Carbon Emissions vs Consumption

It seems that I've confused "carbon emissions" with "carbon consumption" - probably because I care a little about the latter, and not at all about the former - resulting in a thoroughly sketchy claim that BC's new gas tax won't reduce carbon emissions. It's a lot harder to get out of the carbon consumption chain than the carbon emission chain.

Thanks to Sacha for only quoting the least crazy part of that post!

So, does this mean that the environmentally friendly choice at Safeway is plastic bags because it raises the price of gas? It's all so confusing these days...

That being said, I'm not going to take too much crap from anyone that extols both the economic and environmental benefits of this tax restructuring - if there's one thing that economic growth does not normally lead to, it's a reduction in carbon emissions.


See also this chart at Google's Gapminder.

The BC Carbon Tax is Retarded

Whoops! I was not thinking entirely clearly when I wrote this post. Proceed with caution!

Sitting in line for gas on the last day before BC's new Carbon Tax is imposed (hey, I was just unluckily low on gas, not hoarding!), I had some time to ponder the full impact of this legislation.

Absolutely nothing, that's what. Well, in an ideal, frictionless world there would be no impact - we can actually look forward to a small amount of productivity being lost in BC, with no decrease in carbon emissions.

If it was just a regular tax hike, it might result in more money being spent on greening our cities, or treeplanting, or another activity that will produce slightly less carbon than just going about life as normal.

But it's not a regular tax hike. In fact, the BC Liberals have gone out of their way to ensure this tax will absolutely 100% not decrease carbon emissions!

By law, government must show how all of the carbon tax revenue flows back to individuals and businesses as tax reductions.

That's right. They hired a bunch of people to define and administer a brand new tax, spent some more cash mailing one time rebates out, and the net result is the money gets shuffled around a bit. I'll take them at their word that the resulting tax cuts will distribute the revenue relatively fairly and that this tax isn't particularly regressive.

Let's restate things one more time to be really clear: A bunch of money is collected. The BC Government takes a small slice off the top to pay for the salaries of the people that administer the program (or other tax dollars have to be diverted for that purpose - same difference). Whatever is left is given back to the people that paid the tax to begin with so that they can afford to by more carbon based products. Oh, and all the companies that have to collect the tax raise their prices a tiny bit to compensate for the extra overhead.

In summary: No reduction in carbon emissions, fewer people in the province doing productive work, and prices effectively go a tiny bit up on everything we buy.

Good job, geniuses.

Vancouver Taxi Policies

The big uproar over cabbies refusing fares going out to the suburbs of Vancouver is inane. Now the provincial transportation minister (from the relatively free-market party!) is talking about a "bill of rights" for passengers to solve the problem.

Here's an idea, geniuses: Issue more cab licenses in the jurisdictions having problems with uncooperative cabbies. The only reason the drivers can afford to be that picky is because there aren't enough cabs to satisfy demand. Issue limited weekend-night-only permits if this would cause a problem during the rest of the week. It's not that complicated.

And I can't believe that the cops are wasting their time on sting operations:

[The transportation minister] said police told him they were using young, female police officers requesting late-night rides to suburbs to catch cabbies refusing fares.

Excellent use of tax dollars, right there!

Surrey Housing Development: 152nd St. and 29th Ave.

I attended a meeting for local residents about the development of the last big forested lots in the area. Basically 26 relatively high density houses bordered by 29th Ave., 29A Ave., 152nd St., and Highway 99.


All the concerns voiced pretty much fell into one of two categories:

1. This was zoned as low density housing when I moved here. First you screwed us with the low income townhouses, and now this.
   
2. The traffic is going to be a nightmare.

The traffic concern I share myself. 153A comes down a hill from 28th Ave, which is effectively a mini-highway that runs past Sunnyside Elementary School. It is likely that there will be quite a bit more through traffic on 29A because of the roads being built/finished. This in turn will probably result in the mini-mall parking lot being closed off to 29A (the only way currently to head South on 152nd), and the Southbound 152 to 29A median gap being closed off.

The developer claims they had to fight with the city to even get the jogs put in to separate 153A from 29A - it would have been a lot worse without that.

Fraser Health Billing Practices

Fraser Health runs the biggest hospitals in BC, and is responsible for billing patients for any services not covered by the provincial health plan (wait, how many tiers are we supposed to have?).

It turns out that they have a rather... "unique" approach to billing. When you authorize additional services you can provide your private medical insurance info to allow Fraser Health to collect directly from your insurer rather than forcing you to manually submit a claim.

Or so they told me.

Turns out that what they really do is:

1. Immediately send you a bill for the full amount, with no indication that this is not what you really owe.
2. Wait for you to call to complain after you call your insurer to find out why the claim was denied.
3. Explain that you can ignore the first bill because they haven't tried billing the insurer yet, but will eventually.
4. Send off the claim information to your insurer.
5. Send you an adjusted bill for the remaining balance.

Time to send in some process experts to clean things up...

NDP Advocates Crippling BC

John Horgan, the NDP Energy Critic, has introduced a bill that would require the BC government to regulate retail gasoline prices.

An NDP MLA is calling for the regulation of gasoline prices in an attempt to reduce what he called "apparent price gouging."

John Horgan, the energy critic, wants to protect consumers from price fluctuations by allowing the B.C. Utilities Commission to examine wholesale prices and regulate retail prices.

