All posts by Rafe Mair

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.

Rafe: Union bosses fall for Clark's LNG pipedream

Rafe: Union bosses fall for Clark’s LNG pipe dream

Energy and Resources, LNG
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Rafe: Union bosses fall for Clark's LNG pipedream
BC Premier Christy Clark and BC Fed President Jim Sinclair (photos: CP, Glen Baglo/PNG)

When I read that BC Federation of Labour President Jim Sinclair and Tom Sigurdson, head of the BC-Yukon Building Trades Council, had arrived at a deal with Premier Clark on training workers for the liquefied natural gas (LNG) business we’re told is coming, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Now let me make this clear – there is northing wrong and a lot right when traditional political foes shake hands on a deal that is beneficial to them or to the people of BC, or both. Way back in the 70s, Socred Labour Minister Allan Williams worked well with labour because there was trust.

Kicking Dix in the family jewels

The question this latest deal raises is more fundamental than simply making a deal that may never happen, complete with photo-ops in which, I might say, Mr. Sinclair looked most uncomfortable.

That this meeting kicks NDP Leader Adrian Dix right in the family jewels is obvious. Mr. Sinclair’s position goes way beyond NDP inner-politics and raises some interesting questions.

In his remarks, Mr. Sinclair talked about his members “building things”, as a basis for supporting LNG. He then went out of his way to attack Dix for opposing for the proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion to Vancouver.

Let’s look at a couple of issues that make me think Mr. Sinclair is for anything that can be built.

The risks of LNG

What if, as I believe (and I’m not alone), no LNG plant goes ahead? Apart from the fact that he will have a lot of fences to mend with his own members, Mr. Sinclair will be tied to a failure.

What evidence does he have about what an LNG pipelines and plants will do environmentally? If Mr. Sinclair doesn’t give a damn and his position is simply an attack on Mr. Dix, that’s one thing – but if he believes some LNG pipelines and plants will be built, surely his members and the public-at-large should know about these fatcors.

[quote]According to Bloomberg, the Asian price for LNG should collapse to the point where we’re actually losing money – right about the time we enter the market.[/quote]

Apart from LNG pipeline builders, who will mostly come from outside BC, and a few non-union white-collar jobs at the plant, where are the jobs for British Columbians?

For an LNG pipeline and plant to make sense, one must know what market there will be years ahead, when the plants are finally operational. If there are firm deals made – and open to public scrutiny – we must know what the price will be five years down the road.

Incidentally, according to Bloomberg, using the best data available, the Asian price for LNG should collapse to the point where we’re actually losing money, right about the time we enter the market.

[signoff1]

What if the LNG entrepreneur wants to bring his regular crew in to construct the project? Is it Mr. Sinclair’s position that they can be barred to make way for local workers? Has Premier Clark guaranteed this? In advance of any action on the project?

Mr. Sinclair makes it pretty clear that he’s not concerned about the environment – if there’s something to be built, then let’s build it. He’s given his blessing for LNG projects before most of the dozen or so proposed have gone through environmental assessment of the plants or the pipelines associated with them. And that’s saying nothing of the controversial practice of  hydraulic fracturing (fracking), which would supply these pipelines and plants.

What about Fracking?

Let’s look at the last piece.

Environmental concerns are not piddling matters. Fracking involves deep drilling then using huge quantities of chemically-laced water. Where does that water come from? Where does it go? What about the stability of the ground around the extraction?

I infer from your comments, Mr. Sinclair, that you approve of the new Kinder Morgan pipeline and the Enbridge pipeline. I realize that you’re from Ontario and thus not as concerned about the beauty of this province as natives are. So are you saying that ”building” trumps environmental concerns?

Surely, you don’t insult the intelligence of the public by saying that Government/Industry environmental processes actually work! We know, for example, that Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver and our Prime Minister have said that the Enbridge Pipeline will go ahead regardless of the findings of the Joint Review Panel hearings.

What you say, Mr. Sinclair, whether you think so or not, is that all members of the BC Federation of Labour must support LNG, the Enbridge pipeline and the Kinder Morgan expansion. The thousands of British Columbians who have strong environmental concerns must, if they are union members, change their evil ways and all get behind whatever project will allegedly get them jobs.

To meet with the government and try to get a good deal for your members is a very good idea, unless you’ve been played for a fool – which you just have been.

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Wheels coming off Liberal energy policy as IPP contracts cancelled

Wheels coming off Liberal energy policy as contracts cancelled

Economics, Hydropower, WATER
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Wheels coming off Liberal energy policy as IPP contracts cancelled
BC Energy Minister Bill Bennett

Folks, the wheels are coming off the BC Government’s 2002 Energy policy, which forbade BC Hydro from creating new power (Site C Dam being exempted).

Energy Minister Bill Bennett has cancelled 10 Independent Power Projects (IPPs), with plans to defer delivery on up to another 9.

