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.

Sign of the Times: A placcard from the recent rally against expanded oil pipeline and tanker traffic through Vancouver

Tar Sands Pipelines: Our Moment of Truth

Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers, Tar Sands, , , ,
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I’m writing this in Bergen, Norway, after a cruise from Leith (Edinburgh) Scotland that took us past many oil rigs – giving pause to remember that we’re as dependent on oil as we ever were – in fact, perhaps more so. A day or two ago I read in an article in the Guardian Weekly how the US, by growing corn for methane gas for cars, was contributing to starvation in the Horn of Africa. I thought of the passionate embracing of weaning ourselves off carbon fuels done by our governments as they rush to help Alberta further screw up the environment. While this is going on, I watch as president Obama wrestles with the long Trans-Canada pipeline from the Tar Sands to the Gulf of Mexico as celebrities march their way into jail in protest.

I reflect. We are, I think, at the moment of truth. Either we stop these pipelines or the environmental movement becomes like unions were under communism – pallid burlesques of what we once were, now reduced to patronizing speeches by corporations and governments when they feel the need for some fuzzy warmness from the inert masses that now do precisely as they are told.

Of course there is no environmental movement as such. I can’t even define what an environmentalist is when you have turncoats calling themselves environmentalists as they figuratively peddle their ass to corporate interests while pocketing huge bucks in the bargain.

I think I’m an environmentalist and place my record in government and in the media out for scrutiny, but I’m sure many would disagree. No matter, because what does count is how we all comport ourselves from this moment forward.

We are facing massive corporatist takeovers of our societies and the governments that are supposed to be our protectors. It scarcely needs demonstration in BC where, hand in hand, our governments have helped rapacious corporations ruin our fisheries, wreck our environment, make power we don’t need which our own power company must buy at a loss, while we cede our farmland and nature preserves to huge interests which have no stake in preserving our precious resources.

And now it’s pipelines across our wilderness and tankers down our priceless coastline. To rub salt in the wounds, we are asked to be prostitutes without pay – in fact, we are the legitimate hookers’ worst enemies, enthusiastic amateurs.

We must unite! This is the definitive fight. If we lose this, all is lost and we’ll be reduced to a land where there are a few “game” preserves to attract wealthy hunters and the occasional highly expensive streams where the rich can, after a lottery, fish at great profit to large international guide/outfitter companies. It’s as serious as that.

We first must know what we’re fighting – “who” doesn’t matter, for they all wear they same uniform and have the same mission. What we’re fighting for is simply stated: pipelines will burst and tankers will founder. We are not talking “risks” here but mathematical certainties. This is the truth of the matter and we must not be hoodwinked by talk of acceptable “risks”.

ONCE A ‘RISK’ IS TAKEN WITHOUT ANY LIMIT OF TIME OR EVENT IT IS NO LONGER A RISK BUT A CERTAINTY WAITING TO HAPPEN, THE ONLY UNCERTAINTY IS THE EXTENT OF THE DAMAGE.

Corporations spend huge amounts on “feel good” bullshit and the worse the polluter, the higher it’s piled. We must never lose sight of this.

What must be done?

I spoke of unity but fully acknowledge we can’t have a single coalition of all or even many environmental groups. Apart from the impossibility of such a merger, it would be a bad idea.

What must happen is that we all support those who have made the stopping of these pipelines their #1 priority. Such a group – led by the estimable author and co-founder of Greenpeace, Rex Weyler, is now active. What we all must do is multi-task and continue the battles we all wage, yet throw all the energy and funding we can into the fight against these pipelines and tankers.

I might as well spit it out. We must march and picket and refuse to give way – we will, then, be called upon to disobey the law. And, we must be prepared to go to jail.

The pattern will be the usual abuse of process practiced by the companies, fully supported by the governments they control. Picketers will be ordered by the court – which will issue injunctions turning civil protest into a crime – to cease by a judge from his lofty high paid perch, who will impress upon the sinner the need for the law to be obeyed even though it is a clear affront to justice. Picketers will refuse and will go to jail.

I offer this suggestion: We are up against a foe with a limitless amount of money, which, having obtained the law, not caring that justice was lost in the process, will continue to throw in jail for unlimited sentences decent citizens whose only sin is trying to protect their heritage.
 
We must also set up an ongoing fund to look after those attacked by the corporation/government. Not only will these folks lose their income, the companies will sue for damages and seize their assets, including savings and pension funds. This fund should start now and be set up with a trustee to look after those who will not only lose their freedom but also have their assets on the line for the common good.

Now…let us go to work, beat the bastards and save our heritage!


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Precautionary Principle Missing in Protecting Wild Salmon

Fisheries, Oceans, Salmon Farming and Aquaculture, ,
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Alexandra Morton and her small team have had the daunting task of searching through 500,000 documents for the Cohen Commission into disappearing Fraser sockeye – most of which had only been released after the Provincial Government and salmon farmers did everything possible to keep them secret.
 
This government, of all governments, tried to say that releasing the disease audits of the farms would betray privacy and I’m sure they were right – the privacy of the government departments and Norwegian fish farm companies that should have made these documents available long ago. Many of these documents may implicate fish farms in the loss of sockeye and were from the days when the provincial government carried that portfolio.
 
I’m sure this question has occurred to you: What right have the governments to withhold documents from the public they are elected to serve? Where the hell was Premier Photo-Op? Why didn’t she simply order that these be released (that is, before she felt compelled to do an about face at the last minute, under pressure from the media covering the Inquiry)? Same question for Prime Minister Harper who, after all, set up the Cohen Commission.
 
The answer is that the entire question has been and I suspect continues to be one massive government cover-up.
 
