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Rafe: NDP’s Horgan too quick to dismiss Leap Manifesto

April 25, 2016Energy and Resources, LNG, Oil&Gas, PoliticsfeaturedRafe Mair

BCNDP Leader John Horgan touring Metro Van Pipes in 2014 (BCNDP/Flickr cc licence) — BCNDP Leader John Horgan touring Lynnterm docks in 2014 (BCNDP/Flickr cc licence)

I have a question or two for NDP leader John Horgan, given recent developments.

Let me be clear: I have no animosity towards Mr. Horgan – we only met once and just by accident. At that time, several years ago, Mr. Horgan stated that he favoured LNG because “the NDP couldn’t be against everything”. This illogical nonsense guides him still.

Still searching

I’m doing as many British Columbians are doing – looking for someone to support in 2017.

I certainly can’t vote for the incompetent, destructive, featherbrain in power; I thought I had a home with the Greens until I learned that their leader supports the Liberals’ IPPs policy, which destroys rivers and is bankrupting BC Hydro, so I had reconciled myself to the notion that this old Socred could vote NDP…but they lost me by uncritically supporting LNG and by the obvious political naiveté of its leader.

Mr. Horgan, how could you get this far and not understand basic politics?

Christy Clark stated, not long ago, that she represents the majority of British Columbians, or words to that effect. The incredible fact is that she does Mr. Horgan, but that’s not because of her, it’s because of you, sir.

Christy Clark, up against a reasonably presentable fence-post with hair, wouldn’t have a chance but you’ve managed to split your supporters and so alienate the great number of people who would have supported you to avoid the Liberals, that you and your party will probably lose to this quintessence of incompetence.

Kow-towing to unions

John Horgan meets Rob Ashton of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union at Lynnterm docks in North Vancouver (BCNDP/flickr cc licence)

Any winning leader must keep his supporters onside while not alienating too many “floaters” who have no party allegiance. This is fundamental – Axiom I for every party. Your party should have learned that from the many decades the old Socreds thrashed you regularly.

But you’ve scared the hell out of people. While it’s expected that an NDP leader will be concerned about labour unions, when he becomes so obsequious as to all but genuflect in public and before a union leader to apologize for changing party policy without his consent, it’s just too much, even, I suggest, for many members of unions.

Why not take the leap?

What I would really like to ask you today, Mr. Horgan, is why you have not seen the obvious way out of your difficulty – the Leap Manifesto?

Typical of the NDP, they cosseted the far left with the word “Manifesto” pissing off a lot of people they didn’t need to. But that’s minor. I’ve read the document with care – have you? It offers a reasonable blueprint for getting us all out of the difficulty posed by the coming demise of the fossil fuel industry.

But you would have no part of it, saying:

[quote]It’s a document that I don’t embrace personally. There are elements in the document that make sense and there are elements that make no sense for British Columbia. So we won’t proceed under any kind of manifesto in the next 12 months under my leadership.[/quote]

Can you not be more specific? Of course parts will annoy unions dependant on the fossil fuel industry but it’s just a discussion document and if you were to encourage the widest possible debate, it could turn out to be a brilliant political maneuver. Yes, you’d have a harder time from some disgruntled supporters but you’d get support outside the party and the party generally would come along because they want to win and they’ve nowhere else to go.

Moreover, have you considered how much the public think of Naomi Klein, and indeed the Lewis family? And David Suzuki? More than they do of you, Mr Horgan. Is it good politics to stand against them just to stay in favour with one or two union leaders?

Bucking history

Here are the parts that I presume are the sticking points which make you say this document is not appropriate for British Columbia, being a resource-based province:

[quote]Shifting swiftly away from fossil fuels so that Canada gets 100 per cent of its electricity from renewable resources within 20 years and is entirely weaned off fossil fuels by 2050.

No new infrastructure projects aimed at increasing extraction of non-renewable resources, including pipelines.[/quote]

Here’s where your opposition is fatal. It’s a year before the election and opposition to fossil rules won’t lessen. More scientific evidence will likely be adverse. And this puts you and those of the NDP who support you out of sync with history. No politician can buck history for long and survive.

Can you not comprehend that the world is against you on this, including a great many traditional supporters of the New Democratic Party? If you had political savvy and vision, you would support Leap and work with union leaders and, indeed, with community leaders generally. The Leap Manifesto proposes that we wean ourselves off fossil fuels and ease the hardship that will impose on the many employed by the industry. What could be wrong with that, especially if it was a non-partisan, community effort?

No one expects that we’ll be off fossil fuels tomorrow afternoon, Mr.Horgan – the object is to avoid wasting time making adjustments, thus making matters worse. People expect that leaders will take us down that path in reasonably expeditious fashion, while making the changes as smooth as humanly possible for those impacted by them.

No point pretending

There is no point in pretending that the move away from fossil fuels isn’t going to happen and happen pretty quickly. The leader, the statesman, recognizes that the best policy is to control events and not be controlled by them while the demagogue tries to avoid reality for short-term advantage.

The most important consideration of all, Mr. Horgan, is that bringing united public support for a commitment to as quick an end to our reliance on fossil fuels, while caring for those hurt by the inevitable, dramatic changes, is the right thing to do.

BC's gift to the world- Premier Christy Clark — Premier Christy Clark at a government-hosted LNG conference (Flickr CC Licence / BC Govt)

It’s astonishing that the NDP will likely appeal less to the average voter than will premier Clark, considering her breathtaking incompetence, the massive debts that she’s run up, the bankrupting of BC Hydro, the destruction of our rivers, the wreckage and folly that is Site C, not to mention the embarrassment she’s brought herself and us over LNG.

You’ve abandoned the high ground of saving the environment, leading the province carefully and thoughtfully through the perils but likely have given the polluters the chance to escape unscathed and another four years to make it infinitely worse, while driving us deeper and deeper in debt.

Not your fault Mr. Horgan?

Then just whose fault is it, pray tell?

90% of world’s new electricity coming from renewables: Welcome to the end of the fossil fuel era

April 18, 2016Climate Change, Coal, Economics, Energy and Resources, LNG, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers, Renewables, Tar SandsfeaturedDamien Gillis

Solar installation class (Haggerston Community College/Flickr CC licence)

According to the International Energy Agency, a staggering 90% of all new electrical capacity brought online around the world in 2015 came in the form of renewable energy. That same year, China invested a record $110 Billion in clean tech – virtually 100% of its electrical capital – and in 2016, it’s set to close 1,000 coal mines. While Canada is shedding fossil fuel jobs like they’re going out of style, the world’s current economic powerhouses – China, the US, Germany, Brazil, Korea – are generating millions of new green jobs.

In other words, the bust we’re witnessing in Fort McMurray and North Dakota is no mere blip – no typical, “cyclical” downturn. Common Sense Canadian contributor and retired federal government energy innovation expert Will Dubitsky, who has been tracking and publishing these figures here for several years now and whom I draw on extensively for this article, put it to me in the following terms:

[quote]We don’t expect a return in the blacksmith business. At some point, it was simply replaced by more modern tools and trades.[/quote]

Statistics don’t have feelings

Bank of England's Carney- Most fossil fuel reserves shouldn't be burned — Mark Carney in Davos, Switzerland, 2010 (Photo: Wikipedia)

Even if you dismiss the extraordinary economic opportunities emerging in the clean tech sector, the mounting costs and existential threat of climate change are proving impossible for global leaders to ignore, as Paris demonstrated. People at the very core of the so-called “establishment” – from Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England to BP Chief Economist Spencer Dale, now acknowledge that most fossil fuel reserves will have to be left in the ground.

Based on all the available research today – and we have reams of it in our Renewable Energy section – the fossil fuel era is rapidly drawing to a close.

And here’s the cold, hard truth: Statistics and facts don’t care whether you’re a bleeding-heart tree-hugger or dyed-in-the-wool Alberta conservative. They don’t care how badly you need your old job or whether you feel persecuted or unappreciated by the rest of the country. They don’t care about your stock portfolio, your values, your moral compass, your grandchildren, vanishing caribou herds, wild salmon or spotted owls. And we, as a nation – as citizens, employers, employees, parents, youth, pensioners, taxpayers and voters must decide whether we wish to embrace these new realities or bury our heads in the sand – a particular bitumen-laden variety.

Leaping in circles

Canada’s political parties, provincial and federal, are all grappling with these realities in their own, interesting ways – a spectacle now on display from coast to coast to coast.

The NDP’s gong show of a recent federal convention is a prime example. Following his election failure last Fall, Thomas Mulcair absorbed two final nails in his coffin – both over the same issue but from completely opposite ends of the party’s political spectrum. He was too centrist for the party’s left wing, while his openness to the Lewis/Klein faction’s anti-pipeline “Leap Manifesto” angered the Rachel Notley-led provincial party in Alberta, (not to mention working the usual pundits into a tizzy over its sheer audacity, pronouncing the NDP dead upon the manifesto’s arrival). Why on earth Mulcair let the convention happen on Notley’s turf is anyone’s guess.

But Notley fully merits recrimination for her recent ultimatum on pipelines. She won’t get them through BC – even Kinder Morgan is a non-starter, which, apparently no one but we British Columbians, in the “West beyond the West”, realize. The particular blend of First Nations, court challenges, municipal government opposition, powerful coastal activists, widespread public condemnation and complete lack of economic or “jobs” case for the project means that it simply will not happen. I’m taking bets for anyone foolish enough to lay one against me. I’m already collecting on my Enbridge wagers from 5 years ago. Notley will learn soon enough.

BC or Quebec – take your pick

New Quebec government choosing fossil fuels over green jobs — Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard (Photo: facebook)

As for Energy East, well, Notley’s got another fiercely “distinct” Canadian province to contend with in the form of Quebec. Good luck with that one.

