can work if they are run by non-profit societies.

image: Kelly Funk

An example of a successful non-profit clinic is STEPS (Supporting Team Excellence with Patients Society) in Kamloops.

The clinic in Valleyview is owned and operated by the society. Doctors work on a collaborative basis. When my doctor went on maternity leave, another doctor took over. It’s a model that can be used elsewhere according to their website:

“[STEPS] was incorporated on April 11, 2017 as a British Columbia Society whose purpose is to lead innovation in the provision of interdisciplinary team-based primary health care with the goal of developing a successful model of primary care delivery that can be adopted by others.”

 Ford unveiled his government’s plan on Monday. Ontario plans to increase the use of private clinics to tackle Ontario’s surgery waiting lists which is more than 200,000. He claims that clinics would be paid for by the public health system.

Ford says that 50 per cent of surgeries could be done outside hospitals.

Just how for-profit private clinics will be paid for by the public health system is a bit of a mystery. Surely he can’t be suggesting that public money go into the pockets of for-profit clinic operators?

Is Ford suggesting a familiar model by which doctors have operating on since the inception of Canada’s health care?

Some doctors make a good, well-deserved, living by operating private clinics. They bill B.C.’s MSP for each patient visit and if they get enough visits, there will be enough left over after paying staff, utilities, equipment and supplies, rent or mortgage, to live on.

But that model is broken. Not many doctors want to run the business of a private clinic in which they have to work long hours and squeeze in lots of patient visits.

Most doctors would prefer the STEPS model which allows for flexible working hours without the worry of operating a business.

It’s hard to imagine a for-profit private clinic operating with only the income of per-patient visits. They would have to grind through a lot of patients to make it work.

It hasn’t worked for many existing for-profit private clinics. They have had to resort to illegal measures.

“Private surgeries and medical imaging are big business in BC,” says Andrew Longhurst, researcher for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. “Over the last two decades, this for-profit sector has benefited from increased outsourcing of publicly funded procedures and unlawful patient extra-billing.”

For example, False Creek Healthcare Centre in Vancouver received $12.2 million in health care contracts between 2015 and 2020 despite having been audited by the BC government and found to have engaged in unlawful extra-billing, says Longhurst.

Kamloops Surgical Centre received $15.4 million between 2015 and 2020, also despite having been audited and found to have engaged in unlawful extra-billing. Interior Health continued to contract with the clinic during and after the period of unlawful extra-billing. CCPA Policy Note August, 2022.

Not-profit private clinics have demonstrated that they can function successfully to the benefit of patients and doctors alike. But a for-profit clinic funded by the public purse? Dream on.

Will Ontario’s plan to boost surgeries at private clinics work?

If Doug Ford’s doing it, it can’t be good so the thinking goes. But his idea deserves examination.

Private clinics can work if they are run by non-profit societies.

An example of a successful non-profit clinic is STEPS (Supporting Team Excellence with Patients Society) in Kamloops.

The clinic in Valleyview is owned and operated by the society. Doctors work on a collaborative basis. When my doctor went on maternity leave, another doctor took over. It’s a model that can be used elsewhere according to their website:

“[STEPS] was incorporated on April 11, 2017 as a British Columbia Society whose purpose is to lead innovation in the provision of interdisciplinary team-based primary health care with the goal of developing a successful model of primary care delivery that can be adopted by others.”

 Ford unveiled his government’s plan on Monday. Ontario plans to increase the use of private clinics to tackle Ontario’s surgery waiting lists which is more than 200,000. He claims that clinics would be paid for by the public health system.

Ford says that 50 per cent of surgeries could be done outside hospitals.

Just how for-profit private clinics will be paid for by the public health system is a bit of a mystery. Surely he can’t be suggesting that public money go into the pockets of for-profit clinic operators?

Is Ford suggesting a familiar model by which doctors have operating on since the inception of Canada’s health care?

Some doctors make a good, well-deserved, living by operating private clinics. They bill B.C.’s MSP for each patient visit and if they get enough visits, there will be enough left over after paying staff, utilities, equipment and supplies, rent or mortgage, to live on.

But that model is broken. Not many doctors want to run the business of a private clinic in which they have to work long hours and squeeze in lots of patient visits.