The federal government has made it impossible for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to do their job because that job conflicts with another they hold – they are mandated to look after our wild salmon while at the same time pushing aquaculture (including fish farms) for all they’re worth. Fisheries ministers attend Fish Farm conventions trying to induce fish farmers to come to our coast while their scientists are supposed to be protecting wild salmon from the ravaging lice from fish cages, and, even worse, deadly disease!
 
There is a bigger picture here and I hope this is a nettle Commissioner Cohen grasps – the precautionary principle, which simply states, “if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking the action.”
 
This is a huge matter, for the onus of proving the unsafeness of fish farms does not rest upon Alexandra Morton; rather, the onus of proving its safeness rests upon industry and the government departments in question which have massively failed that basic obligation entrusted to them.
 
This isn’t some niggling matter. Fish farmers, without that onus, are scarcely going to cooperate, nor will governments who are supposed to hold their feet to the fire. It has rested upon those who, by far, can least afford it to find out the truth.
 
I’ve watched this develop from the very time the tireless lady from the Broughton Archipelago began her fight nearly a decade ago. She has been impeded by government the entire way and was even threatened with jail by the DFO. Every step was blocked; every truth she put forward was met with lies.
 
Scientific proof of the danger to wild salmon from fish cages was denied in the name of science that didn’t exist or was so faulty as to call into question the researcher’s integrity. How Alex has put up with this massive cover-up is beyond me and those who have been at her side.
 
In a long life I have never seen courage as I’ve seen in Alexandra Morton.
 
The plain fact of the matter is that DFO and the BC Ministry of Agriculture and Lands have wrongfully abused their mandate by refusing to force the industry to demonstrate the safety of their corrosive intervention into the environment and we must all shudder to think what would have happened if a very brave, knowledgeable and, thank God, stubborn woman had not fallen in love with BC and vowed to protect it from the most powerful interests in the world – rapacious industry protected by corrupt government.

Alexandra Morton takes the stand at the Cohen Commission this Wednesday and Thursday (Sept 7-8) – the hearing will be live streamed on Rabble.ca.

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Cobb Fallout: Coleman, Clark Say No New IPPs but Refuse to Kill Policy

Canada, Politics, WATER, Western Canada, , , , ,
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The admission by Dave Cobb, President of BC Hydro, that Hydro is spending 100s of millions for energy they don’t need came as a shock, except for Damien Gillis and me and others, notably the Wilderness Committee, who have been saying this for three years without a peep out of the government. It’s too bad that Mr. Cobb didn’t stand up and be counted by way of a press conference – instead his remarks were leaked. It could still cost him his job, although if he were fired, he would get a pretty penny in severance, to be paid by us of course.

The response by Energy Minister Rich Coleman is what I would expect from a member of this appalling government, though I did harbour hope, in vain, that the minister is made of sterner stuff. He simply replied that they had no plans for any more private power at this time, but they’d be sticking with the underlying policies that justified IPPs – criticized by both Cobb and the recent panel report on Hydro.

Coleman knows, or ought to know, that there will be no new private power, period. The political fall-out from Mr. Cobb’s statement has been enormous but if Bute Inlet, Glacier-Howser or other projects are approved, this government will never be allowed to get away with it. Without any doubt, such a happening would be ugly.

Let’s not overlook another problem: the environment. This is what got many of us involved in the first place. The environmental consequences of these plants is enormous and that alone would have kept any government of decent, caring people away from private power in the first place.

The issue of private power being both wrong economically and environmentally was raised by Dr. John Calvert in Liquid Gold, a book that every one should read. When Damien, Tom Rankin, I and others started raising the economic argument, it was greeted by silence, making me think of the famous Sherlock Holmes story about the dog that didn’t bark. Roughly, in the solving of the case, Holmes said that he solved it because of the dog. When it was pointed out to him that the dog hadn’t barked Holmes said, “Precisely.” We were, up until last week, faced by public dogs that wouldn’t bark, which confirmed we were right.
 
It wasn’t easy dealing with this matter, for the government insisted on the negotiations and the contracts remaining secret. Reflect on that for a moment – Billions of dollars of taxpayer’s money, given away in secret deals!

We had to fly blind with no help whatever from the mainstream media. Dr. Calvert’s book was published 4 years ago and the media remained silent. Op-ed pieces by industry and apologists for it were as regular as ones supporting fish farms but nary a discouraging word. The “hardnosed” columnists, Vaughn Palmer and Mike Smyth said nothing. Indeed the Province, the day after the Sun finally printed the statement of Mr. Cobb – and blockbuster story it was – was silent on the subject. Frankly, it’s been lonely as hell.
 
Now comes the issue of what next?
 
I can only tell you what an honest government would do. The minister would state that the policy had turned out to be too pricey for the shareholders (us) and it was hereby abandoned and would not be revived, Finis.
 
But this is not an honest government. It has been a corrupt gang from the start and Christy Clark was part of it, an integral part, as deputy premier. During her time in radio, she raised not a whisper about the Energy Plan – indeed she abstained from any criticism of the government. The hallmark of this bunch is one falsehood after another. They make the last NDP government look like paragons of virtue with brilliant economic policies.

When, in 2001, then attorney-general Geoff Plant introduced the legislation for fixed election dates in the legislature, he called it “an important tool for moving some of the power out of the premier’s office and restoring public trust in the political system.”

“When people are suspicious of the timing of an election, they become suspicious of the work their politicians do,” he said.

Deputy Premier Clark vociferously supported the move then, but somehow 10 years later – when a premier wants to exercise that very power we all assumed had been taken away – she recants. This is quite in tune with the insincerity and dishonesty of this government.

The revelation by Mr. Cobb could not come at a worse time. Premier Clark had hoped that the blue ribbon committee set up by Rich Coleman would fuzzy over the scandalous issue of costly and useless private power but, try as they might to be nice to the government, they disappointed the premier, who thought she could run an election with BC Hydro an issue for environmental kooks only.