But the bigger issue is the whole “getting bitumen to tidewater” argument – i.e. that Canadian bitumen producers are getting shafted on the price for their product because of a lack of pipeline capacity and shipping opportunities. While it sounds credible enough on the surface to people who don’t know better, and it may have been true a few years ago, it no longer holds water today. Moreover, the global growth in demand for fossil fuels is flattening out, while, according to this blog from the World Economic Forum:

[quote]Petroleum consumption in the US was lower in 2014 than it was in 1997, despite the fact that the economy grew almost 50% over this period.[/quote]

In this energy climate, there simply is no argument for expanding export capacity.

Trudeau singing same tune

You can lump the Trudeau government in with Notley on this one, as it continues to advocate for many of the same projects and backs BC’s LNG pipe dream. One of these days, Justin may learn that he can’t have his cake and eat it too – but we appear to be a long way away from that today. In the meantime, he would do a lot to assuage British Columbians, First Nations and the environmental community if his cabinet declined to issue the permit now before it for the controversial Lelu Island/Petronas-led LNG project near Prince Rupert.

BC NDP flip-flops on LNG

LNG, fracking and BC's Energy future- Multi-media discussion in Victoria — BC’s LNG ship may never come in

This project and many others are the brainchild of BC Liberal Premier Christy Clark, who evidently has not received the memo on all the above realities (though we at the CSC have sent her many!). Up until recently, the John Horgan-led provincial NDP was fully on board with fracking and LNG, then it showed signs of changing its tune – a welcome development that would have gone a long way to helping it get elected in May 2017, for the first time in 16 years.

That was, alas, before Horgan flip-flopped back to the pro-LNG side, kow-towing to union pressure. Besides the obvious political, moral and scientific problems my colleague Rafe Mair addressed with this catastrophic error in judgement by Horgan, even the labour justification is plain wrong-headed. Horgan and BC Building Trades boss Tom Sigurdson clearly don’t understand that there are no jobs to be had for British Columbians in LNG. Even if a single project of 21 proposed gets built – which is looking increasingly unlikely given global crash in LNG prices and steady withdrawal of capital – the BC Liberal government has already promised many of these jobs away to China, Malaysia and India in the form of cheap, foreign temporary workers!

I laid out in these pages precisely how the NDP could successfully re-brand itself, incorporating all these insights. In short, the key to their success is the following slogan and all that goes with it: “New Democrats, New Economy.” But the chances of them getting with the program are diminishing by the day.

Notley’s dilemma

Rafe- Notley should change electoral system following Alberta NDP win — Alberta Premier Elect Rachel Notley rode to victory on a wave of progressive policies she’s now steadily abandoning (Alberta NDP facebook page)

The same logic and opportunities apply in Alberta, though it’s an even steeper hill to climb there. I appreciate the bind Ms. Notley finds herself in – which explains her backpedaling on a number of more progressive energy policies she ran on last year. Her pollsters must be telling her she’s got to make these grandiose declarations on pipelines and undercut the federal party if she has any hope of getting re-elected.

She faces an electorate that is understandably anxious about its future – that only wants things to go back to the way they were in the good old days of $100-150 oil. It’s a scary thing not knowing how you’re going to feed your family. But things in Alberta aren’t going back to the way they were before, no matter how uncomfortable that reality is. And giving people false assurances will only make the problem worse. The only thing that can rescue the Alberta economy and bring jobs back is creating new ones – and there are real ways that can happen (more on that in a moment). Alas, for the moment. it’s easy to see how that may yet seem politically impossible to Ms. Notley.

Not all wine and roses

OK, to the skeptics who’ve gotten this far in the article, first of all, thank you for hearing me out. Second of all, you’re right about a lot of things.

You’re correct that we won’t suddenly replace fossil fuels with renewables across the board. There will necessarily be a transition period and quite possibly a place for fossil fuels in the mix for some time to come. We also won’t be able to sustain the level of growth, materialism and waste in our economy that relatively cheap, abundant fossil fuels have enabled over the past century. Some tough adjustments will need to be made there.

BC sitting on enough geothermal to power whole province, say new maps — Steam rising from the Nesjavellir Geothermal Power Station in Iceland (Photo: Gretar Ívarsson / Wikipedia)

Moreover, not all renewables are created equally – and they all have their problems. Most are not “baseload”, meaning they’re only available intermittently. The exceptions are geothermal (a huge untapped opportunity for places like BC), and large hydro dams, which aren’t clean or green for a whole host of reasons.

The solution to the intermittency issue is multi-fold. It requires building a grid with overlapping sources which fill in each other’s gaps at different times. In places like BC, Manitoba, Quebec, and a number of US states, those large dams we already have can underpin newer, non-baseload renewables. Geothermal can do the same and has for decades in San Francisco. Iceland gets more than half its electricity from it.

There are other problems with renewables though. Aggressive incentives for renewables like feed-in-tariffs have led to soaring electrical costs and energy poverty in places like Germany and Ontario, while in BC, our disastrous private “run-of-river” sham has ravaged watersheds and put BC Hydro on the brink of bankruptcy. The renewable energy sector is no more immune to greed, corruption, foolishness, and government mismanagement than the fossil fuel sector is. Anything we choose to build must be done carefully and with the public interest in mind.

Conservation is the key

The most important piece of the puzzle is conservation – the only form of energy that carries zero environmental impact or cost. The good news is we’re already doing a great job at this. Americans are using roughly the same amount of electricity in their homes today as they did at the beginning of the millennium – despite population increases, more elaborate gadgetry, and the arrival of electric cars. It’s the same story here in BC.

Things are looking up

Now for the really good news! Once we get past the denial and difficulty of letting go of everything we’ve come to take for granted, there are huge upsides to the end of the fossil fuel era. As columnist Will Dubistsky put it in these pages recently, the above developments have resulted in “an amazing decline in energy-related CO2 in both China and the US and global emissions remaining flat since 2013! What’s more, for the first time in history emissions have declined during a period of economic growth.”

Randall Benson is a former oil sands worker who runs a successful solar company and training program (Iron & Earth)

The message we so often get from the media and our elected leaders, particularly in Canada, is, “Sure climate change is a problem and we have to act, but we’ll get to it in 20 years.” Well, the world is already getting to it. Reducing emissions is very much achievable. So is transitioning to renewable energy, and while Canada has remained on the sidelines of the green jobs revolution thus far, there are signs that’s beginning to change.

Suncor recently announced plans to build multiple wind projects in Alberta. Meanwhile, a group of oil sands workers calling themselves Iron & Earth is pushing for resources to retool their skills for clean tech. These welders, electricians, boilermakers, pipe-fitters, carpenters, etc. are well positioned to transfer their considerable abilities towards wind, solar and geothermal. They’re calling on Rachel Notley to expand Alberta’s solar training programs to include retraining of existing electricians for solar installations. And that’s no big leap.

So, we have two choices as Canadians: 1. Accept that the end of the fossil fuel era is nigh and get on with building a new economy that puts Canadians to work in sustainable, longterm jobs; 2. Remain in denial, chasing a vanishing sector, ensuring Canadians remain out of work…and then accept that the end of the fossil fuel era.

The statistics don’t care. It will happen either way.

Rafe: Gutless Horgan caves to union, apologizes for opposing LNG project

April 15, 2016Energy and Resources, LNG, Oil&Gas, PoliticsfeaturedRafe Mair

Apparently, according to Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and BC NDP leader John Horgan, we have a new doctrine in Canada which essentially says that Jobs Come Ahead Of Crisis When A Powerful Union Leader Says So.

Any free society, as part of its basic philosophy, permits citizens to better themselves, legally, and to withhold their labour. At the same time, no society can permit those rights to endanger society as a whole. Moreover, it can hardly be permitted because society hasn’t been able to control some of its segments, like the bastards exposed by the Panama Scandal. That behaviour exposes the weakness of people, not of the philosophy.

Horgan’s about-face shows humiliating weakness

Having once been a cabinet minister in a Socred government, I risk being called anti-union if I offer any criticism of a union. There’s a distinct odour of Senator Joseph McCarthy in an allegation that because one belonged to a certain group, they therefore can be assumed to have certain beliefs. I support unions, have been a member of three, had formal election endorsements from two, and I couldn’t have been elected, twice, in Kamloops, a union town, if I was anti-union.

What I’m on about is the humble, indeed humiliating volte face when John Horgan met with the union, and its powerful leader whose support, more than any other, made Horgan the NDP leader.

This from the April 14 edition of the Toronto Globe and Mail:

[quote]B.C. NDP Leader John Horgan met with his toughest critics on the party’s liquefied natural gas policies, and said his party’s official rejection of the Pacific Northwest LNG proposal could yet turn to Yes.

Mr. Horgan was speaking to the annual convention of the BC Building Trade unions in Victoria on Wednesday, where he sought to diffuse anger from his party’s labour allies over his decision to ask the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency to withhold approval for the proposed Pacific Northwest LNG plant near Prince Rupert.

The NDP Leader apologized to union leader Tom Sigurdson for sending the submission to the regulatory agency without giving him notice that the party had come out against the proposal.[/quote]

Many, evidently including Mr. Horgan, think there’s an easy, gradual way to deal with the fossil fuel/climate crisis so nobody ever has to make a sacrifice quite yet. Forgive the indiscreet example, but that’s like the young boy, who, being warned he’ll go blind if he keeps playing with himself, promises to quit just as soon as he needs glasses.

One leap forward, two bounds back

I heartily congratulate the NDP in Convention for, barely, passing the Leap Manifesto and ask Notley, Horgan and company, “What’s the equivalent of needing glasses to inform us we must now act?” Doesn’t this, at least in principle, make abundant good sense?