Most doctors would prefer the STEPS model which allows for flexible working hours without the worry of operating a business.

It’s hard to imagine a for-profit private clinic operating with only the income of per-patient visits. They would have to grind through a lot of patients to make it work.

It hasn’t worked for many existing for-profit private clinics. They have had to resort to illegal measures.

“Private surgeries and medical imaging are big business in BC,” says Andrew Longhurst, researcher for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. “Over the last two decades, this for-profit sector has benefited from increased outsourcing of publicly funded procedures and unlawful patient extra-billing.”

For example, False Creek Healthcare Centre in Vancouver received $12.2 million in health care contracts between 2015 and 2020 despite having been audited by the BC government and found to have engaged in unlawful extra-billing, says Longhurst.

Kamloops Surgical Centre received $15.4 million between 2015 and 2020, also despite having been audited and found to have engaged in unlawful extra-billing. Interior Health continued to contract with the clinic during and after the period of unlawful extra-billing. CCPA Policy Note August, 2022.

Not-profit private clinics have demonstrated that they can function successfully to the benefit of patients and doctors alike. But a for-profit clinic funded by the public purse? Dream on.

The rocky relationship between CERB, EI and getting back to work

Back to school concerns compounded by back to work woes

While parents worry about sending their kids back to school in September, millions will be without work and without government assistance. The Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) runs out in September. It provided   $500/week to pay the rent and buy groceries.

The future looks especially bleak for those previously employed in the service sector. They represent the largest sector -three out of every four jobs.  With isolation measures in place, many jobs in the food and tourist accommodation sectors are lost for a long time.

Without CERB, a cloud of debt hangs over the unemployed. Canadians owe $1.77 for every dollar available to spend as of June, 2020.

The holders of that debt face a problem as well. Banks were happy to see Canadians in debt as long as the credit cards, loans, and mortgages were paid off with profitable interest. But what do banks do when Canadians can no longer pay debt?

Canada’s Big Six banks face growing loan losses as government programs wind down, and loan-deferral and interest rate relief programs come to a halt. Banks have already set aside $11 billion for losses but that may not be enough.

CERB has kept the wolf from the door so far. Personal insolvencies are below average and credit payments have remained stable.

The government of Canada faces a big problem as well. You only have to look back at the Dirty Thirties to see what happens when there are no jobs and no government support. Men left their desperate families on dustbowl farms and wandered the countryside on trains trying to find any work and money to send back home to starving families.

As of Tuesday, Prime Minister Trudeau has prorogued Parliament to deal with the crisis, a move that sets up a confidence vote this fall that could trigger a 2020 election.

Here’s the problem that the Trudeau government faces.

As of last March all EI recipients were rolled into the CERB program and received $500 a month. The feds will discontinue the CERB program at the end of this month and move recipients back to EI or an “EI-like” transitional benefit. Just what will an EI-like program look like?

There are major holes in the move back to EI as it now stands, according to calculations done by David Macdonald, senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

At the start of August there were 4.7 million people receiving the CERB. Because EI has no minimum, 811,000 of those would receive less on EI than they did on CERB; instead of $500 a week, they would receive only $312 on average.

And under current EI rules, 2.1 million of those receiving CERB will not be eligible; they will get nothing at all. In B.C., that’s 324,000 who were previously receiving $500/week who will now get nothing.

The clock is ticking as CERB runs out. I look forward to the Throne Speech on September 23 and the federal plan in which “no one will be left behind,” as Trudeau promised.

 

Pandemic exposes failings of long-term care facilities in B.C.

In 2002, the BC Liberals had a grand plan to provide seniors with home-like settings. Added to that, they promised that the new residences would cost the government about half as much. Who wouldn’t want that?

image: WebStockReview

Home-like residences would be financed through public-private partnerships (P3s). Reduced costs to the government would result by attracting private-sector investors to finance new residences.

However, the plan hasn’t worked out that well.

Sure, the government reduced their costs but it was by shutting down existing facilities. Between 2001 and 2004, the government closed 26 long-term care facilities, resulting in the loss of 2,529 long-term care beds according to a report prepared for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives called Assisted Living in British Columbia, Trends in access, affordability and ownership.