It fortifies an old and cynical rule that governments should never appoint commissions unless they know what their answer will be or don’t care. Ms. Clark cares about this answer, that’s for sure!

Whether there’s an election in the fall or on its proper day in 2013, Premier Clark will have to tell us why she supports a policy which gives private power a monopoly to create new power which BC Hydro doesn’t need but is compelled to buy at a huge loss – while the IPPs ravish the environment.

I sense that no matter when she calls an election, Premier Clark will learn that being a photo-op is not enough.

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Hydro Chief’s Leaked Comments Trash IPPs – What Will Clark Do Now?

Canada, Politics, WATER, Western Canada, , ,
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I have called it the Campbell/Clark government because that’s what it is. Premier Clark was in on the beginning of most policies including the disastrous energy plan that sees private power companies (IPPs) destroying our rivers to produce power for BC Hydro which it doesn’t need and must take anyway, bringing Hydro to the brink of bankruptcy. (In the private sector BC Hydro would be bankrupt, except as a Crown monopoly it can always pass its grief over to us the ratepayers.)

You could have blown me over with a feather when I read in the Weekend Sun excerpts of an internal conference call in which Dave Cobb, president of Hydro, condemns the government’s IPP policy. A recording of the call – which occurred August 12, on the heels of the recent panel report on the utility’s financial situation – was leaked to the paper. Cobb pulled no punches, detailing his concerns with the government’s exaggerated “self-sufficiency” and “insurance” requirements:

“‘If it
doesn’t change, it would be hundreds of millions of dollars per year
that we would be spending of our ratepayers’ money with no value in
return,’ said Cobb. ‘The way the self-sufficiency policy is defined now…would require us to buy far more long-term power than we need…I think they’re going to make a major change there, which will
significantly reduce the amount of power we will be buying from
independent power producers and anybody else,’ he said. ‘Government has
to make a change.'”
 
I found myself asking why this headline story, so clear about the IPP financial millstone around Hydro’s neck, was not reported after the panel report and why, last week the once intrepid columnist, Vaughn Palmer, dealt with this panel report, noting Hydro’s financial grief at considerable length without even mentioning IPPs.
 
In the Weekend Sun report, much coverage and a picture of Paul Kariya dealt with the responses of his Clean Energy Association of BC and their appallingly shallow concerns. Whatever these industry apologists may say their concerns are, you can be sure that the interests of British Columbia are not amongst them. The Clean Energy Association is the private industry in drag, and refuses to tell us where they get their funding. NB the name – with the clear influence of George Orwell’s 1984 the association calls itself precisely what it is not.
 
It’s hard to believe that Minister Coleman had any advance warning of this conversation – it was, after all, a leaked conversation and at any rate, deliberately leaking a policy change of this unbelievable proportion is not Coleman’s style.

What’s the government going to do now? It can hardly fire Mr. Cobb and deny the truth of what he said for no one would believe that for a moment. Clearly, Mr. Cobb didn’t make this all up but was concerned that his staff would be caught by surprise and wanted to give them a heads up. If Mr. Coleman doesn’t fire Mr. Cobb, he might just as well have made the statements himself.

That this is the government’s unannounced (yet) policy makes political sense, insofar as one can make sense out of the appalling Campbell/Clark energy policy because the policy will kill them in the next election and they know it. It also explains why (I have this on the best authority) the industry big wigs were lower than a snake’s belly when they got the panel report last week and why it was when I met Mr. Kariya coming out of the CBC last Monday morning, he was so defensive and uneasy.

One thing’s for sure – the cat’s out of the bag, and to mix metaphors, the contents of Pandora’s box can never be put back.

The question for the Premier is obvious and simple: What now, madam?
 
The issue is in the public domain and will be a big time political issue.
 
Here’s where Premier can separate herself from the disgraced Gordon Campbell and put her own brand on her government while stealing a march on the NDP.
 
It will take guts to do what is right and Ms. Clark must bite the bullet and announce the end of IPPs and clearly state that it’s for two reasons: the environment and the Energy Plan itself.

She does this in several ways:

  1. She revives the Ministry of Environment, giving true power back to it – naming someone tougher than Barry Penner, who was indeed the longest serving Environment Minister and, sad to say, the worst. The issuance of permits to desecrate the environment must be returned to the Environment Ministry to be dealt with by a minister who has the courage to care about the environment before considering those who want the permit.
  2. She must announce that henceforth the Precautionary Principle, when dealing with those who need permits to encroach upon the environment, will be paramount. This principle states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking the action. No longer must the onus be on the public or environmental organizations or their spokespeople.
  3. She must squarely face the fact that Hydro is in deep trouble and can only be saved by abandoning private power.

This is hardly the full picture because of the Ministry of Transportation running roughshod with highways over wildlife preserves and agricultural lands, and the proposed pipelines and tanker traffic.

The premier’s eminent grise, Patrick Kinsella, will be appalled but Ms. Clark, who has active political antennae, knows that Families and Children will not be the big election issue but that BC Hydro and the environment will be.

Ms. Clark, in order to extract the government from the devastating policy of Campbell must understand and face the hell, fire, brimstone from her corporate backers and lose election funds if she does what I suggest.

The decision will mark clearly whether the premier is just another pretty face or a leader the people of BC and generations to come will mention her name in gratitude… or if she remains a Campbell clone and one can fairly call her administration the CampbellClark government.

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BC Libs, IPPs Can’t Distance Themselves from Hydro’s Woes

WATER, , ,
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The response of the private power industry (IPPs) to the recently released study on BC Hydro is goofy even against other barmy statements they make.
 