This is a major vindication for all of us who have pointed out the obvious – BC Hydro cannot go on paying over two times the market for electricity. It simply can’t deal with the $50 BILLION-plus bill it must pay for the privilege of losing money hand over fist.

Let us always remember that this policy was put in place because the Campbell Clark government, egged on by big business and the loony right wing Fraser Institute, said we would need the energy and that only the private sector could handle this need.

How deep will the cuts go?

The obvious question to the minister is how far will he go? Will he place a moratorium on all future IPP projects? What about other contracts already signed? Will he look at IPP dams in production?

What about the fairness of those deals, which were stated by the BC Utilities Commission as “not being in the public interest”? What if in examining these secret contracts, the minister finds them to be, as I suspect, unconscionable bargains?

Will he start monitoring IPP plants and enforcing environmental rules? Why now, ten years after the Energy Plan, is the minister analyzing this IPP mess?

[quote]Why now, ten years after the Energy Plan, is the minister analyzing this IPP mess?[/quote]

Let good ol’ Uncle Rafe tell you why.

As many have been saying, BC Hydro is bankrupt – at least it would be if it were in the private sector. Its only recourse to avoid actual bankruptcy is to pass this mess off to voters, and that will mean big-time trouble for the Clark government. Premier Clark is now looking towards the election of 2017 and can see her government in deep, deep trouble. She sees the BC Hydro situation as the big issue – demonstrating how the pitiful NDP campaign last May was so harmful to the province.

The premier’s difficulty is that she was part of the energy policy a decade ago and supported it because right wing ideologues like the Fraser Institute advised her government that publicly owned enterprises were to be despised and done away with. In short, the present damage to BC Hydro is irreparable, which was the whole idea in the first place.

LNG Hail Mary

Premier Clark lost all the Campbell nitwits and is now supported by a caucus that was glad to see the end of him. They don’t have an ideological approach to BC Hydro and see their own survival as dependent upon cleaning up this energy mess.

Premier Clark knows this and has a solution: build Site “C” for about $10 BILLION, sell power at a huge discount to large energy producers if they will “mine” gas, largely by “fracking”, then take that gas to Prince Rupert, liquefy it, using huge quantities of subsidized power, then sell it to Asian markets. This will, opines the Premier, not only wipe out the province’s debt but also will put $100 BILLION into a “Prosperity Fund” – and we’ll all be on easy street.

All of this depends, of course, on getting a market for this gas. That depends on its putative customers needing gas in 2017 and beyond. What happens if these future customers have lots of gas? That has largely happened.

(Let me digress to note that recently The UK and Israel have each discovered enough natural gas for 25 years, the point being that the likelihood is that by 2017 – the absolute earliest any of BC’s LNG will be ready for export – gas will be a glut on the market.)

Mr. Bennett is no fool and sees that placing everything on #12 Red on the wheel is madness, while also realizing that what I’ve just said is so obvious that not to deal with it could not only defeat the government but destroy the right wing coalition.

[quote]Premier Clark has no vision because visions cost money.

[/quote]

Premier Clark has no vision because visions cost money. She sees that the energy situation is catastrophic. She will rely on companies pledging to build LNG plants yet the shovels are barely turning. As the months and years progress, she will “suddenly” find that the world – especially including Asia – will be awash in natural gas. More and more, like Mr.Macawber, her policy will be based on the hope that “something will turn up”.

Thanks to the pitiful press we face, and the just-as-pitiful NDP election campaign last May, the public is largely in the dark about this mess – but that won’t last until the next election in 2017.

Minister Bennett and his colleagues will dip deep into the top hat but, alas, there are no rabbits there.

[signoff1]

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How Alberta oil companies bought the BC election - and the media missed it

Media asleep as Alberta oil companies bought BC election

Energy and Resources, Media, Oil&Gas, Politics, Western Canada
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How Alberta oil companies bought the BC election - and the media missed it
Premier Christy Clark tours BC’s natural gas industry during 2013 election campaign (photo: Justin Tang/CP)

I started the week pissed off – make that Tuesday morning when I saw an article in the Province from a guy named Marsden who writes in the Calgary Herald and tells us in British Columbia that we ought to be grateful for the opportunity of transporting Alberta’s Tar Sands – that atmosphere-ravisher and source of catastrophic leaks – to market. I don’t begrudge him his opinion – what I’m sick to death of is the Postmedia press.

Where the hell are the sharp-eyed journalists of old that would have eaten this guy alive? Our local guys are almost all let go. We have no political cartoonist unless you count Harrop in the Sun, who’s incapable of drawing faces, and we have two editorial pages that serially kiss the ass of business. On the question of cartoonists, where is Krieger, who is brilliant? The last time I asked that question the Province sued me – yet, I ask again, where is Krieger?

I ask the editors of the two excuses for newspapers this simple question: would you please scour the morgue and find me one line of criticism editorially or by your two political columnists of fish farms, “run of river projects” and the slow-but-steady bankrupting of BC Hydro, of pipelines and tanker traffic? Just a line.