Ignoring the fundamental stupidity of price controls and the fact that local gas prices still aren't high enough to have removed a meaningful (my commute still stinks) number of cars from the road, this highlights the conflicted nature of left wing parties: It is virtually impossible to reconcile environmental concerns with the needs of the "poor".

Although I suppose it is possible that Horgan is a cynical liar and realizes full well that price controls are not likely to result in an abundance of cheap gas.

BC Midterm Budget

Sacha has a nice summary of the latest BC Budget.

His summary is still pretty long, so I'll cut it down even further: BC is doing really well. Big surpluses, high employment, etc.

BC's Place in the New World Order

An article on how BC is trying to become integral to the shipping of goods from Asia to North America.

BRITISH COLUMBIA'S GATEWAY INITIATIVES

$900 million: Roberts Bank

Terminal Two

Container facility.

$400 million:

Deltaport Third Birth.

$190 million: Fraser Surrey

Dock expansion.

$175 million: Dredging Fraser River Channel for larger vessles.

$340 million: Fraser Richmond terminal development.

$269 milion: Vancouver Harbour terminal.

$550 million +: New deep water container terminals at Prince Rupert.

$60 million + : Tsawwassen First Nation agreement in principle for Roberts Bank expansion.

Total: $2.884 billion

$800 million: South Fraser Perimeter Road.

$460 million: North Fraser Perimeter Road.

$1.5 billion: Trans- Canada upgrades and twinning of the Port Mann Bridge.

$300 million: Widen Fraser Highay through Surrey; twin Dollarton Bridge and other road improvements.

$900 million: Golden Ears Bridge, spanning the Fraser River.

$600 million: Replacing Patullo Bridge.

$252 million: Land border crossing upgrades.

$960 million: Kicking Horse Canyon Highway upgrades.

Total: $5.772 billion

$1.9 billion: Canada Line, between YVR and downtown Vancouver. Completiion 2009.

Total: $1.9 billion

$290 million: Upgrades to Vancouver International Airport to reduce delays. Completion by 2012

$1.4 billion: Expansion of passenger facilities, including a nine-gate expansion. Passengers expected to rise from 16.4 million to more than 28 million. Completion 2015.

Total: $1.690 billion

$5 billion +: Building of up to five pipelines between western Canada and West Coast.

$76 million +: Lheidli T'enneh First Nation settllement also awards 4,360 hectares of land, including 1,160 hectares of mostly Crown land inside Prince George, helping to bring about proposed pipeline and development of inland port and container facilities in Prince George.

Total: $5.076+ billion

Grand Total: $17.332 billion

Surrey Wins!

With the highest murder rate in BC's Lower Mainland. Not being an (East) Indian woman significantly decreases your risk factor though.

I find the statistics related to murder investigations amazing; here in the Lower Mainland only 70% of murders are "solved". Assuming that they use the same criteria as California for considering a case closed, this means that in that 70% there are going to be some number of acquittals, dismissals, and wrongful convictions.

So if you kill someone, you have a 30% chance of never even being charged (closer to 40% in California). If you kill someone you don't know you probably have way better odds than that.

Vancouver Jobs Search Engine

Google has released a tool for building custom search engines that only return results from the pages that you choose.

I have relatively recently done a lot of hunting for jobs, so I whipped up a search engine that looks for jobs in BC's Lower Mainland. It's launching mainly with positions at tech companies, but I'll add lots more if anyone uses it.

Jobs Around Vancouver

Why Was The "Queen of the North" Empty?

If this Wikipedia article is correct, when the Queen of the North sank it was only carrying around 10% of the passengers it was capable of. 101 people (including crew) out of 700 possible, and only 16 cars out of a possible 115.

10-15 years ago when I used to take that ferry relatively regularly it was NEVER empty like that. And the sinking occurred during the summer months when it should have been most busy.

Kind of begs the question as to why it was being run at all (at that frequency at least).

Spam or Ham?

I just received the worst government communication I have ever seen. If I hadn't been able to find a link from a real government site to the one advertised I wouldn't be sure this was for real.

For a good laugh, check out the actual page the email links to - it's distinctly non-governmental looking. (The fact that it isn't hosted on the .gov.bc.ca domain makes me think that there is a strange relationship there.)

========================

TIME TO UPDATE YOUR COMPANY

Dear [[president of company]]:

Your company listing is online at: http://www.made-in-bc.ca

Our records indicate that your company listing has not been recently updated or verified. The BC Manufacturers’ Directory is one more tool that will help you connect with buyers, investors and everyone else in the marketplace.

THIS SERVICE IS PROVIDED TO YOU FREE-OF-CHARGE.

Unless we have your changes your company listing will appear as:

[[Accurate company info]]

To view and make changes to your company visit our web site at: www.made-in-bc.ca Choose Update or Add and then select your company from the list (the listing is under the business name that appears in the address of this letter). Click Company Information and your company will be displayed. Make any changes and Submit Form. BC STATS will then verify the information and update the database to reflect any changes you have made.

Alternately, you can return this email with any changes.

If you have any questions, please contact me at: Phone 1-888-322-3284 Fax 250-387-0329 or email to: BCMD.Mail@gov.bc.ca

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sue Pelter<o:p>

Companies Directory Officer

BC STATS

Ministry of Citizens’ Services

PO Box 9410 Stn Prov Govt

Victoria, BC V8W 9V1