Of course Premier Notley has a problem, but letting it fester, indeed helping it get worse, is scarcely the solution. In spite of 70 years of Alberta arrogance towards less well-off provinces, we all have a societal obligation to help. And we must do that as part of the same Canadian way Albertans were so grumpy about when they were rolling in petrodollars.

What we do not have is an obligation to suffer the fatal consequences of “business as usual”. Someone has to explain that to Ms. Notley and Mr. Horgan, who must then stand up to those who would put themselves first.

A Canadian problem

The solution lies in accepting the fact that this is a national problem affecting every single Canadian and that those who will be most directly affected need the assistance of the rest of us. Just what form that takes must be worked out but we have to make a start, which the Leap Manifesto does.

Beyond a reasonable doubt

What the hell do Mr. Horgan and Mr. Sigurdson need for evidence? Ninety-seven percent of the world’s scientists dealing with this problem confirm that we have a crisis which, unattended, will be fatal.

Of course there are doubting Thomases – articulate ones. If you’re one, here’s my answer.

As a lawyer, I can assure you that there isn’t a proposition ever propounded that I couldn’t make a case against.

Are you a “round earther” – I guarantee I can make a hell of a case for it being flat.

Believe in God? I can rally no end of scientists, including Richard Dawkins, to refute that.

In support of God are many of the world’s greatest thinkers, including Albert Einstein.

Mr. Sigurdson (I take it you have precedence in the NDP), Mr. Horgan, the scientists have done more than meet the civil onus of “on a balance of probabilities” but have satisfied the criminal test of “beyond a reasonable doubt”.

Beyond “a shadow of a doubt”? Perhaps not, but it’s impossible to think of any proposition that meets that test.

But Mr. Sigurdson, Horgan, if you’re wrong, if your “scientists” are wrong, everything is lost. And if the 97% are somehow wrong, we have still made the world a hell of a lot better, safer, cleaner and nicer place to live.

One might reduce the argument, then, to this: “Better safe than sorry”!

Gentlemen, we are all in this together, including you!

Rafe: It’s the end of the newspaper as we know it…and I feel fine

April 13, 2016MediafeaturedRafe Mair

Rafe- Death of the newspaper has a happy flipside — Nine-year-old newsie and his 7-year-old brother ‘Red’ – 1915 (Photo: Lewis Wickes Hine/Shorpy)

When I was born, well, quite a while ago, R.B. Bennett was Prime Minister of Canada, Herbert Hoover was President of the US, Ramsay Macdonald was Prime Minister of the UK, Simon Fraser Tolmie was Premier of BC, and Louis Taylor was Mayor of Vancouver, my natal city. From then until March 28, 2016 the Vancouver Sun and Province were in our house and, when it was alive, from 1933-53, the News Herald as well. I delivered the Province as a boy, was a proud member of their Tillicum Club and sneered at members on the Sun’s Sun Ray Club with Uncle Ben.

I am not going to spend much time today complaining about the newspapers’ inability to deliver quality. That’s a given and I’m not sure that they would deny that. There’s not enough money, they say, and, not being in the business, I can’t argue with them.

I do know that some very bad things have happened in recent years. At the time I was in government in the 70s and right to the end of the 20th century newspapers held politicians tightly to account and by and large they were pretty even-handed.

BC papers quit doing their job

Something happened just in time for the Gordon Campbell government. Almost instantly upon election, Campbell brought in a catastrophic energy policy which was certain to ruin the environment and ecology in a great number of rivers and put BC Hydro into a perilous financial bind.

Rafe Mair is calling out BC's mainstream media columnists, like Vaughn Palmer (pictured here) for their sloppy journalism on BC Hydro's financial troubles (photo: Weekday on KUOW). — Vaughn Palmer (photo: Weekday on KUOW).

The situation was tailor made for the Vaughn Palmer of yore and we all waited for it to happen. He was the man who by diligence and biting journalism brought down the Glen Clark government on the “fast ferry” issue in the 90s. He was relentless and it showed – he’d expose Campbell too! We waited and waited and it hasn’t happened again to this day, 14 years later. The Vancouver Sun, which always prided itself on the holding governments to account, has given the Campbell/Clark incompetents a free ride, starting with Campbell being tossed in jail for drunk driving.

It was soon clear that the two papers were going extremely easy on the Clark government’s trance over LNG. I often think of what would have happened if this were 35 years ago with Webster, Nichols, Fotheringham, Burns, Wasserman & Co prowling the corridors of power. What in hell had happened since?

Unholy alliance

Then there was an article in the Vancouver Observer that caught my eye because it quoted the publisher of the National Post, flagship paper of Postmedia, making purring sounds about the Oil industry.

A little bit of googling and it became evident that the fossil fuel industry was getting even better than a free ride. As is now well known, Postmedia, which includes the Sun and the Province, entered what I indelicately call a mutual masturbation pact with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) while the Province became a partner with Resource Works, a gathering of the usual industry suspects dedicated to promoting Woodfibre LNG, a potential environmental nightmare.

Knowing this, if you cast your minds back a few years, it explains the almost total commitment of the Postmedia papers to the fossil fuel industry.

But that didn’t do it for me – after all, it was the old gambler’s cry, “The wheel may be crooked but it’s the only wheel in town”. There was nowhere else to go.

More than one wheel in town

I thought some more – what was obvious was that both papers are boring. Not just boring – put to sleep boring. There’s nothing to look forward to anymore. Readers want to grab the newspaper to look for news and find that both papers are identical and, in fact, if you get the Globe and Mail, you can often see three identical stories in one morning in three different newspapers.

Then it sank in: there was more than one wheel in town after all, I just had to get off my duff and look!

Where once I waited for the papers, now, first thing in the morning, I look at BBC, CNN, CBC, and CTV on my computer and in less than an hour have a good overview of the major news and several stories to return to after breakfast. Moreover, I have infinitely better sports coverage than I would ever get in the newspapers. The short conclusion is that the Sun and the Province don’t really cover politics in a meaningful way anymore and they never were any hell on other news which I now get on my iPad. They just had Luann, Rex Morgan,The Other Coast…

A few will be missed

I’m going to miss a number of columnists, particularly Pete McMartin, Daphne Bramham, Stephen Hume, and Ian Mulgrew. I’m sure I can find them online as well as Luann, Rex Morgan and The Other Coast – the only comics I care about. When the finance minister of the Mair/Conway-Mair household asked if I could justify the cost of these newspapers, I had to confess that I couldn’t. They’d just become two ever-diminishing sheafs of paper which arrive on my lap at breakfast time that I had become used to.

I’ll continue to get the Globe and Mail, although that isn’t much better than the other two. With the exception of the BC columnists, especially Mark Hume and Gary Mason, I only scan the big kids from the big smoke. With one or two exceptions, they seem afraid to be controversial and are, well, boring. They’re sooooo Central Canada and joined at the hip to the Establishment.

Blogs help fill the void

The problem of how to fill the void remains. What does the ordinary person who grew up with newspapers do now that they are so bad. So far, we’ve just gone on buying them but that will end sooner or later. There are lots of options on the Internet but they’re a lot more trouble than just sitting back with a coffee and opening up your newspaper wherever you want and flipping around as we had always done. We’re going to have to make adjustments.

What’s this going to look like? Many of the large newspapers have online editions – will they be enough to fill gap? And there are newcomers that often tend to be one or two issues only and many of those are excellent but they don’t completely satisfy the news junkie.

I like Zero Hedge because it expands into larger items and also environmental publications such as EcoWatch and DeSmog Blog.

Locally, there are good general information sheets such as The Tyee, and for environment and politics, I mustn’t forget The Common Sense Canadian. For politics over all, iPolitics is excellent and if you are more of the left wing bent, rabble.ca is probably what you want. There are lots of very good newsletters.

Modern news asks more from the reader

I’ve gone on for a bit now and all I’ve done is scratch the surface and piss off a lot of people who wonder why I didn’t mention them. The point is that news no longer comes in nice cosy packages where you can buy a house, a car, read the sportspage, get a girl or a boy or something in between for entertainment and then read for what passes as news. One has to travel about quite a bit.

This bother has no doubt kept the traditional newspapers on life support. The Internet alternatives aren’t easy for lots of folks. But our kids, the new generation of news junkies, aren’t nearly as troubled by the loss of the friendly newspaper as the adults in the family are. In fact, most couldn’t care less. This is where the newspapers are really in deep trouble. If your business hasn’t got a future generation of customers, it hasn’t got a future.

Nobody wants to pay

There really is no point in trying to assess blame. My own feeling is that they wanted to change but couldn’t figure out how. The last major change I can remember was back in the 1960s when the London Times took the advertising off the front page and replaced it with news. Most newspapers in the world essentially look the same.

The big problem for the Internet’s so-called “newspapers” is, of course, that nobody wants to pay for them and content is difficult to keep out of reach – the Catch 22 being the more you put up barriers, the less it’s read.

If I had to make a guess – and I suppose I must– we will carry on with the scads of publications, all the way from trade publications, religious tracts and sports sheets to some whole ones that throw in the news and politics as we are accustomed. We, the public, will get used to that because the new “public” is now about 15 years of age and quite acclimatized to popping all over the Internet to find what they want. Moreover, they can read off a screen where this old fart is easily discouraged by them.

Adjusting just fine

All I can tell you is after two weeks without the regular newspapers, I’m doing fine. I’ve found my favourite comic strips and it’s easy. I get my news from my iPad every morning as I have for some time because I knew I wouldn’t get it in the newspapers. I’m finding that the adjustment has in large measure already been made and I didn’t realize it. It’s nowhere near as bad as quitting smoking, something a heroin addict many years ago told me was much more difficult to quit than hard drugs.