I recognize that Palmer and Smyth have families to feed and kids to educate and were I in their shoes I probably would write what my editor wanted and I would ignore topics that were, wink, wink, off limits. But, gawdamitey, Palmer almost singlehandedly brought NDP premier Glen Clark down and did so by holding his feet to the fire. Nothing sensational, just good old journalistic skepticism.

What happened? Ten years on the NDP’s case but, since 2001, 12 years of canoodling with the Liberals!

The week got worse when Damien sent me some stuff about out of province corporate donations from oil barons to both the BC Liberal Party and the NDP.

And where did he get this information? From the Vancouver Sun? Nay.

From the Province, then?

Nay again, it was from 24 Hours – the throwaway free paper which, along with Metro and the occasional bit in the BC section of the Toronto Globe and Mail (it is very occasional), are the “journals of record” for this news-starved province.

One man, Allan Paul Marking, an Alberta Oil dude, gave $150,000 to the Liberals. Alberta oil companies Encana and Cenovus gave them $68,000 and Texas based Spectra Energy gave $33,000. Many made donations to the NDP too, just in case.

No one can be surprised at these gifts – after all it’s all neat and legal. What I do criticize is the lack of mainstream media attention.

This isn’t brain surgery here. The man who pays the piper calls the tune. If you think that this money doesn’t make Premier Clark think nice things about them when she’s making her pipeline decisions, you must believe in the Great Pumpkin.

What is extraordinary about all this is that for the public to get the truth they must read online journals like this one and thetyee.ca, which, along with many others, do a first class job. They may not get the readership of the Postmedia papers – yet – but that’s because the old papers do stuff on cars, stock markets, real estate, etc, that are beyond the ken of these websites.

It’s bad enough that we have such crappy papers that rely on “foreign” columnists, but the killer is that the great issues of the world pass unnoticed and uncriticized. The press has unusual protection, constitutionally giving them wide freedoms to keep the “establishment” reasonably covered, yet they consistently flout these rights and have become house organs for big business, government and the “establishment” in general.

It is truly to weep.

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Clark & Redford: What their cozy relationship means for BC pipelines

Politics, Western Canada
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Clark & Redford: What their cozy relationship means for BC pipelines
BC and Alberta Premiers Christy Clark and Alison Redford (CP photo)

I have some questions for Premier Clark.

Premier, I’m a simple man who by nature asks simple questions.

You and Alberta premier Redford have evidently agreed that there will be a pipeline from her province through ours to the sea and that BC will make some money out of this deal.

  • Is this the end for Enbridge Northern gateway?
  • What will the new pipeline do to satisfy those of us with serious environmental concerns about Enbridge?
  • Does this musing by you and Redford have any bearing on Kinder Morgan who, incidentally, have had several recent spills?

Let’s move on to Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). You have promised, premier, that over the next several decades LNG will have wiped out all provincial debt and put over $100 billion in a prosperity fund. To make this happen we have to know some things:

  • Who will our customers be?
  • Given the huge reserves of shale gas and oil, worldwide, being discovered every day, isn’t it reasonable to assume that by the time we enter the market at the end of the decade, potential customers will be producing their own gas in quantities beyond their needs?
  • What will the price payable to BC be in 2020? And what will the market price be in the places we want to export to? Surely you can answer those questions, for otherwise your statements are egregiously irresponsible.

Let’s look at our own supply of shale gas:

  •  You have announced that Site “C”, a $10 billion dollar project, is to help the natural gas industry. Does this mean industry gets this new power free or for a significant discount compared to residential and small business customers? Does it mean that any shale gas producer who finds his returns don’t meet costs will get more favourable rates from BC Hydro?
  • If we find, alas, that the Site “C” power is not “bought” by natural gas companies, what happens to that power? In, short, what is your confidence that “Site “C” power will be needed?

A couple of questions about “fracking”:

  • Premier, in days of yore, you and then-Premier Campbell were hugely concerned about the burning of natural gas because it was toxic. Indeed, you and he heavily criticized BC Hydro for using gas to operate Burrard Thermal for a few days a year when hydro power is short. How can you condemn Burrard Thermal and support LNG production?
  • Premier, you have to get that LNG to the coast, I assume by pipeline. Will this pipeline take Tar Sands bitumen as well? Could it be easily converted for that process? Do you intend to hold public hearings, not just on environmental grounds but on the question of whether or not British Columbians want this program in the first place?
  • What are you going to do in a few years time when you discover that this LNG project is just a pipe dream?

Premier, forgive me but I might be a bit rude.

I suggest that your natural gas fracking/transporting policy is just wistful thinking. In reality, you are a Mr. Macawber, hoping that “something will turn up”.

I say your dream will turn out to be a nightmare.

