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British Columbia is a far wealthier place than it was a decade ago. It has also become a prohibitively expensive place to live for more and more working families, young people, and renters of all ages, thanks to ballooning housing prices. And those high prices are inflated by a tax system that encourages speculative investment in residential property with three key policies: low property taxes, the principal residence capital gains...

Mayor Lisa Helps of Victoria is hoping British Columbia’s activist new housing minister will change provincial laws to make it easier to get new homes built in her city, one that is renowned for its tourist-luring British colonial architecture, its growing homeless population, and its lengthy public process to get any kind of new housing approved. Mayor Helps knows it won’t be easy. “It’s going to take bold, courageous action...

BC’s affordable housing providers are staying afloat in large part because the BC government stepped up with support for subsidized homes and tenants.

Editor’s note: The report below is the second update of an original Sightline report published in March 2017. Over the past decade, Oregon and Washington have fended off several proposals to build enormous fracked fuel and petrochemical terminals on their coasts. But just to the north, British Columbia’s political leaders have taken the opposite tack, sending out a siren song to attract liquefied natural gas (LNG) investors to the province’s...

The politicians opposing British Columbia’s upcoming electoral reform measure are trying to frighten voters by telling them Proportional Representation (ProRep) makes ridings too big and breaks the local representation and accountability between voters and lawmakers. But the three ProRep options BC voters will see on their mail-in ballot weren’t just picked from a hat. And the BC voting referendum itself is the product of a demand for fairer representation—10 of...

This year, Doug Ford, whose brand of right-wing populism has drawn comparison to US president Donald Trump, took control of the Ontario government. Ford’s Progressive Conservative Party took majority control of the government with a minority of the votes because Ontario, like British Columbia and other places in Canada and the United States, uses a form of voting that distorts the will of the voters in elections. British Columbia could...

This fall, British Columbians will decide whether to switch to some form of proportional representation. It will be the third such referendum since 2005. This class of voting systems, locally known as ProRep or PR BC, better matches the share of a party’s seats with the amount of support it gets from voters. Some would say ProRep is overdue. Ten of the last twelve governments did not have support from...

BC Attorney General David Eby has recommended to cabinet that voters see a two-part question about proportional representation on their ballot this October or November. First, the referendum will ask voters whether they want to switch to proportional representation. Then, voters will be able to rank three possible forms of proportional representation in order of preference. If a majority say yes to the first question, then the proportional option with...

In northern Cascadia, BC voters will soon vote on a referendum to use Proportional Representation to help ensure Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) better reflect the will of the voters. BC’s current electoral method—single-winner ridings with first-past-the-post ballots—has been distorting the will of the voters for decades. BC’s election history highlights the well-known flaws of archaic first-past-the-post voting. In the past five decades, BC elections often put power in...

In late July, Malaysian oil giant Petronas shelved its plans to build a large liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility at Lelu Island, south of Port Edward, British Columbia. Its Pacific NorthWest LNG proposal was one of seven LNG proposals clustered in the vicinity of Prince Rupert. The $36 billion project would have produced 18 million metric tons of LNG per year, making it three times as large as Oregon’s...