The good side is that I feel cleaner not giving money to newspapers on the take from the fossil fuel industry, which are also deep up the anuses of right wing governments and the greed-ridden polluters that support them in exchange for helpful laws.

I suppose that if an old troublemaker like me can make the dramatic change of tossing away his newspaper, the rest of the world will also adjust and, as it always has, keep spinning on its axis until we blow it to bits or render it uninhabitable.

The trick, as with most things, is overcoming inertia, which I’ve finally done. It feels fine and keep asking myself, why the hell did it take so long?

Now, off to the ‘net to find Luann, The Other Coast, and tiresome old Dr. Rex Morgan.

Rafe: NDP’s LNG reversal is a game-changer for BC election

April 10, 2016Energy and Resources, LNG, Oil&Gas, Politics, Western CanadafeaturedRafe Mair

Important events don’t always seem to be so. So it is with the changes last month in both the Green party and the NDP.

Going back, say a fortnight, the ruling Liberals were unpopular as hell, led by an airhead who likes to have her picture taken and ride in airplanes. Despite that, I would have said – indeed I think I did – that she still had a very good chance of winning next year’s election, if only because of Mair’s Axiom I, “you don’t have to be 10 in politics, you can be a 3 if everyone else is a 2.”

Not only was John Horgan a 2 at that point, he was harried by the Green party who showed every sign of moving into second place, a humiliation that would have damaged the NDP for a considerable time to come.

The Green party was basking in the huge popularity of its national leader, Elizabeth May, undoubtedly the most popular politician in BC and perhaps in Canada. No one seemed to care that voters didn’t really know who the provincial leader, Dr. Andrew Weaver, was – let alone what he really stood for. A substantial number of British Columbians, wavering between voting Green or NDP didn’t like the NDP from another movie. That was the moment for the Greens to make a clear, concise, and comforting statement of their policy emphasizing, of course, the environment.

Dr. Weaver seemed reluctant to support the environment too enthusiastically because he wanted to demonstrate that the party has other strings to its bow – an awkward problem, to be sure, because the Green party is seen by many to be a one-trick pony. This changed somewhat when Elizabeth May arrived and gave a fair impression that even if no one else did, she knew what the she was doing. That’s why I suggested that the BC party drop Weaver and co-opt Ms. May and that if they did, their success in the next election could be truly remarkable.

Weaver blows it stumping for private power

BC Green MLA Andrew Weaver — BC Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver

In any event, Dr. Weaver destroyed himself on a talk show on 1070 CFAX in Victoria with host Ian Jessop . The issue was the Gordon Campbell Energy policy of 2003 as carried on by Christy Clark. Under this policy, the right to make new power was taken from BC Hydro and given to so-called Independent Power Producer (IPPs), who were permitted to destroy beautiful rivers in order to make the power.

In the 2009 election, this was a non-issue in spite of the efforts of some of us to make it one. One person who supported this government policy was Dr. Weaver, then a professor at the University of Victoria. To us going around the province speaking against the policy, that was a pain in the ass but no big deal.

Fast forward to last December 17 and Dr. Weaver appeared on the Ian Jessop show where the main question was his Party’s stand on IPP’s. This issue was finally getting traction because economists like Erik Andersen had publicized the fact that the policy had all but bankrupted BC Hydro and many prominent environmental groups pointed out the horrendous damage done to these rivers, the fish and other wildlife that depend upon them, and at the ecology around. The public, slowly, step-by-step, was becoming au fait with this issue.

Dr Weaver evidently didn’t know this and clearly was taken by surprise when Ian asked whether or not he and the Green party still supported this Liberal policy that had destroyed so many rivers and all but bankrupted BC Hydro. Weaver babbled and the more Jessop questioned, the more he babbled. I suggest that you listen for yourself here – starting around the 41 min mark.

Far from trying to make things better, Dr. Weaver took to blaming me and a column I wrote and got into a slanging match, on Facebook would you believe, with publisher Damien Gillis. Whether or not he was right or wrong – he was wrong as hell – the point is, this was not a time for shrill name-calling but damage control; time for party to come to grips with this question and declare themselves against the IPP policy and in favour of public power and keeping BC Hydro solvent. That simply didn’t happen.

Now, silently, the NDP slipped into the game.

Horgan steps up to the plate

Late last March, John Horgan, the leader, wrote the federal minister of Environment, announcing his Party’s opposition to Pacific NorthWest LNG and, while doing so, laying out four conditions that had to be matched before his party would give approval to any LNG project. The first three are pretty routine but the fourth one, a sort of omnibus clause, covers damn near any environmental eventuality one can think of. It states that “BC’s air land and water must be protected and resource development must be as clean as possible.” It then gives specific numbers with respect to greenhouse gases.

As a one time legal beagle, I don’t see how the NDP can make any exceptions to that blanket guarantee.

The scene has changed

It’s no mystery why this revelation was made privately: John Horgan wanted to save face. He’d have a hell of a time getting an appropriate motion from a convention because so many put jobs before the environment, as we saw in the 2009 election. Union members won’t understand that jobs can never trump the environment and that the terrible shape the world is in is proof of that. The Party knows this but never wants to start quite yet. They’re like the lad who is told that if he doesn’t stop masturbating he’ll go blind, and who in turn responds, “I’ll quit just as soon as I need glasses”.

In any event, the NDP have now pushed the Greens out the environmental field entirely.

Will their deeds match their words? We’ll see when other LNG proposals come to their table.

But the scene has changed and, as has been so well and truly said, in politics, six weeks is an eternity.

From ‘Clean Coal’ to ‘Ethical Oil’: How propaganda (actually) works

April 3, 2016Energy and Resources, Oil&GasfeaturedCommon Sense Canadian

Republished from DeSmog Blog

By James Hoggan

Political Propaganda employs the ideals of liberal democracy to undermine those very ideals, the dangers of which, not even its architects fully understand.

In the early years of DeSmog’s research into environmental propaganda, I thought of industry PR campaigns like “junk science,” “clean coal,” and “ethical oil” as misinformation strategies designed to dupe the public about the real issues.

Although there is obvious truth to that view, I now understand that propaganda is far more complex and problematic than lying about the facts. Certainly propaganda is designed to look like facts that are true and right, but not in a way we might think. What’s more, the consequences are far worse than most people consuming and even producing it realize.

Much of my new understanding comes from conversations with Jason Stanley, an American philosopher and professor at Yale University and author of an important new book How Propaganda Works. According to Jason Stanley, the danger for a democracy “raided by propaganda” is the possibility that the vocabulary of liberal democracy is being used to mask an undemocratic reality.

In a democracy where propaganda is common, you have a state that appears to be a liberal democracy, its citizens believe it is a liberal democracy (they have free speech) but the appearance of liberal democracy masks an illiberal, undemocratic reality.

In this rich and thoughtful book Stanley defines political propaganda as “the employment of a political ideal against itself.” DeSmog stories about groups presenting ideologies or financial interests as objective and scientific evidence are paradigm examples of this type of propaganda.

“Propaganda that is presented as embodying an ideal governing political speech, but in fact runs counter to it, is antidemocratic … because it wears down the possibility of democratic deliberation,” Stanley writes.

He dismisses the idea that it’s deception that makes propaganda effective. Instead, Stanley argues what makes propaganda effective is that it “exploits and strengthens flawed ideology.”

It sometimes involves outright lies, but Stanley points to a bigger problem, which is that “sincere, well-meaning people under the grip of flawed ideology unknowingly produce and consume propaganda.”

My worry, alongside Stanley’s, is that when we can’t spot propaganda or don’t understand how it works, its detriment to democracy will grow to a point where it can’t be reversed.

Propaganda blazes a reckless path in politics

The best example of this dangerous form of propaganda is currently playing out in the race for a leader of the Republican Party in the U.S., with its surprising frontrunner, real-estate tycoon and reality TV star Donald Trump.

In his campaign, Trump has described Latino immigrants as criminals and rapists and proposed to build a wall across theU.S. border to keep Mexicans out of the country. He’s also called for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the U.S. as an attempt to crack down on terrorism and believes those already in his country should be registered on a special government database and required to carry special identification cards.

While it may sound like bluster to some, Trump’s efforts to build support by whipping up fear and anger about race and religion is unfortunately working, at least where popularity contests are concerned.

That’s even though people in his own party see him as reckless and dangerous for the country. Trump is now being regularly characterized as a demagogue in mainstream media, with parallels to Joe McCarthy, the Republican senator who is known for stoking anti-communist fears in the 1950s.

Canada isn’t immune to this propaganda-guided campaign strategy. Consider the Conservative-driven debate during last fall’s federal election around whether Muslim women should be allowed to wear the niqab during the citizenship oath. The former Harper government’s “Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act” also pandered to fears of immigrants, while claiming to address issues such as forced marriages and honour killings, which many pundits were quick to point out are already illegal under existing laws.

Understanding propaganda is key to stopping its spread

Obviously these examples of propaganda feed into negative stereotypes, but blatant bigotry is only part of the problem.

This style of rhetoric is not as much an attempt to persuade, as it is an act of cultural tribalism: the creation of a team divided against other teams in a manner that shuts down open-minded thinking.

Stanley writes that a democratic society is one that values liberty and political equality. It is a society suffused with a tolerance of difference. It rests on the view that collective reasoning is superior, “that genuine liberty is having one’s interests decided by the result of deliberation with peers about the common good.”

These examples of propaganda pose a challenge for liberal democracy because they sabotage joint deliberations of this sort. They are touted as free speech but in fact undermine public reason by excluding certain groups.

Such ad hominem name-calling undermines our ability to question our perspectives, or respectfully consider the perspectives of others, Stanley says. It undermines the inclusive, rational debate at the core of liberal democracy.

“…flawed ideologies rob groups of knowledge of their own mental states by systematically concealing their interests from them,” he says.