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Liberals set BC Hydro on path to privatization

Liberals set BC Hydro on path to privatization

Hydropower, Privatization, WATER
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Liberals set BC Hydro on path to privatization
Will core public assets like WAC Bennett Dam go the way of BC Rail?

It’s rather like a pregnancy – you can only keep it a secret for so long. Thus it is with BC Hydro’s bankruptcy.

We recently learned that BC Hydro spends 50% of its power purchases on power bought, on a take-or-pay basis, from Independent Power Producers (IPPs) yet only gets 16% of its power from them. Did you know that last summer, following a high spring runoff, BC Hydro was forced to spill water (i.e. waste power) over their dams, buying power from IPPs instead of making it themselves?

Did you know that since 2002 BC Hydro has been forbidden to make any new power (excepting Site C – which has been on the books for 30 years) and that all new power must be bought from private power companies?

Did you know that BC Hydro must take all private power produced whether it needs it or not?

Did you know that these agreements, involving huge amounts of public money, are secret? From what little information we do have, we know that BC Hydro must pay IPPs about 3x the market rate for power and up to 10 times what they can produce it for themselves from their heritage dams!

Did you know that BC Hydro used to pay the government hundreds of millions per year in dividends and that they will do so this year only by raising our rates? Think of that – you will pay higher rates so that BC Hydro, in the red and getting redder, can pay this back to us?

Did you know that these contracts forced on BC Hydro have committed them to spend some $55 BILLION to IPPs over the coming decades?

Did you know that BC’s main political writers, Vaughn Palmer and Mike Smyth have said virtually nothing about this for 11 years?

That’s why I raise these matters here – apart from Erik Andersen, an economist specializing in government finances, this website and The Tyee, no one of whom I am aware has written a solitary word.

[signoff2]

I pose these questions because everyone I ask has no idea that this is going on and has been over 11 years.

This all started, as I mentioned, with the Campbell/Clark decision to make IPPs the only new suppliers of energy, with BC Hydro forced to buy it.

Did you also know that IPPs destroy the rivers they use, commit hundreds of infringements on their licenses a year and so far as I know have never been charged?

What are new Energy Minister Bill Bennett and the Clark government going to do about this as more and more people find out the truth?

It’s already started, as we are being primed to accept a substantial hike in our Hydro bills. This will be explained away as rising costs of producing power (which is true, thanks to paying all that money to IPPs), being necessary because the NDP government 13 years ago did not commit BC Hydro to make appropriate upgrades to their infrastructure – plus, I wouldn’t be surprised if the list included El Niño, sun spots, chem trails and too many seals in our oceans!

The reason people don’t know about this is the other side of the big lie technique – the utter silence method of fooling people.

The veil of secrecy has been very effective but the pregnancy is showing.

We will see, I predict, not only huge rate increases but a government blaming Hydro for mismanaging its business. Bennett and Clark will then start the process of saying, complete with crocodile tears, BC Hydro must be sold, with the dams being on a 990-year lease (ring a bell?!). Indeed it will be a reprise of BC Rail and the Fraser Institute, thanks to lack of media and two appalling election campaigns, 2009 and last May by the NDP – and the breach of duty to the public by the Campbell/Clark governments.

While the policy was created by the Liberals and kept secret by them, the NDP has its own, large share of the blame, for not raising these issues in timely fashion in day to day business. They contributed, by their silence, to the Liberals being able to proceed as if nothing was happening.

BC Hydro is worse than dead-broke, giving the government a self-made excuse to split this former jewel in our crown – leaving us all at the mercy of large international corporations.

Wait for  it – the day of reckoning approaches.

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Minister admits Hydro rates going up, won't say how much

Liberals Deliberately Driving BC Hydro Debt

Hydropower, Privatization, WATER
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My colleague Damien Gillis’s recent speech in Kelowna (see below) must be required reading if one is to comprehend what is going to happen to BC Hydro debt and your power bills.

Hydro was created out of the fertile mind of WAC Bennett when, in 1961, his government bought out The BC Electric Railway Company. The purpose of this gigantic move, which led to one of the longest lawsuits in history, was to provide secure and cheap hydro power for both citizens and industry. It succeeded – grandly.

During the time the Campbell Liberals were in Opposition, they planed to make the generation a private affair, and shortly after taking power, in 2002 to be exact, Premier Gordon Campbell, with Christy Clark as deputy Premier, forbade BC Hydro from generating any new power (the exception being Site “C”, which had been on the books for over two decades at that point).

The media, very much including me, fell down on the job. I can’t count the times I had the Independent Power Producers (IPPs) lawyer, David Austin, on my radio show singing the IPPs company tune. Mr. Austin did nothing wrong – he did his job and he told the story from his client’s perspective.

It was I who failed. I bought the crap about IPPs building handy-dandy little “run of the river” schemes that wouldn’t disturb the river in the slightest. Colin Hansen, then Finance Minister, did a TV interview that repeated this bullshit.