The defence against the charge that their power costs many times what BC Hydro can make it for themselves is that BC Hydro has paid for its facilities long ago so doesn’t have any capital costs whereas IPPs must build new plants.
 
Of course that’s true – AND THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT!!!
 
Why should BC Hydro (that’s us folks) pay huge rates to cover the construction of private dams when they can get the power from their own system at a fraction of the cost? To pay a triple, quadruple bonus to IPPs so they can build power plants that ruin our rivers and supply us with hugely dear power is plain and simply nuts – yet that’s what the Campbell/Clark Government has been doing for 10 years!
 
Repeat after me – Vaughn Palmer and Mike Smyth too please: “We have never needed IPPS, don’t need them now and won’t need them in the foreseeable future.”
 
Independent experts make it clear that with reasonable conservation, upgrade of current facilities, new generators on flood control dams and taking the Columbia River Treaty power back that we currently sell, puts us in a position that no new power will be needed for decades.
 
My Liberal colleague on our Monday morning Political Panel said today, obviously thinking this was in the government’s favour, that the Committee Report is a window into BC Hydro’s inner workings.
 
I replied and say again, “Yes that’s absolutely right and when the experts look into that window they see a screwed up mess of massive proportions all of which happened during the last 11 years the Campbell/ Clark government has been running the show!”
 
There is no escaping this charge because BC Hydro has its policy directed by the government of the day and always has. The orders to bugger up our rivers and streams by IPPs came directly from the Campbell/Clark government. The government has persisted in this policy even though they have been fully informed throughout.
 
This report also, without saying so, is a condemnation of the media which knew all the facts leading up to the report’s criticism of IPPs, but stayed silent. This is disgraceful and there’s no excuse for their silent support for the Campbell/Clark encouragement of IPPs. If Vaughn Palmer had dealt with this issue the way he dealt with the “fast ferries” issue under the NDP, I have no doubt that the outcry from the public would have been such that the government would have been forced to cancel this outrageous policy.
 
As with fish farms, and will be with pipelines and tankers, it’s all there for everyone to see – BC Hydro has been brought to where, if it was in the private sector, it would be in bankruptcy protection.
 
Premier Clark would like to distance herself from the past and considering her role in government and her silence when in radio, one can understand why.
 
She could make a big step towards her goal by ending BC Hydro’s commitment to private power immediately.
 
If Ms. Clark refuses to change, she will deserve to have her name linked with that of Gordon Campbell because her government will continue to be joined at the hip to the 10+ years the Liberals have been destroying BC Hydro and the environment.
 
My Liberal colleague on the CBC is right – the report is indeed a window into BC Hydro’s government-directed follies which have destroyed our rivers, are bent on destroying many others and committing corporate suicide in the bargain. 
 

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Hydro Report: Death Knell for BC’s Public Power?

Canada, Politics, WATER, Western Canada, , , ,
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This will be a short blog because the point is simple…and devastating.
 
Mark down August 12, 2011 as the day BC Hydro all but concluded its suicide mission, with the Campbell/Clark government and the Review Panel playing the role of Dr. Jack Kervorkian.
 
When you sort through the announcement by Rich Coleman and the verbose report itself, you learn that BC Hydro will cut its future costs by 50%, which in practical terms means this: Hydro will be unable to upgrade its facilities and build generators on flood control dams which means they will buy more and more power from more and more private power producers – which is surplus to their needs – buggering up more and more rivers and streams, thus fulfilling the Campbell/Clark government’s ambition to privatize power in BC.
 
BC Hydro, in taking all this unneeded power from Independent Power Producers (IPPs), must either export it or use it instead of its own vastly cheaper power. This means that BC Hydro will use power at at least double what it can make it for or export it at half to a quarter what they were forced to pay for it. Last year Hydro wasted $600 million buying IPP power it didn’t need – that money was our money, folks.

This comment on the report by former BC Hydro board chair and SFU political scientist Marjorie Griffin-Cohen. She said that the review – which also called for the utility to cut its proposed 50% rate hikes by half – distracts from the utility’s real problem: that  the real burden of cost is the government’s policy on private power. “Basically, what they have required to happen in BC is for new power generation to be in the private sector, BC Hydro to buy that and their hope was that this could spur exports of electricity to the United States,” she said.

“It was a very serious miscalculation of what was going on. So what we have now is a lot of private power that is extremely costly.”

Griffin-Cohen said private power projects produce 16 per cent of domestic power, but account for 49 per cent of energy costs. (emphasis added)
 
The much esteemed SFU professor and energy economist Marvin Shaffer had this to say:

“The real story in the review panel report, although gingerly and cautiously stated, is that it is government itself which bears major responsibility for driving up BC Hydro costs and rates. It was the government that directed BC Hydro to acquire all new sources of energy from Independent Power Producers (IPPs) except in the refurbishment of existing projects or developments like Site C on existing BC Hydro-controlled river systems. (emphasis added)

It was the government that legislated self-sufficiency requirements that have forced BC Hydro to buy more power than it needs to ensure reliable supply. It was the government that imposed debt/equity provisions that exaggerate the cost of BC Hydro financed investments. And it was this government that raised water rentals in a way that directly affected BC Hydro and its customers, but that would not impact private power producers, including Alcan and Teck.“
 
Anyone who’s run a household budget knows that leads to the poorhouse and bankruptcy.
 
What this means is that the Campbell/Clark government, as advised by the right wing Fraser Institute, see their dream come true – the end of public power in our province with the ruination of our rivers in ever increasing numbers.
 
We at The Common Sense Canadian have been saying this for close to two years and as individuals nearly four. I have faced audiences all around the province and have seen disbelief in the faces of the audience saying to me, “No government would do anything so stupid!” Well they have and are about to make it worse.
 
