Clark’s Answer to Deepening Debt: Pretend Shipping Tar Sands to China Means “Jobs” for BC

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Christy Clark, aka Premier Photo-Op, has a big mess on her hands – but, fear not, she’ll let us all muck about in it.
 
The government is in deepening debt and Ms. Clark can’t pretend that it’s a mystery how that came about. While there are many causes the principal one is that the government didn’t see the Recession coming and, when it came, went into denial. The budget of 2009 with which they proudly went to the polls was an utter and deliberate sham. Ditto the HST.
 
How is Clark going to deal with this?
 
Easy – Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!
 
And where will those jobs come from?
 
In part from exports to China. Apparently Premier Clark hasn’t heard that China has its own Recession going, Big Time. Their banking system is essentially the government and only looks good on paper because the US owes them so much. Their mega-projects, especially the Three Gorges Dam, have become serious fiscal problems.
 
What is truly worrying is that Ms. Clark will try to create employment, preparatory to election time, on her own mega-projects such as the proposed Enbridge pipeline to Kitimat and the related tanker traffic down our treacherous coast. Environmental rules, such as they are, will become a chimera – a cynical gesture of contempt to citizens who put protection of our environment ahead of Ms. Clark’s election prospects. Fracking, the natural gas extraction which pollutes huge amounts of water, will be hugely encouraged.
 
The entire policy of the Campbell/Clark government will be to have in place a policy which she believes will mesmerize the public into believing that prosperity is just around the corner.
 
If the genie gave me but one wish it would be that everyone understands that pipelines and tanker traffic don’t pose risks but certainties. We must hammer this home as the corporations move into high gear with their high paid flacks to convince the public that they really do care about the environment. The fact is that they couldn’t care less about the environment or any social values. Oil spills are not seen for the ugly destruction they bring but merely the cost of doing business.
 
We environmentalists have to face facts – we haven’t the money to match the outputs of both government and industry. We must get down to basics – the issue is not money or jobs but the preservation of our very soul. We must care for our fish not because we fish but because when we lose them we lose a part of us. When we lose our wilderness we don’t do so just in some sort of abstract way but in the real sense that we, each and every one of us, have sustained a wound that will never go away.
 
There is no “safe” way you can construct and maintain pipelines or transfer oil on tankers. You can’t, in that most weasely of weasel words, “mitigate” the damage. We have to understand that from the moment you start the first pipe installation, the first step on the road to certain environmental devastation has been taken. When the first barrel of oil starts through the pipe, catastrophe has become merely a question of “when”.
 
The arguments we make are never met head-on. The answer will be, “aw hell, you don’t really believe those eco-freaks, do you?” “Jeez, this is the 21st century, sure we can do these things with little or no risk these days”, “Let those goddam tree huggers talk to the guys out of work”. “If you don’t move forward, you’ll end up going backwards”. There are plenty more one-liners.
 
There is no doubt that society must change; our ambitions must take into account a different society. For if we permit the destruction of our environment, what do we have left of the beautiful province we all love so much. The unemployed are not so because of environmentalists but because of a society that finds it easier to destroy than create.

While I do not let religion get in the way of rational debate, surely it’s utterly apropos to remember Jesus’s words, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

And, folks, it’s our soul that’s at stake here.

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About Rafe Mair

Rafe Mair, LL.B, LL.D (Hon) a B.C. MLA 1975 to 1981, was Minister of Environment from late 1978 through 1979. In 1981 he left politics for Talk Radio becoming recognized as one of B.C.'s pre-eminent journalists. An avid fly fisherman, he took a special interest in Atlantic salmon farms and private power projects as environmental calamities and became a powerful voice in opposition to them. Rafe is the co-founder of The Common Sense Canadian and writes a regular blog at rafeonline.com.

7 thoughts on “Clark’s Answer to Deepening Debt: Pretend Shipping Tar Sands to China Means “Jobs” for BC

  1. Young or old, every single person I’ve spoken to about the pipelines and oil tanker traffic said they don’t want to, but will if they have to, physically fight this one…seems BC is truly united on this issue!!!