It wasn’t until 2006 that I understood what was really happening. The producer of my very short lived Internet show, gave me chapter and verse but asked me not to identify him, which I have never done. When I started to belatedly research this issue I learned that these IPP projects not only destroyed the fish but also scarred the landscape with roads for access and transmission lines.

And they ruined Hydro.

Not long afterwards I met Tom Rankin, who was to spend a fortune of his own money telling people what was really happening. I met my colleague Damien Gillis at the same time and both of us joined Tom in the Save our Rivers Society and we went to work, Damien with his camera and I with my pen and vocal cords.

We had comrades-in arms like independent economist Erik Andersen, who had the technical ability to translate into plain, unreconstructed English just what was going on.

But the NDP blew it. And here’s what’s going to happen.

BC Hydro owes IPPs $55 Billion dollars over the next 40 years, which, in itself, will break the crown corporation. During the spring months when you and I were bitching about the weather, IPPs were churning out power because the run-off is the only time most IPPs generate any appreciable power. BC HYDRO, IN THE MEANTIME, WAS FORCED TO BUY THIS POWER AT HUGELY INFLATED AMOUNTS WHILE THEY SPILLED THEIR WATER OVER THE DAMS, INSTEAD OF MAKING THEIR OWN POWER!

This energy “plan” has resulted in BCH being unable to handle its own upkeep, as we see with cost overruns to numerous capital projects.

As if things were not bad enough, now they must build Site “C” for $10 BILLION to make cheap power for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plants. It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to see that Hydro can’t possibly handle these burdens.

Then came tragedy #1. The NDP simply did not understand or certainly didn’t reflect any knowledge of this issue going into the 2009 election and the Liberals won.

Tragedy #2 came in 2013 when, once again the NDP failed to raise environmental and economic issues, including the now provable fact that BC Hydro, because of the 2002 Campbell energy plan, is broke.

I cannot forecast just how it will happen, but the Clark government will break up Hydro and the ostensible reason will be because they so mismanaged themselves as to prove their Fraser Institute proposition that only private companies know how to do things right. I can say that the first step has been taken as the government has made it clear that rates will, alas and alack, have to increase. What the government won’t tell you is that the Campbell/Clark government has deliberately brought Hydro to its fiscal knees so that it can be privatized. One guess is that somehow the dams will be leased for 990 years, a formula that they successfully got away with as they privatized BC Rail.

It gives no pleasure, I assure you, for us at The Common Sense Canadian to say “we told you so”, although the fact is that it, and especially Erik Andersen, have been spot on for years now.

No…the feeling is sorrow, anger. And a sense that perhaps we could have and should have presented our arguments better in some way. And that may be true, except I think we’re permitted to observe that with our meager resources we tried while the mainstream media were silent throughout and remain so.

Please do watch and pass on Damien’s Kelowna speech because he tells it like it is.

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Why Rafe Mair is cancelling his Sun, Province subscriptions

Energy and Resources, Media
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On Thursday, July 4, Mr. Gordon Fisher, publisher of the Vancouver Sun and Vancouver Province, printed a full page letter to subscribers, telling us that the cost of the papers will increase on August 1, then gave us the economic reasons for his decisions. He wants us to stay subscribers and pledges rather vague changes that will take place.

Mr. Fisher, we will be cancelling subscriptions in September and think you should know the reasons.

Mr. Fisher – If I don’t want a critical look at fish farms; if I don’t want a critical look at highways tearing up farmland; if I don’t want sharp investigations into the private river power policy that has driven BC Hydro to the brink of bankruptcy; if I don’t want an evaluation of what is called “fracking”; if I don’t want a sharp-eyed evaluation of pipelines; and if I don’t want a careful and questioning evaluation of tanker traffic, then I don’t need to pay you for not getting these things when I can sit in front of my turned-off computer and not get the same non-coverage for free.

I understand your money problems but I would like you to tell us why all of the matters I’ve just raised have not had one line written about them by Mike Smyth and Vaughn Palmer, two excellent writers.

I just want you to be fair, sir, and evaluate what excellent work these and others did on the NDP during their decade and why they have given the Liberals a free ride since 2001.

On the face of it, if these writers were to be “muckrakers”, in the best sense of that word, you would surely increase your readership substantially. Moreover, it would not cost you a dime. But that’s not the reality, is it Mr Fisher?

The truth is that these writers and others have been muzzled, because otherwise you would lose huge sums from advertisers.

Look at another related subject. The day was when op-ed pieces were parcelled fairly between proponents of a scheme and this opposed. Your editorial sheet is run by a Fellow of the Fraser Institute, Fazil Mihlar, and while that shouldn’t deprive him of his position, surely it places a heavy burden on you to make sure he gives fair play. The fact is that private power producers, pipeline and tanker people seem to get an op-ed piece whenever they so wish.

To level that playing field costs you nothing – unless it’s advertiser support.

Wayne Moriarty, editor of the Province called me after I had made observations similar to those above and he asked, plaintively, “Rafe, you don’t think I tell my writers what not to write do you?”