BC Hydro is the egg that’s become the omelette. The dice were cast and they turned up snake-eyes. The Campbell/Clark government privatized BC Ferries and BC Rail and now it’s moments away from privatizing power by bankrupting our crown jewel – the much coveted BC Hydro and Power Authority..
 
The story Damien and I and many others including our adviser, economist Erik Andersen, have been telling since 2008, has been difficult to believe.
 
Well, folks, BELIEVE IT!!!

Postscript – to Vaughn Palmer and Mike Smyth – repeat after me: “The problem with BC Hydro is the massive sweetheart deals made with private power companies where under Hydro must buy ever increasing amounts of power at a huge loss.” Now, having spat it out, PRINT IT!

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The BC Liberals and the “Family” Issue

Canada, Politics, Western Canada
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What do families have to do with the
environment?

Quite a bit, actually.

The Campbell/Clark government is
looking for an issue to run on and the Family is the answer the backroom boys
and girls have decided is the best one.

This decision is sure as hell not
based upon the government’s great successes in this ministry. In fact
they have been a near disaster if not a full one. Mind you, in fairness, this
isn’t the area that’s good to any government and the NDP had its
share of problems but the point is simple – why would the C/C government
run on a failure?

Easy – everything else has been
worse.

Let’s start with law and order,
a favourite for all rightwing governments. The major problem here is BC Rail.
This is where the Government put the fix in and settled the Basi-Virk bribe
case just as Gordon Campbell and former Finance Minister Gary Collins were to
give evidence.

The first version by crown counsel
Bill Berardino was that he had made the deal all on its own, then it was with
the Deputy Attorney-General – then it had the Deputy Finance Minister
involved and before you knew it, it was obvious that the whole cabinet had to
be in the know. Crown Counsel looked bad thus so did the entire A/G ministry.

What then about fiscal probity?
Surely the Liberals could claim that here’s where the Campbell/Clark
government shone as it made the NDP era look so bad.

Unfortunately for them, it did the
opposite as all the yardsticks by which you gauge these matters, the NDP look
like paragons of fiscal prudence by comparison. The only evidence that the
Liberals did well was the bullshit they peddled.

Let’s look at two areas, the
2009 fudge-it budget.

You will recall that in 2009 the
Liberals presented a nice rosy “election budget” which went a long
way towards painting themselves as fiscal geniuses especially compared to that
wastrel NDP. The trouble was that the budget was a falsehood by over $1 BILLION
dollars.

And how they explained it took the
breath away. Why, how were they to know that there was a world wide recession?

Apparently they hadn’t heard of
the financial meltdown the previous year including a stock market crash.

To fudge a budget then win an
election based upon their ignorance of what the rest crown counsel is one thing – to pretend that
you, a self declared fiscal genius, didn’t know what everyone else in the
world knew takes the breath away.

The HST scarcely needs further
comment except that the Campbell/Clark government lied through its teeth as
became obvious when we learned that then Finance Minister Colin Hansen had, two
months previous, been given a report by his ministry telling the minister what
a bad deal it was.

What about “health” as an
issue?

Every opposition loves this issue
because they would have been much better but governments know better and avoid
the issue like the plague.

Well, then, what about the
environment? Surely Pat Kinsella and the boys have lots to work with here?

Everywhere in this broad field has
been a self created disaster for the C/C government starting with fish farms.
Ignoring all the scientific evidence, the government took its advice from a
discredited DFO “scientist” and fish farms prospered decimating
wild salmon runs in the bargain. While the debate from our side of the issue
talked about penned fish escaping and the horrendous damage done to migrating
wild salmon now an even bigger threat has appeared – disease from
contaminated eggs from Norway which all but wiped out the fish farm industry in
Chile. The Campbell/Clark government have made a bad idea into a catastrophe.
Not a good election issue.

Then there is the energy plan which
gives the creation of power to private companies that not only bugger up the
rivers used, but have the sole power to make electricity which BC Hydro must
buy at a time they don’t need and loses huge sums of money, $600,000,000
last year alone. In the bargain, this policy has all but bankrupted BC Hydro and
bids fair to do that in the near future.

This doesn’t look much like a
good election for the C/C government does it?

Then we have the matter of the
installation of Smart Meters by BC Hydro which will spend a billion dollars on
it – in essence using taxpayer’s money without their MLAs having the
right to ask questions. In addition to the cost, and indeed more importantly,
there is a substantial health risk which, again, will not be debated in the
Legislature. The Campbell/Clark government shows as much concern about the
health of citizens on this issue as it did for the folks in Tsawwassen with
overhead power lines.

Then there are the Sea-to-Sky and
Gateway projects where the Ministry of Transportation has been aggravated by
the government’s haughty attitude which was so well articulated by then
Transport Minister Kevin Falcon (who is the second most powerful in the
government) when he said: the Chinese “don’t have the labour or
environmental restrictions we do. It’s not like they have to do community
consultations. They just say ‘we’re building a bridge’ and they move everyone
out of there and get going within two weeks. Could you imagine if we could
build like that?”

With
the Sea-to-Sky upgrading, Falcon rode roughshod over the protests of citizens
of Eagleridge who wanted to preserve significant and sensitive wild preserves.
With the Gateway Project, the C/C government has not only endangered wildlife
preserves and Burns Bog, it’s taken whatever farmland they want without a
care.

You ask, then, why is the
“family” according to Premier Clark the big election
issue?

Because no matter how lousy this
issue is for the government, the others are all worse.

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Campbell-Clark Government Goes After Wolves

Campbell/Clark Government Goes After Wolves

Species At Risk
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Campbell-Clark Government Goes After Wolves
photo: Ian McAllister/Pacific Wild

The Campbell/Clark government has done it again. Now wolves will be wiped out in BC because, it’s alleged (by ranchers), that their cattle are being slaughtered by wolves. Ranchers are friends of the government while wolves are not. The constituencies where cattle are ranched are constituencies the Liberals must win if they’re to win the next election.