  2. One of the costs of the Enbridge is the destruction of 100 km of the Peace River valley in NE. BC. The $10 billion Site C dam would destroy our ability to use nearly 20% of BC’s top farmland. What do we get in return? We get 70 years of hydro power targeted to extract North East Horne River natural gas applied to increase, by a third, Tar sands bitumen which is destined for the Enbridge and Kitimat Supertankers. BC imports more than half of its food. We cannot flood prime valleys to subsidize fossil fuel and ultimately, climate change. It is all a one way street for short term gain for a few, with long term planetary ecosystem destruction for everyone else.

  3. That LNG that big oil and gas corporations are ‘fracking’ for is not intended for BC consumers. We have plenty of natural gas produced by normal methods.

    Hydraulic fracturing does not only use copious amounts of fresh water from our lakes, rivers and aquifers. The water is mixed with various chemicals, many of which are known carcinogens, which those corporations refuse to divulge.

    The first thing we should do is watch a documentary called “Gasland”, so that we have some knowledge of the process. The people of B.C. have shown that we can be a force to be reckoned with, and we can stop this runaway BC Lib train (pun intended) before they can, along with their corporate bosses, destroy all that remains of our beautiful province.

  4. Promise of BC jobs? The newly approved Northwest Transmission Line is being built by an Alberta company, the IPP at Forrest Kerr is being built by an Alberta company. I’m fed up to here with any taxpayer funded contracts going to everyone but a BC company. This “Liberal government is NOT looking out for our interests.

  5. I am really fed up with the promises for jobs. There aren’t any to be gained for BC people, by allowing big oil or Enbridge into our province. The BC province and the citizens stand to risk absolutely everything, for absolutely nothing.

    The Campbell/Clark BC Liberals have, totally destroyed BC financially, now they want to make BC, a polluted wasteland. We have also had enough of Harper. Sending scum like Campbell to England, as High Commissioner, is the worst of Harper’s embarrassment yet.

    Now they want to log our Rain Forest. That is the home of the Spirit Bear, the unique small wolves, salmon runs and thousands of other wildlife creatures. This is also the channel for the dirty tankers to Kitimat. Our beautiful Orca and Humpback Whales and thousands of marine life are in that channel. As our raw logs go to China, I would think China will also have ships, to pick up the raw logs in the channel as well.

    The BC citizens have had enough stolen from them, and so have the First Nations People. There are thousands of BC people, who will join the First Nations, to protect this beautiful province, from Harper’s and The BC Liberals greed and thefts. Let BC be!!!

  6. I am really fed up with the promises for jobs. There aren’t any to be gained for BC people, by allowing big oil or Enbridge into our province. The BC province and the citizens stand to risk absolutely everything, for absolutely nothing.

    The Campbell/Clark BC Liberals have, totally destroyed BC financially, now they want to make BC, a polluted wasteland. We have also had enough of Harper. Sending scum like Campbell to England, as High Commissioner, is the worst of Harper’s embarrassment yet.

    Now they want to log our Rain Forest. That is the home of the Spirit Bear, the unique small wolves, salmon runs and thousands of other wildlife creatures. This is also the channel for the dirty tankers to Kitimat. Our beautiful Orca and Humpback Whales and thousands of marine life are in that channel. As our raw logs go to China, I would think China will also have ships, to pick up the raw logs in the channel as well.

    The BC citizens have had enough stolen from them, and so have the First Nations People. There are thousands of BC people, who will join the First Nations, to protect this beautiful province, from Harper’s and The BC Liberals greed and thefts. Let BC be!!!

  7. All of Christy’s job plans, were on the books for a long time. Christy’s route was all mapped out for her, by Harper and Campbell. All of Christy’s jobs are for the Americans, not for the BC and Canadian people.

    The tear down of the smelter in Kitimat, is an American contract, they brought U.S. citizens for those jobs.

    The few Kitimat people that did get jobs. Well, they were very badly treated by the American workers. So bad was the abuse, as badly as they needed jobs, some quit. The Canadian people weren’t even given safety gear, as the American crew were.

    The Enbridge pipeline same thing, they will bring their own workers. The pumping station for the dirty oil tankers, takes very few staff.

    If the seven mines going into Northern BC are American contracts? They will bring their own miners for those jobs.

    Even the ship building company that would get contract, if there is one for BC, is also American. They too will bring Americans in. I think that company is SeaSpan, the same outfit Christy’s brother was involved with.

    So, Harper, Campbell, Alberta and China can go straight to hell. The BC People owe them NOTHING.

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