The story of child poverty in Canada is very much an urban story. One out of every 10 children living in urban areas was poor in 2010, compared to one in 20 children living in non-urban areas. Three-quarters (or 76 per cent) of all poor children in Canada lived in one of the urban centres shown in the chart above.*

On April 23, the Fraser Institute released the annual update of their misleading Consumer Tax Index report. The piece is meant to feed the anti-tax sentiment with numbers sprinkled liberally for their shock value instead of providing any meaningful analysis. Here are some of the main flaws with the report's methodology.

Our last post argued that British Columbians are open to tax increases, and that the province would be well advised to increase revenues so that we can invest in services that improve our quality of life (such as affordable child care, seniors care and better public transit). It also needs to ensure everyone -- especially those at the top and corporations -- pays a fair share.

Yet many people worry that such changes will have harmful economic consequences. We are warned that asking upper-income people and corporations to contribute more into the collective pot will cause businesses to withhold or uproot their investments, and wealthy people to leave the province or work less, leaving us with fewer jobs.

Change the conversation, support rabble.ca today.

Yesterday's Speech from the Throne reads more like a list of what this government sees as its main achievements than a true framework for going forward. New initiatives are few and far between, sandwiched between pages of self-congratulatory recap of the natural gas strategy, the jobs plan and highlights from the last budget.