The fallout of the grand experiment is fewer, unaffordable housing units.

According to Statistics Canada and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), the cost of Private-Pay assisted living exceeds the financial resources of seniors with average or low income.

Affordable housing is defined as rent less than 30 per cent of income. While wealthy B.C. senior couples can almost afford rent according to that definition (39 per cent), seniors living alone in a bachelor suite require over 80 per cent of their income for rent, which is clearly unaffordable. At rents that high, seniors will be doing without basic sundries, medications, transportation, and entertainment.

Seniors who can’t find lower cost Publicly Subsidized residences are turning to Private-Pay residences as a last resort, even though they can’t really afford them.

And while the number of Private-Pay and Publicly Subsidized units has increased marginally, it hasn’t kept up with demand. The net new Private-Pay units have only increased by 1,130 in all of B.C. from 2010 to 2017. In the Interior Health region, the net new Private-Pay units only increased by 243.

The number of Publicly Subsidized assisted living units added in the same period is even more dismal -only by 105 for all of B.C. and by 26 for the Interior Health region.

The labels “Private-Pay” and “Publicly Subsidized” are misleading.

Private-Pay suggests that these residences are built independently and rented at market prices, like a hotel. However, the government pays the operator of these facilities a daily resident rate and BC Housing, a crown corporation, pays for housing costs.

Publicly Subsidized is equally misleading. It suggests that the residences are owned and operated by the government. They are not: 63 per cent are owned by a non-profit organization, 33 per cent are owned by a for-profit business, and only 4 per cent are owned by a public health authority. Unlike Private-Pay facilities, renters are subsidized according to their ability to pay.

As the pandemic unfolded, it became apparent that some Private-Pay residences did not meet the legislated standards of care for residents. As a result, health authorities seized control of a number of residences owned by Retirement Concepts, British Columbia’s largest chain of for-profit care homes.

Long-term care facilities in B.C. didn’t meet the needs of most seniors before the COVID-19 pandemic and now the outbreak has focussed a spotlight on those failings.

More Publicly Subsidized residences need to be financed by BC Housing and operated by non-profits and for-profit businesses. The housing may not be grand but when well-designed, they can be comfortable, affordable, safe, and profitable.

Kamloops’ rental shortage is no accident

The shortage of affordable rental units in Kamloops is the result of deliberate government policy starting with the Mulroney Conservatives in the 1990s. Not just Kamloops but all Canada was affected.

CSI low-income housing in Kamloops

Governments stopped investment in affordable rental units for a number of reasons: strong wage growth from 1996 to 2006 coupled with declining interest rates and modest housing prices enticed more renters into home ownership.

But by the mid-2000s, stagnant wages and the growth of low paying jobs along with escalating housing prices pushed people into rentals.

Now the federal Liberals in cooperation with the B.C. government and CMHC have reversed that trend with an investment in affordable housing.

Our society, the Centre for Seniors Information in Kamloops, is one of the city’s non-profits involved in the construction of affordable housing (I am the president of the society). We are building a five story apartment with112 units, ranging from studio-sized, to two bedrooms on the site of the old Cineplex Odeon theatre on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Victoria Street.

Judging by the response that our housing manager is getting, the building could be full when it opens its doors in just over a year.

The drought in affordable housing has had a devastating effect on low and middle wage-earners.

Canada’s five most common occupations are low-paid and often not full-time. (admin assistants, retail salespersons, cashiers, food and kitchen helpers, food and beverage servers) representing 1.8 million workers or 12% of all jobs,

According to calculations done by David MacDonald, senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, wages don’t pay the rent any more. He has come up with a measure of how much wages are short, something he calls the “rental wage.”

He defines the rental wage as the amount you would have to earn so that no more than 30 per cent of your wages goes to rent. In Kamloops, the rental wage is $25 an hour for a two-bedroom apartment. That would leave a reasonable remainder of 70 per cent for groceries, medicine, clothing, fuel, etc.

Another way of measuring rent is by the number of hours you would have to work at a minimum wage of $12.65. In Kamloops, you would have to work 78 hours a week to pay for an affordable two-bedroom apartment.

I suspect that many Kamloopsians are doing without essentials because they pay more than 30 per cent of income for rent.

