BC Business
We assess how different people/things and, of course, businesses fared this week.
Hey, hello, hi.
We at the BCBusiness Report Card would not like to apologize for having missed the past couple weeks (undisclosed upper body injury).
Rather, we’re going to treat the facts like BC Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson did in a recent interview with the CBC’s Stephen Quinn about the current B.C. transit strike.
Even though his party took the province through a 123-day strike back in 2001, Wilkinson didn’t want to talk about that—he would only focus on the issue at hand and the failure of the current NDP government.
So we’d like to take a similar tack.
We don’t know what you’re talking about in regard to the previous weeks. We are only concerned with what is happening right now. And right now, we are writing a Report Card.
And that is what we’re concerned with.
Here’s what made the grade (and what didn’t) this week.
Excuses for being late
Grade: A
As we mentioned, there is transit job action happening in B.C. And while that is certainly not a good thing and we hope it ends very soon
There are some benefits. Namely, excuses for being late!
Running a few minutes behind to an important meeting?
Feel free to sacrilege our transit system!
“Yeah, so sorry I’m late. The buses They really need to do something about that strike.”
It might not be true, but when has that ever stopped you?
B.C.’s environmental reputation
Grade: A
Our province “continues to be the national leader by a long shot when it come to the adoption of zero emission vehicles including electric, plug-in hybrids and fuel cell cars,” according to the CBC.
So yes, you are allowed to continue acting superior to the other provinces when it comes to what you’re doing to save our planet. Even if you’re personally doing nothing. That’s how this works.
Numbers released by Electric Mobility Canada show that a full 10 percent of all new passenger vehicles sold in the province fall into the EV category, well above the national average of 3.5 percent.
In other words:
Reginald, how is the solar-panelled roof coming?
Tourism
Grade: C+
In the latest example of yes, actually, you can have too much of a good thing (like we didn’t learn this lesson at the sundae bar when we were six years old), tourism is reportedly too big an industry in B.C. right now.
Cities like Barcelona and Venice are apparently suffering from overtourism, and it’s not a stretch to say that B.C. might be the phenomenon’s latest victim.
“B.C. tourism, like tourism everywhere, wants to have its cake and eat it too,” says The Tyee‘s Crawford Killan.
C’mon B.C., the freaking sundae bar, dude.
Vaping
Grade: D
B.C. is set to implement the country’s toughest restrictions on vaping.
That means a new 20-percent tax rate, along with restrictions on nicotine levels and advertising. There won’t, however, be a ban on flavours.
B.C. is the first province to specifically tax the trend.
And people used to think Pokémon cards were killing youth.
Pettiness
Grade: F
Don’t get us wrong. We love some good, old-fashioned pettiness like anyone else.
But Peter Allard might have taken it a step too far. The famed UBC donor filed a petition with B.C. Supreme Court to make sure his name appears on all law degrees given out by the university.
Hey, we get it. You gave the place $30 million. You want to see a bit of a return on the investment. But Pete, man, this makes you look oh, I don’t know, incredibly out of touch?
In addition to his philanthropy, Allard was apparently the real-life inspiration for multiple Bond villains.
Have something that needs to be graded? Email ncaddell@canadawide.com