My response was, “You don’t have to, Wayne”.

I have pretty good personal experience in this department having been fired three times in my radio career and by countless papers and magazines. Please don’t take this as whining – I’m proud that I stuck to my guns and I acknowledge firstly that the media bosses have a right to use whomever they please and, secondly, sometimes I may have been fired for incompetence.

I don’t yearn for the impossible – Alan Fotheringham, Jack Webster, Jack Wasserman and Pat Burns are gone. Yet what they did wasn’t rocket science but sound journalistic skepticism – a commitment to holding the feet of all in authority’s feet to the fire.

You won’t permit this sort of criticism, although Vaughn Palmer especially did much to expose NDP errors such as the “fast ferries” and looked with a jaundiced eye at all propositions put forward by those in authority. One might, I think, fairly infer that you dare not make things difficult for a “business-oriented government.”

You feel obliged to cater to the wishes of advertisers and spike your own guns and expect us to help you stay afloat.

Count us out.

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Rafe Mair on Mainstream Media a Decade after Leaving CKNW

Rafe Mair on mainstream media a decade after leaving CKNW

Media
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Rafe MairIt was ten years ago that I was unceremoniously dumped by CKNW, where I had been for 19 years – nearly 16 as the morning host.

What does that have to do with an environmental web page?

Modesty is not my long suit and I believe that had I stayed, the general public would have been infinitely better served on environmental issues.

A Judge once said to the great Lord Birkenhead, “I have read your brief but am none the wiser.” Birkenhead replied, “Perhaps not, Milord, but much better informed”.

There is no point re-hashing the reasons I was dumped – just let me say it was shameful.

I had three pieces of good luck/good management.

First, when the media got wind of what was happening, two days before NW dumped me, I issued a press release so that they knew what the story was.

Second, timing. I couldn’t have managed it better myself – Brian Coxford ended the 13 minute session of the evening news with two segments.

Segment #1 showed my wife Wendy, friend Russ Fraser, myself and our Labrador waving and smiling (actually Clancy was more wagging his tail) as we took our sailboat out of Thunderbird Marina, while the second showed the “brass” at CKNW putting their hands in the lenses to keep from being seen. Perfect!

Thirdly, the people were magnificent. They were so pressing with their kindnesses. The phones, including my private number, rang all day. Wendy and I scampered to London for a few days and came home to a job offer and the news that I was to receive the Hutchison award for Lifetime Achievement at the forthcoming Jack Webster Awards. I will never forget Christie Blatchford’s column – she was at the Globe – when she said the station ought to have told the lady to “blow it out her ass”.

As it is now, I’ve been airbrushed out of CKNW’s history.

To give you just one example, I delivered a book as a present for Simi Sara after she was hired last year as the afternoon host. I have always tried to encourage women to break through the “glass ceiling” and she is good. It took the station 6 months to deliver it from the front desk to her office! Simi was embarrassed contemplating what I must have thought. The problem, you see, is that under the payout agreement 10 years before, I was not allowed on the 20th or 21st floor of the Toronto Dominion Building without the written approval of the manager! I had broken the rule! Can you imagine the mischief I might have done!

What this is all about is the environment. CKNW as a station now has about a 9 share of the market (meaning, on average, 9% of the market’s radio audience is listening to the station at a given time), with Bill Good at 6 in my former slot. Over the years I was there the station was consistently in high teens and I was often over 20.

CBC, with Rick Cluff in the morning, out-polls Phil Till (a class act, incidentally, as is Jon McComb, who should have taken my show). If I’d been out-polled by anyone I would have considered my options, including jumping out the 21st floor (come to think of it, I wouldn’t do that because I’m scared of heights!).

Look at what has happened in the past 10 years to coverage of environmental issues. To combine a book by Mike Smyth and Vaughn Palmeron the slow but certain death of BC Hydro would be unprintable, not because of the nature of the comment, but because neither of them has written a real word on the subject. In fairness, neither has anyone else, but Palmer and Smyth are supposed to be the heirs of Marjorie Nichols and Jim Hume, to name two.

When I was in Cabinet, I felt the lash from Fotheringham, Webster, Nichols, Burns, Hume, Barbara McClintock – the list is all but endless – every day. Webster was so tough that Premier Bill Bennett would only allow half a dozen ministers to be on his show!

I must admit I was slow to some issues – notably The Kemano II project – but I did get to it and the issue was duly aired. And we received the coveted Michener Award for our efforts.

I was slow to the Campbell Energy Plan, which was declared in 2002. I got there, however, in 2003 and have hammered it since then. The man who put me straight is well known to the media but asked me not to name him.

Think on this: BC Hydro is now technically bankrupt because Campbell forced them to buy all their new power from private power companies at more than double the market price and about 10 times what it costs Hydro to make it itself!