Understanding what makes propaganda effective is at the heart of understanding political inaction on issues that scream out for action. Stanley is most worried about demagogic speech, saying it “both exploits and spreads flawed ideologies,” creating barriers to democratic deliberation. “It attempts to unify opinion without attempting to appeal to our rational will at all,” he says.

Stanley describes propaganda as a method to bypass the rational will of others. The consequences are widespread and can be long-lasting. Accumulated over time, propaganda becomes a turn off that discourages citizens from participating in democratic responsibilities, such as voting, the participation level of which is already embarrassingly low in free societies like Canada and the U.S.

Propaganda’s attempt to silence critics

The propaganda problem goes way beyond terrorism, impacting the entire world around us. Consider the harm being done to the planet by those who deny climate change is a reality or label Canadian oil as “ethical” and coal from West Virginia as “clean” to justify its aggressive expansion and government subsidies.

According to Stanley, it’s difficult to have a real discussion about the pros and cons of an issue when they’re slapped with these types of spin. He believes assertions like these, where words are misappropriated and meanings twisted, are often less about making substantive claims and more about silencing critics.

In his words, they are “linguistic strategies for stealing the voices of others.” Groups are silenced by attempts to paint them as grossly insincere, which in turn undermine the public’s trust in them. Consider the former Harper government’s labeling of environmentalists who opposed their aggressive oil sands expansion policies as “radical groups” funded by foreign interests trying to block trade and undermine Canada’s economy.

When I first met Stanley in Harlem, he used the example of Fox News, which he says is silencing when it describes itself as ‘fair and balanced’ to an audience that is perfectly aware that it is neither. “The effect is to suggest there is no such thing as fair and balanced. There is no possibility of balanced news only propaganda,” Stanley says.

This style of propaganda pollutes the public square with a toxic form of rhetoric that insinuates there are no facts, there is no objectivity and that everyone is trying to manipulate you for their own interests.

James Hoggan is the co-founder of the influential website DeSmogBlog and the author of two books, Do the Right Thing: PR Tips for Skeptical Public, and Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming.

Rafe: Weaver, BC Greens should quit backing private river power sham

March 29, 2016Hydropower, Politics, Privatization, WATER, Western CanadafeaturedRafe Mair

Rafe- Weaver, BC Greens should quit supporting private river power sham — Dr. Andrew Weaver, leader of the BC Green Party, has long supported IPPs

It’s been a disappointing week. We all have them.

In a moment, I’ll get to my frustration with the BC Green Party and its leader Dr. Andrew Weaver – but my disappointment started with a letter from Fair Voting Canada (FVC) in answer to a letter from me offering support in their fight for reform of our voting system.

As you know, the Trudeau government has set up a committee to hear evidence in order to bring forth a bill to change the system from First Past The Post (FPTP) to some form of Proportional Representation (PR).

Though it has nothing to do with their bleated moral virtue but everything to do with getting past the next election still under FPTP the Tories tendentiously insist that there must be a referendum.

I have a manuscript into the publisher on the Canadian Constitution which really could be called “the constitution for dummies”. Meaning no disrespect, it’s an uncomplicated look at how we run things and puts forward some options for reform. I offered this book to FVC, no strings attached, but then we hit upon a serious problem.

System be left to reform itself

My position was taken after considerable study and some 40 years of experience in the field at the highest level. I examined FPTP, PR, Alternative Voting, and STV as recommended by the BC Electoral Assembly in in 2008.

While FVC and I came to the same conclusion, FVC would not have a referendum but would leave implementation entirely to the Parliament of Canada – which is saying to Mr. Trudeau and his whipped Liberal caucus.

It seems to me, and I hate to use this word about such sincere people, that it’s pretty hypocritical to call for “fair voting” and deny the vote to people on the very issue at stake. The morality is scarcely improved by the fact they agree with Trudeau’s position but, intended or not, is “we know best” elitism. I want the same thing but know that unless it comes from the people, it will never really be legitimate and never fully accepted.

Obeying the elites

The reason – I would call it an excuse – that FVC gives is that it will be too late, thanks to the delays of the Harper government, to hold a referendum in time for the next election. Therefore, goes the reasoning, the lousy system we used to let this crowd in, because time is awkward, will be replaced by one we who know best have selected!

This smacks of the discipline Canadians traditionally impose upon themselves in favour of the pronouncements of the elite. It just goes back, I suppose, to British autocracy as represented in our Constitution, which doesn’t talk about liberty, but “peace, order, and good government”. Somehow, even in 2016, we’re prepared to obey the elites rather than think for ourselves. The elites know that, so don’t trouble us with things like referenda.

I ask FVC and their allies like Leadnow: What the hell are you afraid of? How can you possibly want to improve a democracy by denying democracy and then pretend that you have actually reformed the country?

Greens don’t get it on Hydro

My second disappointment was with the BC Green Party and in particular its leader Dr. Andrew Weaver.

I consider myself a Green, though not a Party member, and am a huge fan of their national leader Elizabeth May. My attraction to the Greens is that they honour the environment with political muscle while at the same time recognizing that people must work, live and eat. Unlike other parties, they don’t see these as mutually exclusive ideas.

I have tried to meet with Dr. Weaver on a number of occasions but it hasn’t happened. My quarrel with him and the party is a very simple one.

In 2003 the Gordon Campbell government brought in the infamous “energy plan” which essentially did two things – it denied BC Hydro the right to make any new power other than Site C and mandated that all future power must be made by private power companies – euphemistically branded Independent Power Producers (IPPs). Their power would be sold to BC Hydro at inflated prices with our crown corporation forced to take all the power the private companies produce, whether they need it or not.

Construction of a private power project on the Ashlu River (Photo: Range Life)

This was sold by the Campbell government as being environmentally neutral because the companies would all be little “Mom and Pop” operations, the rivers wouldn’t be dammed, just an unobtrusive little weir, and the flow of water unimpeded. Therefore, we could expect no environmental damage. At the time I kept and still have the video of Finance Minister Colin Hansen peddling this crap.

I came into the picture, along with Damien Gillis and others in 2008. I was on a sharp learning curve mainly because I could not believe what I was being told.

It was not long before I found that these IPPs were very substantial operations. The weirs were large obstructions, whether called a dam or not; the water flow was seriously impeded (up to 95% of a river’s flow diverted through large pipes or bus-sized tunnels for miles); when the salmon runs came up the river, it was low water and the artificial channels built to accommodate them were a bad joke. The foliage around the rivers was destroyed for the purposes of the “dam” and transmission lines, there were trees cut down and roads built and so-called “Mom and Pop” operations were mostly subsidiaries of large, mostly American companies, who took our money out of the country. The whole program as started by the Campbell government and perpetuated by Clark was bullshit.

IPPs are a financial scam for BC

I consulted with a number of people, including highly-regarded economist Erik Andersen, and saw that the financial arrangements BC Hydro was forced to make were ruinous, and would inevitably lead to bankruptcy in a fairly short period of time.

Putting this all together, Damien and I, working on behalf of the Save Our Rivers Society, were joined by others – and I particularly note Joe Foy of the Wilderness Committee – and we toured the Province, often speaking at meetings put on for the same purpose by COPE 378, during the 2009 election, telling people, chapter and verse, what was going on. The story we told, as I related above, just seemed too preposterous for people to believe. No government would be so careless of the environment, so negligent about BC Hydro and its finances as we were stating. Evidently, Dr. Andrew Weaver, now leader of the Green party, couldn’t accept the obvious either, and campaigned vigorously on behalf of the Liberal energy policy, ignoring the easily available information I had, declaring it was “clean energy”.

I wouldn’t now hold this against Dr. Weaver if he had taken a little time to see what has happened since but he hasn’t and still supports the Liberals on this point.

Rates soar as Hydro buckles under private debt

It’s just as Erik Andersen and other economists predicted, except much worse. Rivers, salmon runs, aquatic life and vegetation have been destroyed, just as Joe, Damien and I predicted.

On the economic front, I don’t think I have to tell you what has happened to BC Hydro. It has been well reported and must have been seen by Dr. Weaver. As a direct consequence of this economic catastrophe visited upon BC Hydro by the Campbell/Clark energy policy, that Weaver supports, our once great Crown corporation is now de facto bankrupt.

This is hardly just Rafe Mair or Damien Gillis talking. Readers of The Common Sense Canadian have seen the evidence build over the past few years as we reported it. The tragic figures are now common knowledge and available on the Internet. You have all seen the numbers and know the terrible shape BC Hydro is in. As a reminder, here’s blogger Norm Farrell’s explanation:

[quote]…from 1996 to 2016, purchases from independent power producers (IPPs) soared by 839% to 14,877 GWh, which cost about $1.3 billion in the current fiscal year. According to BC Public Accounts, the obligation to IPPs is $1.85 billion in the year ended March 2016.[/quote]

Alas, that’s not all. We have Site C which will certainly cost more than $10 Billion to produce energy we don’t need, and without any customers unless Christy Clark comes up with an LNG industry to supply countries that don’t need it, in a world market with a massive glut of gas.

Weaver still backs IPPs

Sadly, while Dr. Andrew Weaver has spoken out of late against Site C Dam, he and the BC Green Party fully support the Campbell/Clark energy policy and the continued enriching of the rich while bankrupting BC Hydro. If you wish to confirm this, listen to the Ian Jessop Show on CFAX from December 17 1 PM slot (the second interview, start listening around the 41 min mark). It’s worth the trouble.

There, you will hear Dr. Weaver still praising private power – only criticizing the Liberals’ lack of environmental monitoring and enforcement. What he fails to recognize or admit is that this industry has never been monitored, nor any protections enforced, since day one, which is precisely what we’ve been warning for nearly a decade now. This is not some mere wrinkle or oversight – it’s exactly how a privatized system is designed to work.