Wolves are endangered such that Americans are bringing them back to National Parks in order to keep the species alive. Noble as that is, it’s rather a surrender to the same troglodytes who slaughtered the buffalo (bison) with the last vestiges now in parks, not on the plains, reduced to being objects of tourist’s cameras.

The wolf has had a terrible press over the years from writers of fairy tales to ranchers. In fact they are a magnificent example of highly developed animals that, in contradistinction to us humans, mate for life and are part of a pack led by an alpha male. Humans should have their sense of community.

There is a very strong moral argument, an argument ranchers deride as condominium conservationist stuff from the big city.

I have news for them. I live in Lions Bay where black bears abound and if they attack anything living aside from spawning salmon, it’s human beings. We get a “bear warning” in Spring which lasts until late Fall. Despite the danger, I know of no fellow citizen who would want bears murdered. I have seen several bears on our streets over the 11 years I’ve been here plus several coyotes and one cougar. Our view is that we’re in their habitat, not the other way around.

It is important to understand nature’s way of dealing with wolves. They will kill and devour ungulates (deer, caribou etc), invariably the weak ones, until their numbers deplete to the point that wolves starve and the ungulates replenish their numbers and on it goes as it has for thousands of years.

Into this mix arrived ranchers and cattle. This meant that when the ungulates were down, the cow became prey. As we will see, the number of cattle they kill is minuscule and wolves were a known part of life when ranchers moved in.

It’s rare that wolves attack anything other than small animals until winter when small animals are not around, which brings me back to the second question (above) “What the hell are cattle doing out on the range in the winter?”

For me, it’s as Yogi Berra is alleged to have said, “Déjà vu all over again”.

Over 30 years ago I became Minister of Environment and I immediately stopped the slaughter of wolves in British Columbia. When I left the ministry for Health, Tony Brummett, from the heart of rancher land in the Peace River region, and the great hope of the ranchers, maintained the moratorium as has every Environment Minister since until we reach the Campbell/Clark government which now encourages hunting and killing of wolves a 24 hour a day, 365 day of the year season.

A story about life as a member of Bill Bennett’s cabinet.

When the Tsawwassen overhead wire issue was being fought I spoke to several rallies and continuously asked where the Liberal MLA, Val Roddick, was, observing that usually you couldn’t shut her up.

A lady, an obvious government supporter, came up to me after one such rally and said “I’ll bet you didn’t go to these sorts of rallies when you were in government.”

My reply: when I banned the killing of wolves, a Socred backbencher, Cyril Shelford and his seemingly unending list of brothers arranged a rally in Smithers and I was dared to attend.

I did, and it was scary to see 500 or more angry ranchers wanting my scalp – literally.

I then said to the lady, “you probably think I was very brave?”

She allowed that she did to which I replied, “it had bugger-all to do with courage; if I hadn’t gone, Premier Bennett would have turfed my ass out of cabinet.”

I tell that story to demonstrate the size of the storm created by my decision.

In order to satisfy myself that the ranchers had blown the issue out of all proportion I sent a Kamloops man, once a Fish and Game officer, the late George “Sandy” Sandiford, to go on a swing throughout the appropriate parts of the province then give me his impressions as to whether wolves were destroying huge amounts of cattle.

After about four weeks he reported to me, in his characteristic way, “it’s mostly bullshit – what the ranchers really want is compensation for any losses, it being assumed that they were all killed by wolves”.

He recounted an especially forceful argument of ranchers, which was told as three separate incidents where wolves drove a herd of cattle onto a frozen lake and the ice fractured leaving the cattle at the mercies of the rapacious wolves. Three times this happened in different lakes!

You will, no doubt, be asking yourself “how did the wolves avoid drowning too?” and, “what the hell were a herd of cattle doing on the range in the dead of winter?”

In Anecdotal evidence not good enough to justify wolf kill in the Vancouver Sun, on Friday the 5th, the estimable Stephen Hume makes the obvious point that there’s a paucity of evidence that wolves are a serious threat to cattle. He points out a survey in 2003 (that it’s far back because the Campbell/Clark government has made the Environment Ministry into a phantom post in which to deposit MLAs who are so grateful to be in cabinet, thus they go along and make no discernible waves).

In that report it was estimated that 93-95% of cattle lost were due to a great many other hazards such as “disease, toxic flora, calving problems, bad weather, getting hung up in the ubiquity of barbed wire fences, hit by vehicles, or killed and butchered by rustlers. There is no evidence of any basic change in the circumstances since my time as minister.

As I said, what ranchers seek is compensation for every cow lost, it being assumed that a wolf did it.

The wolf is a marvelous animal with a great sense of community. The same cultural immorality that has wolves endangered would eliminate grizzly bears, black bears, coyotes, cougars. Tragically, it’s the same ilk that destroy sharks so that oriental gentlemen can get erections and have their restaurants carry shark fin soup. Their counterparts poach wildlife in Africa such as wildebeests. Elephants and Rhinos and nail tigers and elephants in Asia.

What this wolf kill demonstrates is not only the complete lack of understanding of wolves by the Campbell/Clark government but their willingness to pander to their supporters without any science to support them at the expense of an environment which, to them, is a nuisance and a hindrance to development by their corporate donors.

It’s not just wolves but the desecration of wild salmon by fish farms; the ruination of rivers and their fauna and flora so that their private sector pals can produce power we don’t need; it’s the destruction of Agriculture and Wildlife Preserves that fortify (as if fortifying was needed) the evidence that this government does not give a damn about the outdoors, the treasured legacy we received but, thanks to the Campbell/Clark government, will not be intact for the next generation.