Between 1980 and 1993, 49% of all rentals built were affordable. Federal tax incentives and loan programs to private investors also played a pivotal role in apartment rental construction over that period.

Now, new federal programs plan to deliver more than 110,500 new units by 2027-28. Combined with other provincial and federal programs, 15,100 and new affordable units were committed in 2017-18 and 16,600 in 2018-19; almost as many as from 1970 and the early 1990s before the cuts.

Canadians desperately need affordable rentals. One-third of Canada’s 14 million households rent their homes.

Without deliberate government policy, private investors can’t deliver the housing needed.

Everybody wins. Mortgages are given specifically for low income rentals, developers build the units and employ trades people, people can afford rent with money left over, and non-profits like ours take ownership of the buildings to generate much needed revenue.

Alberta’s faulty pipeline gambit

The Alberta government says that if only B.C. would allow a second pipeline to be built, our gasoline prices would go down.

If only it were true.

The new pipeline will not supply more gasoline to B.C. and it will not reduce our gasoline prices. The reason is hardly a surprise -the new pipeline will carry crude oil, not gasoline.  A report uncovered by reporter Justine Hunter confirms that.

The report was commissioned by Trans Mountain with the hope that it would demonstrate the need for a new pipeline. To no one’s surprise, that’s what they found.  The consulting firm Muse, Stancil & Co. says:

“The startup of [the Trans Mountain expansion] project will act to increase the price of crude oil at Edmonton because roughly 79,500 [cubic metres a day] of crude oil is diverted from the existing North American markets to Northeast Asia (Globe and Mail, May 6, 2019).”

In other words, what B.C. needs is not what the pipeline will deliver. It will send crude oil to overseas markets. It will not send crude oil to be refined into gasoline in B.C.

Even if the second pipeline delivered crude to be refined into gasoline, that wouldn’t happen because our refineries are running full-tilt. They couldn’t produce any more gas even if they wanted to.

For sure, B.C. would be hurt if Alberta were to cut off the existing pipeline. Alberta supplies 80 percent of fuel burned in B.C.

Dan McTeague, senior petroleum analyst for gasbuddy.com, says the only way gas prices could go down if the existing pipeline carried more fuel:

“The new pipeline would be entirely devoted to heavy oil, but the existing pipeline would be expanded by 50,000 barrels per day.”

More supply would reduce prices in a marketplace that was properly functioning.  However, there is some doubt about the marketplace according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. They claim that price-gouging is driving up prices. Their report reveals that of the 55 cent per litre increase since 2016, only 6.3 cents is a result of increased taxes while profit margins have increased by 18 cents.

Another group confirms that finding. Navius Research reports that since 2008, refinery margins in Metro Vancouver increased to 35 per cent while the increase was less than 18 per cent in the rest of the country. They say that margins “have decoupled from supply costs, resulting in prices that cannot be attributed to competitive market forces or scarcity of supply.”

While there is no hard evidence of price-fixing by the four companies that supply the Lower Mainland, Premier Horgan has asked the B.C. Utilities Commission to investigate the record-breaking gas prices. It will be interesting to hear what they find.

The BC Liberals see political hay to be made. They have erected huge billboards with a picture of Premier Horgan and the words, “Blame John Horgan.” BC Liberal leader Wilkinson says that Horgan has failed to cap gas taxes.

I have to smile at Wilkinson’s claim, not just because taxes aren’t the problem but because it was the BC Liberals who introduced the carbon tax in the first place.

 

 

Failure of NAFTA could be good for our creativity

It’s a toss-up on whether the North America Free Trade Agreement will survive. The fifth round of discussions has concluded in Mexico and Foreign Affairs Minister Christie Freeland is not optimistic. “Hope for the best and prepare for the worst and Canada is prepared for every eventuality,” she said.

     image: AgWeb.com

Failure of NAFTA will have only a slight negative economic impact. If the U.S. terminates NAFTA, as the unpredictable President Trump has threatened to do, trade would revert back to rules of the World Trade Organization. Under those rules, the added tariffs would only add 1.5 per cent of the cost of goods exported to the U.S. according to a study from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

With “trade” in the title, you could think that’s what NAFTA about. And since Canada is a trading nation, you could conclude that NAFTA is vital to our economy. While NAFTA offers some advantages, it has a number of disadvantages such as the investor-state dispute settlement provisions that allows foreign firms to sue governments. And exports of Canadian softwood aren’t even covered.