Who in the media has told you about this? How many editorials or columns have you seen on this subject in the past 10 years? The Hume brothers, Scott Simpson, Gary Mason and one or two others have stood back and commented, but not harshly and never demanding that their political commentators colleagues hold the government’s feet to the fire.

Let me give an example of what this uncritical “journalism” has not done. The proposed Enbridge pipeline goes through some of the wildest territory known to man – the Rockies, the Rocky Mountain Trench, the Coast Range and the Great Bear Rainforest. The calamitous Enbridge spill of bitumen into the Kalamazoo River teaches us that cleaning up a spill is well nigh impossible.

Why has no member of the media, except me, asked how Enbridge intends to get heavy duty equipment into a spill in the forbidding terrain where the pipeline is proposed to go? Doesn’t this seem like a pretty basic question?

Is the real answer that Enbridge knows it can’t clean up a spill anyway, so no sense talking about the matter?

I once raised these issues and the Province’s publisher, (I swear in tears), asked “do you really think I tell my writers to write?”

“Wayne, you don’t have to,” I replied.

What newspapers or broadcasters have informed you about fish farms? I got fired at 600AM for hammering at the bastards. Alexandra Morton is a hero and has carried this issue entirely on her own shoulders and such reporting has been pooh-poohed by the newspapers, who apparently give the Executive Director of the fish farmers’ lobby an op-ed piece when requested.  As they do with the private power people, the oil pipe builders and the Fraser Institute.

Let me close with this.

I have no idea whether or not I would have made a difference but I can tell you, I covered those and other environmental issues when I was on air and no owner even hinted at what I should do or say.

When I’m asked about my broadcasting career I say “ I was BC Broadcaster of the Year, was twice short-listed for the Michener Award, I in fact won the Michener, the Bruce Hutchison Lifetime Achievement Award, am in The Canadian Broadcasters Hall of Fame – during which time I was fired three times!”

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Liberal Lies on LNG, Hydro Debt, Budget Spell Fiscal Disaster for BC

Economics, Hydropower, LNG
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Crown utility BC Hydro has been saddled with massive debt associated with overpriced private power contracts
Crown utility BC Hydro has been saddled with massive debt associated with overpriced private power contracts

We are getting barrow after barrow of barnyard droppings dumped on our laps and we should know it.

Premier Clark promised us huge LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) revenues in a few years. We would be debt free and have $100 BILLION in the to be created “Prosperity Fund”.  That was at the start of the election campaign. Then it became a year after the next election. Now, according to Mike Smyth of the Province, this is 15 years away.

It’s all bullshit. For LNG to become a major export industry 15 years from now requires a phenomenal outlay of capital and it isn’t going to happen. Of course companies will, cross their hearts and hope to die, promise great things but they will not happen. We have only begun to learn about the reserves of shale gas and oil around the world but, in all likelihood, they will be everywhere and in abundance. Premier Clark and Finance Minister de Jong are telling us not to worry but it will all happen.

Well, then, would the two of you please outline the timetable for all this?

As Mario Cuomo said, “you campaign in poetry and govern in prose.” These promises however, are dangerous and deliberate nonsense.

Within the mandate of this government, it will try to break up BC Hydro and sell off the parts. Just like BC Rail, the government will retain residual ownership, in 900 years, to take back the dams. At the rate we’re going, this will have to happen. BC Hydro is awash in debt in its normal operations and new projects and is now facing an ever-increasing debt as private power producers (IPPs) provide power to BC Hydro at double-plus the market price and 10x what it can generate for itself from heritage assets.

This is the elephant in the room no one will talk seriously about – not the Premier, not the Minister of Finance, certainly not a government MLA, not Vaughn Palmer or Mike Smyth – it just throws its weight around unchecked.

Now BC Hydro is committed to a $10 BILLION Site “C” dam to subsidize the government’s dusty-eyed plans to make us all rich with LNG.

BC Hydro has only one source of revenue – you and me, the taxpayer and ratepayer – and when the government comes clean, the rate increases will be beyond our ability to pay.

This all started with the Gordon Campbell government and my bet is that privatization talks have been ongoing since then.

The balanced budget of Mike de Jong is bullshit too. In the first place, you can hardly say with a straight face that you’ve balanced a budget when, to make ends meet, you’ve sold hard assets for your revenue side. This is precisely like you balancing your personal budget by taking on a new mortgage or selling the car.

The real debt of the province per capita, under the Liberals, has quintupled. It will continue to grow at a frightening rate.

There’s insufficient money for current social funding, let alone increasing it.

This government’s election platform was a tissue of lies, but so what? It kept the bad guys out and left the white hats in control, didn’t it?

The Liberals have a hell of a lot to answer for. So do the NDP, who ran a pitiful campaign.

So do the nearly 50% of voters who stayed home last May 14.

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Increasingly Irrelevant NDP Opposition Failed to Question LNG Pipe Dream

Energy and Resources, LNG
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Artist's rendering of one of 5 or more proposed LNG plants for BC's coast.
Artist’s rendering of one of 5 or more proposed LNG plants for BC’s coast.

