Tying minimum wage increases to inflation and including other revenue sources in B.C.'s prosperity fund are among the 60 recommendations in a new report.
Released September 25 by the Business Council of BC and the BC Chamber of Commerce, the report is based on discussions over the past year with various groups all over B.C. and designed to stimulate discussion on how to build B.C.'s economy and stem the rising tide of income inequality in the province.
An Ipsos Reid poll conducted for the project found that two-thirds of B.C. residents agree that the province's economic prosperity will rely on developing the resources in B.C.'s north. More than half (53%) support developing the liquefied natural gas industry.
But the polarized debate over resource extraction in B.C. has continued to hamper future development, and that needs to change, according to BCBC president Greg D'Avignon.
"There isn't a day that goes by where people aren't opposed to something happening, but in the same breath they want smaller classrooms, more transit and more things that add value to their lifestyle. But that equation doesn't work. You can't have more with less."
"The key message from the report is we need to do a better job at creating prosperity and sharing it and let's build better institutions for British Columbia. The vast majority of the province wants to get on with it and they want to find ways to participate in that prosperity more effectively."
According to the report, B.C. needs to ensure that regular, predictable and modest increases in its statutory minimum wage are tied to inflation to alleviate some of the province's income inequality.
It also needs to find new ways of reducing transit costs, provide a working income tax credit for low-income workers and reform the pension system to help lower income families save money for retirement.
But the government should also be expanding the revenue sources for its proposed prosperity fund to include royalties from the mining, energy and forestry sectors.
"We think there is a broader opportunity in a prosperity fund that has more component parts of natural resources that are non-renewable," said D'Avignon.
He added that the fund should be arm's length from the government.
"If you look at Alberta, they have not done a good job at managing their Heritage Fund. It's largely the same size as it was a decade ago, despite the huge wealth that's been generated in energy and part of the reason is the drawdown for the deficit [the government] is accruing today." •
Increasing the economic literacy of British Columbians is key to improving the public debate over the province's economic future, according to the latest report by the Business Council of BC (BCBC) and the BC Chamber of Commerce.
"Frankly, the Lower Mainland is a bit disconnected with what creates economic wealth in this province," said BCBC president Greg D'Avignon. "That's not the public's fault. That's businesses' fault. We talk about individual projects, but we rarely talk about the interconnectedness of the B.C. economy. This [report] is the first attempt at building out that economic literacy."
The report called for an end to the way important issues are discussed in B.C., which can be "highly adversarial, inflexible and too removed from the facts."
"The polarized nature of the debate here is unique from the rest of the country," said D'Avignon. "And the kinds of debate that happen aren't allowed in schools and aren't allowed in the workplace, so why do we allow it in the public sphere? People deserve better than that."
Among the 60 recommendations in the report is a call for the use of citizens' assemblies in public engagement, more involvement from academia for public assessments, greater engagement with First Nations on economic and social matters and a German-style experts' advisory panel to provide economic and fiscal oversight and validation of key economic data.
It also suggests moving the fixed provincial election date to the fall to "facilitate budget transparency" during election years.