(I refer to it as the Campbell/Clark government not to be a smarty pants but because it’s a fair description of 12 years of government in which Gordon Campbell was head for 11 and was supported by Christy Clark when she was a senior cabinet minister and supported by her by not uttering a murmur of dissent when she was an open line broadcaster and has done nothing to alter since she has been premier).

It must be remembered that this is a government that cares little for anything but rightwing philosophy, regarding the Fraser Institute as their guiding guru. Kevin Falcon, now the 2nd most powerful minister, said when Transportation Minister and said seriously “(the Chinese) don’t have the labour or environmental restrictions we do. It’s not like they have to do community consultations. They just say ‘we’re building a bridge’ and they move everyone out of there and get going within two weeks. Could you imagine if we could build like that?”

We pride ourselves on being “Supernatural British Columbia” as our government does all it can to destroy that heritage and do so as fast as it can so that like the omelet, it can never go back to its original form.

My opposition to this mob of disgraceful destroyers of our beautiful province is not just bewilderment, not just sadness, not just anger and disgust, but also of profound embarrassment that we the people have elected these bastards three times and might do so again.

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Drills for fracking operations near Hudson's Hope, BC

What “Fracking” is About

Energy and Resources, Fracking, Oil&Gas, Water and Hydrocarbons, ,
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Until a couple of months ago I had never heard of “fracking”.
I now understand why. And I should have known.

Governments, by long standing habit, don’t like smarty pants
environmentalists to learn what the hell is going on and thus be able
to alert the masses, for those masses can mess up the process. The BC
government’s policy was neatly summed up by Finance Minister Kevin
Falcon when he was Transport Minister. Frustrated by boo-birds who
were always asking questions, going to public meetings and
demonstrating, said the Chinese “don’t have the labour or
environmental restrictions we do. It’s not like they have to do
community consultations. They just say ‘we’re building a bridge’ and
they move everyone out of there and get going within two weeks. Could
you imagine if we could build like that?”

Here is as good a definition I could find for “fracking”:

Horizontal hydrofracking is a means of tapping shale deposits
containing natural gas that were previously inaccessible by
conventional drilling. Vertical hydrofracking is used to extend the
life of an existing well once its productivity starts to run out,
sort of a last resort. Horizontal fracking differs in that it uses a
mixture of 596 chemicals, many of them proprietary, and millions of
gallons of water per frack. This water then becomes contaminated and
must be cleaned and disposed of.

What happens is that the drilling is not done vertically but
horizontally which allows the company to recover huge quantities of
natural gas unobtainable by vertical drilling and they do it by
forcing huge quantities of water laced with the chemicals mentioned.

Knowing that, what sorts of questions are running through your
mind?

  • Does this process weaken the ground so that it might
    collapse?

  • Where do they get all that water from?

  • What happens to the river or lake from which all that water
    was taken?

  • What happens if it comes from a reservoir for a dam, does its
    loss reduce the capacity of that dam?

  • Does it go into the water table? Assuming that it has to go
    somewhere, how clean is it?

  • Does the process have any greenhouse gas emissions?

  • What about people who live and/or work in the area – does
    this process affect them adversely?

This isn’t something that came down the river on a piece of bark
but is a major undertaking throughout North America. The Atlantic
Provinces are involved and Quebec has suspended fracking until there
has been a detailed environmental review.

What about the BC government? Surely they have done studies,
issued a white paper and encouraged public involvement!

Not a chance. The Minister responsible – the Minister of Forests,
Lands and Natural Resource Operations, Steve Thomson – simply refuses
to comment. You will note that the Minister of Environment is not
involved in this huge environmental question mark.

Here we go again, folks! This is the Campbell/Clark Energy plan
all over again. Bring in a policy with huge implications for the
environment and just refuse to answer obvious questions and, for God’s
sake, don’t have any public hearings! The entire environmental policy
of this, the worst government since the Coalition of the 40s and
probably beyond, is to simply ram things through and the public can go to
hell.

We must assume that companies will lie through their teeth which
is quite understandable when you remember that their sole objective
of existing is to make money for shareholders. I don’t say that with
a sneer – it’s simply that their raison d’etre does not permit
them to utter a discouraging word about anything they do.

“Good corporate citizen” is an oxymoron. Whatever they
do from sponsoring a Little League Team to building a new wing to a
hospital has a profitable pay-back. They don’t make gifts
anonymously.

They hire the most expensive liars of earth, the Public Relations
industry, to distract the public with literature and film that would
make Josef Goebbels blush with pride. That, armed with some crap from
the Fraser Institute and a rigidly right wing government is all
that’s needed.

It’s all rather like the aphorism, “If a husband sends his
wife flowers for no reason, there’s a reason.” If the government
doesn’t want you to know, there is a reason – and the reason with this government is invariably that they and industry are about to
do it to you again. Lie, obfuscate and clam up is the way the game is
played.

The underlying philosophy of this government is as Kevin Falcon
stated – the public is a nuisance. Don’t level with them for it might
worry the little dears.

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Reflections on BC Day

Energy and Resources, Pipelines and Supertankers, , ,
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It’s August 1 – British Columbia Day.
 
This being a relatively new holiday, we have not really come up with a tradition such as we have on Thanksgiving and Christian holy days. One might think of May 24th, the significance of which could not be stated, I don’t think, by 1 in a 1000 British Columbians. It was the birthday of Queen Victoria and that did have significance when I was a boy, at least for those who were devout British Empire folks who sang the old version of O Canada which contained “at Britain’s side, whate’er betide, unflinchingly we stand.”
 
For some reason, one couldn’t go swimming or even run through the sprinkler until May 24th although no one could explain just how it warmed up so much from the previous day. It was also the day most schools had their sports day.
 