Gordon Clark in the Province this week called into question the relevance of the NDP and I’d like to add my two bits worth (now there’s an expression that’ll date you!).

Clark is right and it has serious consequences for our province.

As I have often mentioned, Lord Randolph Churchill once said, “it’s the duty of the opposition to oppose.” He did not mean that oppositions must simply sow sand in the gears but they must, if the system is to work, question all government policies or they will be seen as adopting them. The latter may be fine in limited cases but certainly not in contentious ones.

The Clark government has bet its entire stack on Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). The NDP, through Energy critic John Horgan, supported LNGduring the recent election. The problem is obvious – “do you support LNG?” is more than just one simple question.

It would be like saying “I like apple pie”. Even if it means you’ll throw up? Even if the apples are stolen? Even if picked by slave labour? Even if the cooking oil is possibly poisonous? What if the crust contains carcinogenic elements?

LNG has to be obtained from somewhere and more and more of that is from shale deposits “mined” by “fracking”. Does that mean that the NDP supports “fracking” to obtain the original gas? (Fracking is a process where one drills deep underground, then horizontally, sometimes to great lengths; then, when finding gas or oil or both trapped in pockets inside layers of shale and using enormous volumes of water laced with chemicals, one cracks open the shale, releasing the oil or gas to the surface.)

This, standing alone, is a huge issue. It takes a lot of water – where does it come from? What happens to it when, chemically-laced, it’s released? What about stability of the land? It’s irresponsible in the extreme to base policy on extraction methods that have not been proved safe.

A proper opposition party would insist “fracking” be environmentally safe before even thinking of an LNG policy.

Fracking for natural gas and liquefying it is expensive, as acknowledged by the premier, and the market is heavily subsidized in other regions – especially Australia, which is a big player. So we, the taxpayers will be called upon to pay subsidies.

The Premier has already designated Site “C” Dam as the engine for powering our LNG (along with burning gas for electricity). Does the NDP agree with subsidizing international industrial giants? Does it agree with Site “C” and the enormous environmental damage it will do? There appears to be no case for Site “C” to supply power for any domestic purpose other than LNG. Does the NDP agree with Site “C” – even if the government can’t provide a proved need?

The gas must be piped a long way. Even though a natural gas pipeline is not as fatal as one carrying bitumen, is it worth the candle to take any risk at all?

What about the risks when converting gas to LNG? The accidents have not been many but when they happen they can be horrendous. Have the NDP and Mr. Horgan assessed these risks?

Leaving aside the environmental concerns for a moment, at this point in time, the market for gas is fragile to say the least. Moreover, the essential ingredient in any deal – supply – is uncertain. To put all our eggs into the LNG basket means we make a commitment which will be hugely expensive without any real idea of what, if any, market will be there.

“Fracking” has upset the world of energy, Big Time. More and more shale fossil fuels are being found almost daily. Anyone trying to predict the market in 5 months’ time, let alone 5 years is a gambling fool.

In short, say that the premier’s optimistic view is correct that we’ll be in business, rolling in dough by 2018, we must commit now to expensive plans, even though by 2018 there may be no viable market for our gas.

Is this what Mr. Horgan and the NDP mean by supporting LNG?

Put another way, are you satisfied that your money is safe with the NDP supporting LNG?

In answering that question, it’s not good enough for the NDP to say, “we just agree in principle but reserve the right to question how the policy is implemented.” In for a penny, in for a pound.

This is what Lord Churchill was talking about and the NDP is the only viable opposition we have.

The NDP has a hell of a lot more to think of than its energy policy. As Mr. Clark has stated, the party has become irrelevant. It still doesn’t know if it’s a movement, an heir of Fabian Socialism or a modern political party that is prepared to offer an alternative that ordinary people can consider as a possible government. I say, there is no in between.

This doesn’t mean that a party shouldn’t have principles – of course they should, but if those principles mean that policy must, like a religious catechism, adhere to ancient tenets, regardless of present day realities, irrelevance is the result.

This isn’t a new problem for the NDP. Those who remember the contest between the moderate Tom Berger and the activist Dave Barrett in the 60s will know that this is an ancient struggle.

Those wise men and women who run the NDP must understand just how bad their May 14 loss was. This province, if I may repeat former utterances, is 30-30-40. 30% will always vote NDP, 30% will vote for a right wing party and 40% are there to be wooed.

The NDP utterly failed to capture that 40%, even though they were facing a government that had been in power too long, was rife with scandals and had made a balls up of the public purse.

It would appear that the NDP will just drift until they get a new leader and, all the while, let the engine of energy policy pass while they stand at the station and wave them on. All the while, farmland will be destroyed, rivers will be ravaged, salmon runs ruined, pipelines will burst while tankers wreak havoc on our shores.

For those of us who had hoped for, indeed expected better government, it is a very bitter pill we must swallow.

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