I’m keenly disappointed. I honestly believed that a party had appeared that British Columbians could support and I no longer believe that. I have written to Dr. Weaver and advised him of that.

The result, then, at this moment in time, is that the Christy Clark government has had a huge stroke of luck, assuming that John Horgan and the NDP don’t follow Damien’s advice here a few days ago – and they show no signs of doing so. Better the party loses an election than the leader loses face.

This, then, is the extent of the tragedy and you can understand, I think, why this is a disappointing moment.

The NDP’s only shot at winning in BC: Embrace the NEW ECONOMY

March 25, 2016Economics, Energy and Resources, Fracking, LNG, Oil&Gas, Politics, Renewables, Western CanadafeaturedDamien Gillis

The NDP's only shot at winning in BC: Embrace the NEW ECONOMY — BCNDP Leader John Horgan has a tough row to hoe to win the next election (BCNDP/Flickr)

The following is Damien Gillis’ rebuttal to colleague Rafe Mair’s recent piece, “By Backing LNG, the Horgan NDP lost election before it began”

I agree with my colleague Rafe Mair on most things – including his commentary that John Horgan and the NDP’s choice to back LNG has been a political disaster. The only real difference between Rafe’s and my views on the subject is that I still think they have a shot, a slim one albeit, to win next year’s provincial election. But only if they own up to their mistakes and quickly embrace a new, winning narrative.

Magic formula

That narrative is simple. It’s the only one they can win with and it’s so simple and powerful that if they pick it up, short of a Monica Lewinsky-level scandal, it will return them to government. This is it:

[quote]New Democrats, New Economy

[/quote]

Why is this the perfect slogan? It does everything the NDP needs it to. It promises an economic vision and jobs – the things people most want to hear. It contrasts them with the Liberals’ dowdy Old Economy – a shortsighted, failing vision based on fifty-year old ideas like big hydro dams and oil and gas.

It promises the single most popular and alluring of election outcomes – the very thing that brought Barack Obama, Justin Trudeau and many other usurpers to power: Change. Finally, it sets the stage for protecting the environment and the economy at the same time – the Holy Grail of Canadian politics today. I’m telling you, roll with this slogan, backed by a solid campaign, and you win.

It’s the economy, stupid

In the aftermath of the NDP’s catastrophic loss under Adrian Dix last time around, I penned a post-mortem titled, “It’s the economy, Stupid NDP” (based on American political guru James Carville’s famous slogan to that effect). I stand by every word to this day. The main points I made therein are:

The NDP didn’t deal with the ballot box issue of the campaign (and more often than not the key issue of all campaigns): the Economy.

The NDP failed to tell a compelling story, while the Liberals spun a powerful “jobs” meta-narrative. Sure, it was all bullshit, as we now see, but it worked at the time. They were going to deliver untold “prosperity” to British Columbians by building a brand new LNG industry. The NDP, by contrast, had no vision, no story to offer.

The NDP, in Mr. Dix’s pathetic “nice guy” campaign, failed to take away the Liberals’ only apparent strength – their purported fiscal prudence and economic mastery (again, all bullshit, as Rafe and I went around the province demonstrating, based on clear evidence).

Nice guys lose elections

The latter was easy pickens. You can be a strong, respectable, principled leader and still attack your opponent wherever justified. Christy Clark and her Liberals are unpopular and vulnerable, but you have to be willing to get your knuckles a little bloody in politics. You have to be willing to draw attention to the fact that Christy Clark failed three times to get a university eduction; worse yet, that she got stripped of her student presidency and fined for cheating in a campus election at SFU – hardly irrelevant when gauging her political character today.

Christy Clark commemorating new Port Mann Bridge - as it rang in at 550% of the government's original cost estimate of $600 million (Province of BC/Flickr) — Christy Clark commemorating the new Port Mann Bridge – as it rang in at 550% of the government’s original cost estimate of $600 million (Province of BC/Flickr)

You also have to be willing to remind voters that this government has increased our real debt from $34 Billion to well over $170 Billion since it came to power – much of that owning to a whole, new category of taxpayer obligations it invented to sweep sweetheart private power contracts and PPP construction deals under the rug (that’s not even counting the likely $20 Billion tab coming if Site C gets built).

You have to be willing to say that this government couldn’t manage its way out of a wet paper bag – pointing to a pattern of more than doubling initial estimates for major capital projects like bridges, highways, transmission lines and convention centres.

You have to be willing to tick off a long list of scandals, from triple-deleted emails and healthcare firings all the way back to illegally broken teacher contracts and BC Rail (hey, if your opponents are happy to go back to the fast ferries well, two decades later, over what now seems a paltry cost overrun by comparison to today’s boondoggles, well, then, BC Rail and legislature raids are more than fair game).

All of these things are fair game – not only that, they need to be brought up, in fairness to the electorate. But I digress. Back to that winning formula: The New Economy.

A golden opportunity missed

Asian LNG prices set to tumble further — LNG is a sinking ship (Jens Schott Knudsen/Flickr)

Nearly three years ago, I began doing townhall presentations around BC on the myths of the Liberal LNG vision. Armed with the latest data from Bloomberg and respected global and local energy analysts, I predicted that the bottom would fall out of the Asian LNG market long before we got to it (I said $8/unit, where the break-even point is around $12 – today it’s fallen even below that, with predictions of $4-5 over the next year, meaning it’s impossible to make a buck at LNG).

The response I heard from NDP MLAs at the time was, “We can’t say ‘No’ to everything.”

No, you can’t. But you can say “No” to stupid ideas and “Yes” to good ones. Had the NDP picked up on this intel 3 years ago, they may have taken a political hit in the short term, but by now, a year out from the election, they’d be looking like geniuses who could shamelessly crow, “We told you so!”

Say “Yes” to good ideas

So, the flip-side of that coin is what you say “Yes” to. You say “Yes” to renewable energy. I don’t mean rip-off private power projects and old-school, destructive dams – rather our abundant geothermal potential, wind and solar.

You embrace a group like Iron & Earth – oil sands workers lining up to retool their skills for clean tech.

It’s no big leap for an unemployed gas pipeline welder from Fort St. John to weld wind turbine components instead, or for an oil sands electrician to wire up roof-top solar. We have the workforce – we just need to shift it from an old, shrinking economy, to a new, burgeoning one.

All around the world, except Canada, the leading industrial nations are getting it – investing tens of billions in renewable energy and reaping millions of new, green jobs. As our contributor Will Dubitsky recently noted, “according to the International Energy Agency, in 2015, an astounding 90% of all global electrical power capacity added was attributable to renewables.” Translation: nine tenths of the market for new electricity in the world today is clean tech, not fossil fuels. Pipelines, oil sands and fracking are on the way out. Why stake your future on a losing, outmoded idea?

Get creative

You also say “Yes” to the creative economy. Vancouver now has the biggest digital effects industry in the world and a booming tech sector – driven by the great lifestyle the region has to offer and a growing cluster of skilled people and hubs of activity and resources. Mayor Gregor Robertson is embracing and nurturing this trend, while Christy Clark has shown half-hearted acknowledgement at best. In the last election, her government also ran against the film industry – which is now thriving again in today’s low-dollar environment.

Super, Natural BC

You say “Yes” to preserving and growing our $13-14 Billion Super, Natural BC tourism economy, which employs over 135,000 people vs. 10,000 at the absolute peak of our oil and gas industry – roughly 3,000 direct jobs for British Columbians in oil and gas extraction and maybe double that in additional support services. But you don’t do that by destroying our salmon runs with LNG plants, marring our coastal viewscapes with bad clearcut logging practices, oil tankers and LNG plants. You don’t attract people to “the greatest place on earth” if it no longer is “the greatest place on earth”.

Adding value

Gas industry contributes 0.01 per cent of BC revenues, few jobs — Two of the province’s surprisingly few gas workers – in BC’s Horn River Basin in 2011 (Photo: Damien Gillis)

You also say “Yes” to local, value-added manufacturing. You don’t ship raw logs to China and Japan – you turn them into high-grade wood products here first, employing thousands in the process.

We seem to have it set in our minds that we’re bound to be nothing more than hewers of wood and drawers of water – a “resource” economy – forevermore. That’s our lot in life and there’s nothing we can do about it. Balderdash. It’s that sort of self-determining crap we’ve been feeding ourselves for decades and which keeps us from moving forward.

The bottom line is this: Oil and gas contributes a scarce few jobs to this province, compared with other sectors – same goes for mining. Don’t take my word for it – check out this handy chart, put together with Stats BC figures, for this publication by Norm Farrell.

Oil and gas also contributes just 0.1% of our provincial revenues – partly because since 2008 we’ve been subsidizing the industry to the tune of a billion dollars a year in taxpayer-funded infrastructure and massive royalty credit-backs. Imagine, for a second, if we invested that kind of dough in building a renewable energy sector!

We all gotta eat

Site C review panel changes mind, asks for ALC's input on farmland — The Peace River Valley is home to some of BC’s best farmland (Damien Gillis)

Finally, you say “Yes” to feeding ourselves. That means you don’t flood or disrupt 30,000 acres of the best farmland we have left to build a $20 Billion dam we don’t need. Agriculture is not only essential to our survival – it’s also important economically.

Getting that land into production would create jobs at the same time as it saves consumers money from the rapidly escalating cost of importing half our food from drought-stricken places like California.

The NDP created the Agricultural Land Reserve – arguably its single greatest legacy. It should stand loud and proud for it now.

No more Mr. Nice Guy

John Horgan’s a smart guy. He’s a hell of a lot tougher than Adrian Dix too and I doubt he’ll make the same mistake of running a “nice guy” campaign. I’m also liking what I started hearing from him late last year, in terms of taking a tough stance against Site C Dam and rolling out a green economy platform called PowerBC. He needs to go much further on both of these points, but, hey, it’s a start.