However, trade deals like NAFTA are not primarily about trade. Trade takes place without them. These trade deals are actually about protection of corporate interests such as “intellectual property” which is not property in the usual sense. It’s a means of commodifying artistic and technological creations such as brands, music, movies, patents, and software.

America normally supports trade deals because they benefit most. The deals enforce corporate interests, and in the U.S. corporate interests = government interests. The reason that the U.S. is so interested in intellectual property is because it’s one of their biggest exports. Culture, what the U.S. calls entertainment, makes up one-third of American exports. American movies are seen in theatres around the world. U.S. pop songs are heard in the streets. Kids play American-made video games. American inventions such as the iPhone are ubiquitous.

An indication of how poorly President Trump understands the American economy is his rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It was a license for U.S. corporate giants to impose protection of intellectual property. I celebrated its demise after Trump cancelled the TPP but I had to wonder what (if) the president was thinking.

The demise of NAFTA would lift a weight off of Canadian creativity and allow it to flourish.

Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, was asked to advise a Senate Open Caucus meeting on modernizing NAFTA.

“To my surprise, the shift in focus to a post-NAFTA world was liberating, opening the door to considering Canadian policies that have previously been viewed as unattainable given intense U.S. pressure on intellectual property policy that favours ‘Americanization’ of global rules,” he said (Globe and Mail, October 20, 2017).

By loosening the grip of the U.S. on creativity, Canadians can market their innovations globally; innovations such as software developed by Blackberry for self-driving cars and recently sold to the Chinese firm Baidu.

Of course, our intellectual property needs protection. With the U.S. out of the way, international agreements can be struck that encourage innovation while protecting creators without one player holding a big stick.

Stop treating B.C.’s interior like a colony

Premier Clark’s plan for job growth in B.C.’s interior is a failure. Her plan to extract Liquefied Natural Gas from the interior evaporated. She is sending more raw logs out of the interior than any other government according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Clark treats B.C.’s interior like a colony of Victoria: drill for natural gas and sell it overseas with no regard to the contamination of water or earthquakes that fracking causes; send raw logs, and the jobs that go with them, elsewhere instead of restoring those jobs in the interior.

The interior-as-colony mentality didn’t always exist. Before 2003, the government made sure that jobs stayed in the communities where trees were logged. That meant that sawmill workers could earn good wages where they lived. Once logging companies were free of that obligation, they shut down mills. Since 1997, 100 mills have closed and 22,400 jobs were lost.

That loss of jobs means a transfer of wealth out of the interior. By my calculation, the loss of the above jobs amounts to $1.5 billion.

Since 2013, when Premier Clark was elected, nearly 26 million cubic metres of raw logs worth more than $3 billion were shipped out of BC. No previous BC government has sanctioned such a high level of raw log exports. Last year, about 6.3 million cubic metres of raw logs left the province. Had those logs been turned into forest products in the interior, 3,600 workers could have been employed.

We can do better. B.C. does a poor job of extracting value from our publicly-owned forests compared to other provinces. Ontario’s value-added wood industry was almost three times that of B.C.

B.C. should be a leader in extracting value from our forests, not a laggard. Waste wood can be used for more than paper mills and as fuel to generate electricity. That’s a good start says The Forest Products Association of Canada. They suggest other uses for waste wood -make wood pellets to heat homes, manufacture alcohol for vehicles, and make solvents for industry.

In addition to these bio-products, engineered wood products add more value. Such building systems include wall panels and roof trusses that are made from lumber in factory settings. The completed pieces are then moved to construction sites where they are secured into place, forming the walls, floors and roofs of finished houses or multiple-dwelling buildings.

In one demonstration, two identical triplexes were constructed in Edmonton.  The pre-fabricated building went up faster, with less on-site waste than the building next door.

Victoria can afford to be blasé. Vancouver Island gained 9,000 jobs last year; two-thirds of them went to Victoria. The Lower Mainland did OK as well, gaining 94 per cent of all B.C. jobs.