Perhaps, to use an oxymoron, we should start a “new tradition” and devote some time to thinking about our province, its traditions, its history, its beauty and how we can best pass all of this on to coming generations.
 
My recommendation for a book that best tells our story is The West Beyond The West by Jean Barman. It tells how BC was peopled by European settlers, where they came from and how the Province differed from the Prairie Provinces and the western states below the line in that regard. There are loads of both soft cover and hard covers available with the latter costing less than $10.
 
I have begun to see August 1 as a day to reflect on what I remember about the outdoors when I was a child and where that outdoors is today.
 
Of course there are huge differences – I’ve been around a long time and could write reams about being a boy on the west coast. Much as I like to reminisce with pals I used explore the North Shore rivers with – the days on the Musqueam Indian Reserve Tin Can Creek, in reality Musqueam Creek, which thanks to the people taking care of it, still has salmon spawning in it. I could talk about my friend Denis Hargrave and I skinny dipping at Wreck Beach, now not then (with the exception of Denny and me) a nudist beach.
 
I can tell stories about just how great fishing was in our waters…but there I go, doing what I promised not to do.
 
These days – and for some time now – I’ve worried about our attitude towards nature’s blessings. It’s not hard, to say the least, to see what we’ve ruined and are in the process of ruining. But why are we doing it?
 
George Santayana‘s famous aphorism “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it” is very apt.
 
When I was growing up the great makers of fortunes were in lumber and, to a lesser degree mining. To this we make fishing the triumvirate. There was always another valley to log, mines were usually out of sight thus out of mind and fish were in huge abundance up and down our coast. Today this is not the case yet too many corporations, governments and citizens act as if nothing has happened.
 
I have learned a great lesson over nearly 8 decades – none of the triumvirate gives a good god damn about the resources they exploit and depend on the demand for jobs to take them past the dodgy bits. As my colleague Damien Gillis is fond of saying, corporations exist to make profits for shareholders and if the directors don’t remember that they will be, and deserve to be fired. This isn’t cynicism but reality – the cynicism comes when these industries and government pretend that they really do care. Millions of dollars are spent in BC for flacks to paint pretty pictures to distract us from the great harm their clients do.

I well remember an incident back in 1992 when I was on CKNW and fighting the Alcan Kemano Completion Project. I got wind of a new bit of flackery about to be foisted on the public by way of glitzy, warm and fuzzy all over TV and radio ads. I also found out a bit of what they would look like so warned my audience to be ready for them, describing just what they would see.
 
Alcan was furious because this blitz was to come on suddenly. They cancelled the ads, which by no means pleased CKNW. Indeed, I thought I would be fired but that, as it turned out, was to be 10 years hence. The point is this – the public had no way of matching corporate advertising and when they turned to the government for help it wasn’t there. Environment ministries were badly underfunded and MLAs of both parties didn’t want, for their own reasons, to interfere with corporate plans. For the NDP, it was jobs; for the Socreds cum Liberals, holding companies feet to the flame ran against their philosophy.
 
BC arrived at the 21st century like the restoration of the Bourbons – we had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. With notable exceptions we still acted as if there were more valleys to log, lots of fish to catch and that making mines clean up after themselves would drive the miners away.
 
The threats to our resource business were very real. Entrepreneurs in lumber found safety and profits in jurisdictions to which environmentalism and concern for worker safety were non-issues and, of course, wages were appalling. While many corporations sounded like Peter and the Wolf, there was some truth to their concerns.
 
What all this means are stark choices – exploit our natural resources with the environment being of secondary importance, rules that make it impossible for resource companies to compete, or find some compromise. I find all these choices repugnant – the last one by no means the least. Compromise means that ultimate in weasel words, “mitigation”, which simply says, “you’re still going to get screwed but not quite so quickly.”
 
We must change our attitude as a society. It is possible to exploit our natural resources if we lower our expectations. If we don’t do that, we lower our standards to those in the other countries that we compete against. Our labour unions will not tolerate lowering their wages to those of other countries in order to keep their jobs. Nor should they be expected to, but does that mean companies should be allowed to literally rape the resources in order to make up for the higher wages? That indeed is a stark choice but there it is. It’s what we face, in a nutshell.
 
The bottom line is that forestry and mining cost more in BC than elsewhere and given the choice between lowered wages and safety standards on the one hand and desecrating the environment on the other BC will take neither and industry will have to accommodate themselves to the laws in BC, not those in South America and Asia.
 
Fishing is a story unto itself. It is a commercial industry with special rights for First Nations. It is a sports industry. But it doesn’t stop there, for salmon are part of two critical ecologies – at sea and in their home rivers. Many species above them in the food web rely upon them alive but also in a natural death process. They are also – and don’t underrate this – a symbol deeply important to many British Columbians. Our concentration must be directed to rehabilitation or we will lose that heritage.
 
Where the debate is at its sharpest is in fossil fuels. Here we are as a society trying to save our province from permanent and long-term environmental ruin in resources we own, about to let giant corporations “mine” oil in the Tar Sands (the world’s most polluting project) then pipe the results across our most environmentally sensitive land and ship it by tanker down the most beautiful and dangerous coastline in the world – and do so in the full knowledge that spills are not a risk but a certainty.
 
Here, then, is the nub of the matter.
 
Corporations don’t care that they are buggering up our rivers to make power we don’t need but must buy at egregiously inflated rates; companies will chop down the last tree and kill the last fish; oil companies and pipeline people see spills as a cost of doing business; and we have a government that’s not only OK with all that but wants more.
 
That leaves the people whose only long term defence is the ballot box and even then they need a good choice, not just a better one.
 
I sit here, an old man (in years) with only this hope – no matter how bad the fight looks we will never quit fighting it.
 

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