Chances are…

That said, Rafe is correct that Horgan and the NDP have dug themselves a huge hole by failing to counter the Liberals’ disastrous LNG fib. So BC faces three possible outcomes next May:

Despite all their mistakes, fibs and failings, the Liberals get back into power…again
The NDP, under John Horgan, finally gets it together, embraces the “New Economy” and wins an election for the first time since cargo pants and Tevas were in fashion
There is a very narrow possibility that the BC Greens, under the leadership of Elizabeth May – on the wild chance she heeds Rafe’s advice and takes over the BC party – come from nowhere and steal this election.

Based on our current trajectory, we’re headed for option 1 – which would be an unmitigated disaster for our economy and environment. But if there’s any chance of it being option 2, things have to start changing right now. The NDP can’t win by default – just because their opponents are so bad. The last election proved that in stunning fashion. Moreover, they don’t deserve to come to power, nor will they help the province unless they have the right vision and commitment to follow through on it.

They also must get their shop in order, as I noted in my post-mortem 3 years ago. The party’s back rooms need fresh blood and the various factions within the NDP must commit to working together and winning for once. This campaign cannot be the sloppy mess the last one was – they require a well-oiled machine to beat a slick political operation like that of their rivals. And all that starts at the top, with the party’s leader.

All of which means the ball is in John Horgan’s court. And nothing short of the future of the province hangs on his next move.

Rafe: Elizabeth May and the Greens should double down on BC

March 22, 2016Canada, PoliticsfeaturedRafe Mair

Federal Green Leader Elizabeth May with Provincial Leader Andrew Weaver (Green party/facebook)

It being just over a year until the next provincial election I fret that people really have no choice. The government is bloody awful and the opposition is scarcely a government in waiting and a lousy opposition to boot – what to do?

What about a new party “coming up the middle”, something that pundits always talk about but almost never happens?

Wouldn’t be the first time

Well, it happened once in my lifetime, back in 1952, my 21st year. The government, a coalition of Liberals and Conservatives, was appalling, although nothing as bad as Christy’s bunch. The opposition CCF, now NDP, were led by Harold Winch, a highly respected man, their problem being that the right wing had done such a good job of demonizing them that they had a hard time attracting voters outside a select group of supporters.

Longtime Bc Premier WAC Bennett's dream is dead — WAC Bennett

The Coalition split, ran separately and, of course, the CCF ran, but suddenly there was another player in the game, former conservative backbencher William Andrew Cecil Bennett, running for something called Social Credit, which had little presence in British Columbia and no political leader.

To the amazement of all, Bennett wound up with 19 seats to 18 for the CCF and after a great deal of tooing and froing by Lieutenant-Governor Clarence Wallace, Bennett, who only became leader after the election, was premier and the Social Credit party became government – for 20 years!

A little harmless speculation

I don’t say that it’s 1952 again or, even if similarities are great, that the same thing will happen. It is, I think, both fun and perhaps even helpful to speculate a bit from time to time. If nothing else, it makes for great conversation over a beer or two.

I think that three principles prevail – my own, namely, “You don’t have to be a 10 in politics – you can be a 3 if everyone else is 2”; there’s this from former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson: “In politics, six weeks is an eternity”; and then the general proposition that “politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum”. With those thoughts in mind, let’s take a look at the Green Party as the logical third party in the game.

What would it take?

One must bear in mind, of course, that there were four parties in the 1952 election, although I don’t think it mattered much, as the Liberals were ill and the Tories terminally so.

We have questions: First, is the division in British Columbia such that people are looking for a new option?

Secondly, and most importantly, could that alternative be the Green Party, and, if so, under what circumstances?

Going on the 1952 experience, if you’d asked that question about The Social Credit League you’d have drawn a blank stare. 2017 is different in this respect – the Green Party does have a presence in British Columbia, in the nation and indeed in the world. It is the same as 1952 in that the Greens have never been close to gaining power.

There’s a second consideration, however, that arises out of the previous one. The big issue that concerns the public today – and the Green Party is the result of that concern – is the environment. This issue has taken hold around the world and no longer can the Greens be easily dismissed . The Greens’ problem is that people still see them as a one-trick pony, no matter how hard they plead otherwise. Will the public concern about the antediluvian attitudes of the others about the environment trump these concerns? Might people just say, “What the hell? They couldn’t possibly be worse than what we have and at least they’ll care about environmental matters.”

Greens have a shot in more than one riding

In 1952 there was only one constituency that Social Credit could see as a possibility, Mr. Bennett’s home in Kelowna. In BC today the prospect for the Greens is better in that Dr. Andrew Weaver, their leader, has a seat and has had a term in the legislature as a Green to get experience and strut his stuff.

There are other constituencies, very much including the one I live in, which could easily elect a Green – in fact I find it difficult to think of who else could win in the Howe Sound area. The Liberal MLA has been an appalling failure, having paid no attention to the deep concerns about the potential LNG plant in Squamish. The NDP, who might have a chance under normal circumstances, is a victim of Mr. Horgan’s commitment to LNG and are scarcely seen as friends.

The Greens ran a very good campaign in the last federal election but were victimized by strategic voting by a public that wanted to be rid of John Weston more than they cared about who they elected. That will not be the case in 2017.

LNG helps Greens

Artist's rendering of proposed floating LNG terminal in Saaninch Inlet - Malahat LNG — Artist’s rendering of proposed floating LNG terminal in Saaninch Inlet – Malahat LNG

Are there other constituencies similar to mine? I suspect the Cowichan area would be fruitful given the government’s support of an LNG plant at Bamberton in Saanich Inlet. There may be others. It’s probably true to say that most ridings have a fairly prominent environmentalist in their midst so that whatever candidate the Greens choose will be reasonably well known, a matter of great importance.

What’s unknown is the leadership ability of Dr. Andrew Weaver.

Does Weaver have the right stuff?

I don’t know Dr. Weaver but what I have heard is all good – except that he supported the Liberals’ horrendous private river power program back in the 2009 election. He is not well known in the province, is not seen as a particularly charismatic individual but is very well-informed, capable, and sincere. But can those qualities be translated into a winning leader for a party that until now has been a “no-hoper”.

It’s here I make one of my famous way-out suggestions. It won’t be followed, so there’s no possible way we’ll know whether or not I might be right. Those are the very best kind of suggestions because if either the Liberals or the NDP win in 2017, I’ll be able to say, “If only those idiots had accepted my suggestion!”

May could pull it off

Elizabeth May with the Media (T.J. Watt/Green Party of Canada/Flickr)

Here is my proposal: If Elizabeth May was the leader of the BC Green party, I think it would be in there with a chance not just for opposition but who knows, a repeat of 1952?

This isn’t a knock on Dr. Weaver. He has a done an excellent job. Elizabeth May, however, is a one-off, having had considerable electoral experience becoming extremely popular right across the country. She won an enormous victory in her own riding against the Trudeau sweep and is, if my riding is any example, very popular with the grass roots. She has that mysterious charisma as all who have met and heard her will attest. It also helps that she is extremely well-informed on all major issues.

As I understand it, the Green Party’s federal and provincial wings are separate so if Ms. May were to lead the BC wing, it would require 100% cooperation from Dr. Weaver.

Having a been a politician I know that Dr. Weaver is not likely to be thrilled at the idea of standing aside for Elizabeth May or anybody else. He doesn’t have enemies in the party that I know of and no one wants to see him turfed out. Weaver’s consideration is that if May can make substantial inroads into the Canadian political situation by a strong performance in BC, the Greens as a whole suddenly gain legitimacy. I don’t believe that the Green Party can do well nationally until the voting system changes to proportional representation and God only knows when or if that will ever happen – UNLESS, it demonstrates that it could win in a Canadian province. That would have to be the reason that Dr. Weaver would consider any sacrifice.

Unlikely story

Being a reasonable man at heart, I don’t think that Dr. Weaver is going to step aside, nor do I think that Ms. May wants to be the leader of the BC party. That doesn’t mean that Dr. Weaver should not step aside nor that Ms. May should not come to BC – they would have to put the Party first – just that I don’t think it’s going to happen.

That being so, I don’t think the Greens can capitalize sufficiently on the horror story that exists in Victoria. My opinion is very different if Elizabeth May is leader because what voters are looking for more than just getting rid of the incompetent Clark government is leadership, something pitifully lacking in Christy Clark and John Horgan and a quality they’ve had every opportunity to see in Elizabeth May.

I leave my prediction like this – with Dr. Weaver as the leader, fine man that he is, the Green Party has two chances: slim and none. With Elizabeth May as leader, they’re in with a helluva good chance.

With Site C, LNG Trudeau govt already breaking promises to First Nations, environment

March 21, 2016Energy and Resources, First Nations, LNG, Oil&GasfeaturedDamien Gillis

Justing Trudeau and Jody Wilson-Raybould meet in Hartley Bay on the BC coast in 2014 (Flickr / Justin Trudeau) — Justin Trudeau and Jody Wilson-Raybould meet in Hartley Bay in 2014 (Flickr / Justin Trudeau)

It all started off so well. Justin Trudeau launched his career as Prime Minister with big promises to First Nations and the growing number of Canadians concerned about the environment. He installed indigenous MPs in key portfolios like Justice and Fisheries; vowed a new respect for Aboriginal people and their rights; re-introduced the climate to Environment Canada.

But five months later, it appears former New York Governor Mario Cuomo was right when he famously said, “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.” And the prose Justin Trudeau is authoring these days tells a very different story than it did on the campaign trail.