All other regions outside of Victoria and the Lower Mainland lost jobs last year compared to 2008 before the Great Recession (CCPA Monitor, March 2017).

Rather than treating the interior as a colony the government should create jobs and wealth where people live. The forestry sector is an obvious place to start since forestry has been a proven record as a job creator.

 

Tax loopholes –the good, bad and ugly

What’s the difference between a tax break and a tax loophole? Tax breaks are legitimate deductions that I make and loopholes are shady tax dodges that others use. Seriously, they’re all what economists call tax expenditures. The only difference between them is whether they progressive or regressive, and how much they improve equality.

Some tax expenditures benefit low and middle-income families such as deductions for union dues and post-secondary education. Others benefit wealthy Canadians such the mineral exploration deduction and the capital gains allowance.

Regardless, they are all uncollected taxes. And it’s a lot says David MacDonald, senior economist for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (Monitor, Jan/Feb, 2017). The government of Canada gives up almost as much in tax expenditures as it collects in taxes. In 2011, tax expenditures were $103 billion while collected taxes were $121 billion.

Tax expenditures serve a useful purpose if they improve equality. Equality is an indicator of how happy citizens are, be they rich or poor, as I argued in an earlier column (Conservatives can increase chances by decreasing happiness, Dec. 14, 2016).

The question is whether tax expenditures increase equality or reduce it. Are they progressive or regressive? MacDonald has analysed tax revenues and found that of 64 tax expenditures, only five are progressive and go to the lower half of income earners. The remaining 59 tax expenditures go to the top half. The tax benefit for low-income earners is a paltry $130 while for the richest it’s $15,000. Is it any wonder that “tax loopholes” seem shady? Low income earners see it for what it is –a benefit that only the rich receive.

With the feds in the fiscal hole, and with almost as many taxes uncollected as collected, I would have thought that Finance Minister Morneau would have use the last budget to reform taxes. But he didn’t according to Kevin Milligan, professor of economics at UBC.

“In the budget, the government did make some good moves with the tax measures it tackled, but it did not tackle enough. That is, Mr. Morneu may have grabbed some of the low-hanging fruit, but he left a lot of fruit further up the tree untouched, (Why Morneau got cold feet over eliminating Canada’s bloated tax-credit system, Globe and Mail, Mar. 24, 2016.)”

On the plus side, the feds are still committed to reviewing corporate tax shelters that allow income to be split with partners and lower taxes. And they simplified the Canada Caregiver Credit for those caring for an elderly or infirm family member.

It’s OK to eliminate tax breaks but not my tax break. Milligan elaborates:

“For every tax expenditure, there is a particular constituency that benefits, while costs are dispersed across all taxpayers. Firefighters like their volunteer-fighter tax credit; teachers like their teacher-school-supply credit and first-time home buyers like their home-buyer tax credit.”

The solution, adds Milligan, is to eliminate entire bundles of tax breaks. That way no particular group feels targeted by tax reform.

Tax reforms may be painful but they’re necessary to improve equality. We’ll all be happier for it.

Is spending on B.C. education really at “record levels?”

The BC Liberals claim in a fact sheet that spending on education is at record levels. A reality-check shows otherwise. Sure, spending is up if you consider only dollar amounts. When inflation is factored in, a different outcome emerges: there is no increase at all.

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For example, from 2009 to 2013 B.C. education spending increased by 5.6 per cent which is almost exactly the rate of inflation. Across Canada, spending is actually increasing. It’s up by 12.3 per cent according to the Canadian Centre for  Policy Alternatives. Their assessment of the BC Liberals’ claim is blunt:

“As much as government may like to brag about the dollar amounts of funding, ignoring the basic inflation rate and other cost pressures obscures the meaning of those numbers.”

Spending is not at record levels and spending per student is dismal. Compared to the rest of Canada. B.C. is second last with PEI at the bottom. Alberta is second highest with Manitoba at the top.

However, Premier Clark can truthfully boast about record spending in one area. Funding for private schools has increased at more three times the rate of public schools over the past ten years, and is now projected to reach $358 million in the 2016/17 school year.

