From TheTyee.ca – June 1, 2011

by Ben Parfitt

As British Columbia Premier Christy Clark makes her debut in the provincial legislature this week, the media spotlight will likely be on the predictable verbal sparring between her and Adrian Dix, the NDP’s recently minted leader, over the Harmonized Sales Tax.

Meaning that Independent MLAs Bob Simpson and Vicki Huntington will have their work cut out for them trying to maintain media focus and public attention on their welcome non-partisan call for the appointment of a special legislative committee to thoroughly investigate unconventional natural gas developments in the province.

It’s a call that 21 organizations and prominent British Columbians — including First Nations, leading environmental organizations, local citizens groups in the natural gas-rich northeast corner of the province, and individual town councilors — all support, and one that we at the B.C. Office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives have also endorsed.

For years, the policies of provincial NDP and Liberal administrations alike have been squarely focused on increased exploitation of B.C.’s natural gas resources, which are primarily situated in the Peace River and Northern Rockies regions of the province — an extensive but remote part of B.C. that is larger than the state of Nebraska. This fact may help to explain why it has fallen to Simpson and Huntington to propose that the time has arrived for a sober assessment of the industry’s activities and the role that provincial policies play in shaping them.

It was under the NDP that the one-stop-shop for regulatory energy industry approvals — the Oil and Gas Commission — was created in an effort to eliminate the alleged red tape of multiple agencies reviewing applications by natural gas companies to drill gas wells, build roads and situate pipelines. Dan Miller, under whose tenure as energy and mines minister the OGC was created, would go on to do lobbying work for mining and energy company clients, including Enbridge Inc., the company hoping to build an oil pipeline from Edmonton to Kitimat.

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