Tough choices

Justin Trudeau at Davos (Flickr / World Economic Forum)

It’s all frankly understandable. The forces behind major pipelines, hydro dams and LNG projects are considerable and deeply entrenched. It was always going to be a challenge for young Justin to appease two sides seemingly so far apart.

At the recent World Economic Forum, when he spoke of Canada shifting from “resources to resourcefulness” and joining the global green economy, he drew a mixture of ridicule and outrage from Calgary to Bay Street. Even as the rest of the world is getting it, we, as Canadians, clearly have a depressingly long way to go.

Yet there are some hard realities here which are simply unavoidable. And that means Prime Minister Trudeau has some very difficult choices to make.

Can’t have your cake and eat it too

He cannot, for instance, ignore the pleas and court challenges of Treaty 8 First Nations on the catastrophic and treaty-breaking Site C Dam and still claim to be respectful of First Nations.

He cannot approve LNG projects and pretend to care genuinely about climate change.

He cannot keep approving and subsidizing heavy oil pipelines and pretend to champion the green economy.

These, unfortunately for Justin, are not grey areas. There is no room for “balance” or a “middle path” – simply because of a stubborn little thing called facts.

Just the facts

Treaty 8, signed and adhered to beginning in 1899, guaranteed First Nations throughout the Peace Valley Region the right to hunt, fish, trap and practice their traditions on the land unimpeded by colonial settlement and development. Flash forward a century and it is abundantly clear this promise has been shattered.

Much of the Peace Valley's best farmland is already under the Williston Reservoir, behind the WAC Bennett Dam (Damien Gillis) — WAC Bennett Dam – the first on the Peace (Damien Gillis)

Over two thirds of the region has been impacted by heavy industry – in many places multiple layers of development stacked on top of each other. Logging, mining, roads, power lines, conventional gas, fracking, pipelines, massive hydro dams. As for the latter, there are two already. Site Site C would be the third and, undeniably, the final nail in the coffin of this treaty and the lives First Nations have lived there for some 10,000 years.

In other words, you cannot sign off on Site C – or refuse, in this case, to revoke illegitimate permits issued by your predecessor on the eve on an election, literally – and declare yourself a friend of First Nations. These two realities are utterly and completely incompatible.

Wilson-Raybould between a rock and a hard place

And this is where it gets very messy for even the best-intentioned, brightest young stars of the Trudeau Cabinet. I’m talking specifically about Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould. The former BC leader of the Assembly of First Nations has run smack into a wall of political reality. She claims no conflict between her current role and her former. But here we must go back to what she to said to me and others 4 years ago at the Paddle for the Peace, where she took a passionate, unequivocal, legal, treaty-based stand against Site C. See for yourself here.

Ms. Wilson-Raybould is the first indigenous person to be minster of justice in Canada. She is a smart, capable leader and she understands Aboriginal law perfectly well, as she attests to in the above video, noting:

[quote]The legal reality is that Aboriginal people have rights and treaty rights that must be respected…The country’s reputation is at stake with approval of these projects like Site C…running roughshod over Aboriginal title and rights, including treaty rights, is not the way to improve that reputation. [/quote]

But what good is all that if she can’t put it to use and do the right thing, legally, for the people of Treaty 8 territory, now that’s she’s finally in a position of real influence?

Suicide and dams

Before leaving off on Site C, I want to direct readers to Emma Gilchrist’s poignant and accurate piece titled “Want To Reduce Suicide in Native Communities? Step 1: Stop Destroying Native Land”. Mr. Trudeau has recently come face-to-face with the tragic epidemic of suicides on native reserves in this country. If he’s honest about it, he will stop compartmentalizing this issue from that of environmental devastation. This is no big leap. It is abundantly fair to connect these issues and it brings home the gravity of the decisions he now faces. There are, literally, many lives hanging in the balance. That’s a big responsibility for anyone to bear, but no one said being Prime Minister is easy.

The dirtiest fossil fuel on the planet

BC LNG plans could mean 50,000 new fracking wells-Expert report — A fracking operation in northeast BC (Two Island Films)

Next, we move onto LNG. And more unavoidable facts, which are as follows: BC’s LNG industry would require a massive increase in fracking in – once again – Treaty 8 Territory. This is not Liquefied Natural Gas but Liquefied Fracked Gas (LFG). Fracking is far worse for the climate – not to mention water, local air quality, wildlife habitat, etc. – than old school “natural” gas. It’s also even worse than coal.

When you then take that fracked gas and pipe it to LFG terminals on the coast, in order to turn it into a liquid you can load onto Asia-bound tankers, you first have to chill and compress it. This requires the burning of copious amounts of additional gas to create the electricity for the cooling process. One plant alone, the proposed, Petronas-led Lelu Island project, would increase the province’s greenhouse gas emissions by a whopping 8.5%. Plus all that dirty fracking to get it out of the ground.

Don’t take my word for it: listen to the world’s top independent experts, like Cornell University’s Dr. Robert Howarth.

Woodfibre approval a bitter pill

Woodfibre LNG - Public comment period begins for Squamish project — Citizens line the Sea to Sky Highway to protest Woodfibre LNG (My Sea to Sky)

Suffice it to say, you cannot be a friend of the climate and still approve LNG projects. No way, no how. Which is why it came as a huge – though not surprising – disappointment when, this past Friday afternoon, the Trudeau Government quietly approved the proposed Woodfibre LNG plant in Howe Sound. (PS you don’t make an announcement you’re proud of on a Friday afternoon).

Once again, this decision came with casualties, including the tarnishing of another bright new MP’s credibility – that being West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country’s Pamela Goldsmith-Jones. This just after she held a series of public meetings to discuss the climate impacts of the project.

My colleague Rafe Mair called bullshit at the time, noting that climate calculations can easily be fudged and admonishing Goldsmith-Jones for ignoring all the other issues associated with the project – like tanker danger and the millions of gallons of hot, chlorinated water that would be dumped into local fish habitat by the plant. Some called Rafe cynical for not giving Pam a chance. Well, though it gives me no pleasure to say in this case, my friend Rafe was bang-on.

Pipelines to nowhere

Finally, a few more inconvenient truths on pipelines:

There is no market justification for them. As this recent study shows, Canadian oil sands producers are already getting the highest value possible for the resource – despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about getting bitumen to tidewater.

The Economist: China's going green...but is it fast enough? — China is investing $70 billion a year in renewable energy

There is no growth in demand for fossil fuels. As our contributor Will Dubitsky has aptly noted in these pages, “according to the International Energy Agency, in 2015, an astounding 90% of all global electrical power capacity added was attributable to renewables.” Global emissions have been flat since 2013 – which is really, really good news. The shift to the green economy is real and it’s happening right now – everywhere except Canada.

So instead of continuing our massive subsidies to the oil and gas sector and approving new pipelines, our prime minister needs to follow through on his bold statements about green energy and actually start supporting the stuff. That will lead to far more jobs, which will prove far more reliable into the future than would continuing to flog a dead oil sands horse. Again, that is simply what the best available facts point to, so wherever you stand morally on these issues, if you care about jobs, then this one is a no-brainer.

Where the rubber meets the road

So where does Mr. Trudeau go from here? I’m happy to report it’s not all bad. Fisheries Minister Hunter Tootoo appears to be listening seriously to First Nations on the Central Coast of BC about the upcoming herring fishery. The commercial quota has been significantly cut back this year and tensions appear to be much eased compared with the fierce standoff I documented in these pages last April. Fingers crossed.

Trudeau promises climate test for LNG...now will he stick to his word — Christy Clark and Justin Trudeau Flickr/Province of BC)

As for Site C, I know it’s messy. It’s tough for a new administration to reverse the policies of the old one – especially once they’re already in motion. Our new PM doesn’t want to run roughshod over BC Premier Christy Clark and this one is clearly her baby.

Yet Site C is still in its infancy. There is still time to reverse a very bad and politically unpopular decision – for taxpayers, ratepayers, farmers, fish, wildlife, and, frankly, all British Columbians. Make no mistake – this one decision will cast the die for Mr. Trudeau’s legacy with First Nations. That’s the choice before him, whether he likes it, recognizes it or not.

Lelu decision looms

Juvenile salmon at Flora Bank, where a controversial LNG terminal is proposed (Tavish Campbell)

As for LNG, Mr. Trudeau has already made the tragic mistake of approving Woodfibre. Still on his docket is the larger Lelu Island project that would, in addition to being terrible for the climate, also threaten our second biggest salmon run, the Skeena, and further alienate First Nations (I’m not talking about the band council that reversed its position on Friday, rather the clear opposition of the thousands of band members it represents who voted nearly unanimously against the project last year).

Mr. Trudeau received a letter from over 130 respected scientists slamming the government’s draft assessment of the project and urging it to protect wild salmon by turning down the permit. We shall see how the review panel finds and then how Mr. Trudeau’s Cabinet rules. But if they say “Yes” to this one, it will be exceedingly difficult to tell the difference anymore between Mr. Trudeau and his predecessor.

If that last line causes some to gasp, so be it. Nearly three years ago, I wrote a piece titled, “Why Justin Trudeau may be more dangerous than Harper”, which touched a nerve back then. I take no pleasure in being right about such unfortunate matters. But my thesis then was essentially that Justin represents a better-packaged version of the same policy positions as Harper on many defining issues – trade deals, oil and gas, the environment, and foreign ownership of strategic resources. The way things are shaping up today, I can see little justification for altering that assessment.

Here’s hoping

I hope I’m proven wrong. I hope, sincerely, that Mr. Trudeau, Ms. Wilson-Raybould, Ms. Goldmisth-Jones, and all their well-meaning, bright-eyed Liberal colleagues find the courage to right the ship, even if that means braving rough political waters ahead. It would be good for this country and the world if the next four years proved radically different from the last.

But, then, as they say, the proof is in the pudding.