Premier Clark clearly likes private schools: she sends her son to St. George’s School in Vancouver at a cost of about $20,000 per year. In welcoming a new parliamentary secretary to the minister of education for private schools, she said: “I’m pleased to have him joining our excellent team of parliamentary secretaries, advocating for independent schools throughout B.C.”

She is mistaken in the belief that private schools are better. Student performance is affected by their parents’ socioeconomic status. In a study by Statistics Canada and reported by the CBC, the success of students is a result of resources at home.

“For example, compared with public school students, higher percentages of private school students lived in two-parent families with both biological parents; their total parental income was higher; and they tended to live in homes with more books and computers,” the report says.

Premier Clark makes it evident that she no intention in catching up with the rest of Canada on spending. In her mandate letter to Mike Bernier, Minister of Education, she instructs him not to increase spending:

“1. Balance your ministerial budget in order to control spending and ensure an overall balanced budget for the province of British Columbia.”

At first glance, the plan to close underutilized schools seems perfectly rational until you consider the details. They count computer labs, art and music rooms, as “empty” because they are shared by all students. By this warped calculation, a school with seventeen full classrooms and three “empty” rooms would be only 85 per cent full.

Despite all the perky talk about how great Clark’s government is doing, the real agenda of the BC Liberals is clear: keep spending on public schools low and ensure that private schools are available to the deserving rich.

Fracking is a threat to B.C. dams

There are environmental reasons to stop fracking in B.C. There are political reasons to continue.

In addition to the environmental reasons to stop fracking, there is a risk to B.C. dams. The list continues to grow: the contamination of groundwater, the disturbance of natural environments with roads and drilling rigs, the disposal of toxic water, and now the danger of earthquakes. Especially around dams, reservoirs, and tailings ponds.

Freedom of information documents obtained by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reveals the concerns of BC Hydro officials.

BC Hydro became alarmed in 2009 when drilling started on lands near Peace Canyon Dam, downstream from the W.A.C. Bennett Dam; a dam which holds the world’s seventh-largest hydro reservoir by water volume.

Ray Stewart wrote, “BC Hydro believes there are immediate and future potential risks to BC Hydro’s reservoir, dam and power-generation infrastructure as a result of this coal-bed methane project.” He warned that earthquakes caused by fracking “may be greater than the original design criteria for the dam.”

His concerns are well-founded. Fracking is taking place in the Montney Basin which underlies much of the Peace River region, an area rich in shale gas. And fracking is proven to cause earthquakes.

Stewart also warned that fracking could “reactivate” ancient faults in the region, which could potentially set the stage for earthquakes. He also warned of “hydrogeologic impacts” on hydro reservoirs from fracking. He worried that the land might sink or that dried-out coal seams might ignite.

The land could sink and the coal dry out because the cavities that result from the extraction of gas. It occurs after water under pressure fractures the shale and is pumped out. The gas follows the pumped out water. The cavities are one thing, the toxic water is another.

To get rid of the toxic water, it’s pumped back into the earth below the area that’s been fracked. The pressure created triggers earthquakes.

Regulators have been slow to react. BC Hydro would like to stop the drilling within five kilometres of dam sites but regulators have not ruled it out, citing only “understandings” with drillers.

Even BC Hydro’s deputy CEO, Chris O’Riley, seems to be in denial. “Fracking by itself cannot generate large magnitude earthquakes.” That’s not what the U.S. Geological Survey found. While B.C.’s fracking is in its infancy, the USGS has been studying the alarming rise of fracking-induced earthquakes in Texas and Oklahoma for decades.

The USGS says that magnitude 6 fracking-induced earthquakes could occur which can damage even well-built structures. “But we can’t rule out quakes of magnitude 7 and above,” says Mark Petersen, chief of the National Seismic Hazard Mapping Project (Scientific American, July, 2016).

The political reason for fracking is that it’s the only plan we have. Premier Clark campaigned on her plan to liquefy natural gas plan and won — a plan to drill and export LNG and to power it with the Site C dam.

She’s likely to campaign on the same strategy again in the upcoming B.C. election. Even though LNG markets have dried up and the power from Site C won’t be needed for decades, it’s the only game in town.

It will be interesting to see what job-creation strategies other parties have as the campaign heats up.