New Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey data shows British Columbia lost 20,000 jobs in February, including 33,000 full-time jobs, while the province’s population declined by roughly 3,000 people last month, including 2,000 youth aged 15–24, raising new concerns about the direction of the province’s economy. Gavin Dew, MLA for Kelowna-Mission and the Critic for Jobs, Economic Development, Innovation and AI, says the numbers point to a worrying trend for BC’s economy: “With BC losing 20,000 jobs in February and David Eby on track to lose his own job, no wonder he’s trying so hard to distract British Columbians with silly political games. The NDP jobs minister is seemingly more focused on taking over the Premier's job than protecting private sector jobs for British Columbians." "Here's a simple economic truth: holding the unemployment rate steady by losing both jobs and population is not a success story," said Dew. "Less people chasing fewer jobs is a downw...
Describing the basic flaw of Proportional Representation (PR) is challenging because advocates of PR offer at least a half dozen or more PR variations without ever specifying which one they propose should be implemented if we ditch ‘first past the post’ (FPTP), so agreeing to ditch FPTP in favour of adopting PR is like buying a pig in a poke. That said, PR generally assigns legislators to Parties based on the Parties’ share of the popular vote, in addition to legislators directly elected to represent specific constituents, contributing in at least two ways to increased power to Party bosses. First, the extra legislators are accountable mainly to their Party rather than being representatives for any specific electors, since they owe their appointment to their Party. Legislators who act as if they are beholden to their Party rather than to electors are already a huge contributor to lack of democratic legitimacy in Canada’s electoral system today, and the question is whether we wan...