Tag Archives: Water and Energy

Campbell/Clark Libs Have No Credibility – HST Promises Meaningless

Canada, Politics, WATER, Western Canada, , , , ,
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I commented here last week upon Premier Clark’s silence on all the great issues she faces and questioned what her policies will be. I expect no answer because she wants to put all Gordon Campbell did into the darkest corner of the cupboard. The strategy is “that was then and now is now”; I am Premier Clark and my responsibility started last March 14 when I was sworn in.

This, as I will show, is not so. It started the day she became a Campbell cabinet minister in May 2001.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane but start with a current issue – what does the HST have in common with the environment? The answer to this will weave an unbroken and unbreakable thread back to 2001.

Both the HST end the environment ask public acceptance based upon the credibility of the Campbell/Clark government – a government that has lied through its teeth for the seemingly endless decade-plus they have been in power.

Surely no one, not even the Fraser Institute, believes that the Liberal government will drop the HST to 10% in 2014!

First of all, God’s mercy will see that they’re no longer in power so they won’t be around to keep a pledge they never intended to keep on the first place. If God is just and not merciful, there isn’t a chance that a future Liberal government will keep that promise. In short, Ms. Clark has made a pledge she will never redeem and may never be required to.
 
All government policy depends upon credibility. Unfortunately, the public has learned to expect some government deceit but usually it’s deceit by way of exaggeration – rather like the gilding of the lily practiced in most societies in order to stay at peace with one another. We learn how to discount the statements made – political statements are expected to have a measure of barnyard droppings mixed in. As former New York governor Mario Cuomo said, “You campaign in poetry and govern in prose.”
 
But this is different. Big time. We’re talking about major league falsehoods.
 
I call this government the “Campbell/Clark” government for that’s what it is. Premier Clark participated in the deceit when she was in government, accepted it uncritically when she was a talk show host, and perpetuates it in office by not dealing with it.
 
It started when Campbell, after holding the NDP to the highest standards of probity, somehow forgot that idealism when he was thrown into jail for drunk driving. Christy Clark, Education Minister, offered not a whisper of criticism. Like all good Liberal toadies, she went along.
 
He lied about BC Rail, Fish Farms and private power.
 
With BC Rail, he pledged in two elections including the one that made him premier that he would not privatize BC Rail (as did Ms. Clark, as co-author of the Liberals’ 2001 campaign platform). Of course, he did and Clark went along with him at the time, during her radio career and to this date.
 
Not a peep out of Clark, on air or in office, as Campbell settled the Basi-Virk case just before he, former Finance Minister Gary Collins, and Sir Hiss, Patrick Kinsella, were to give evidence.
 
Premier Campbell let fish farms expand exponentially saying that he was following the best science available. The public now knows what opponents of fish farms have always known – the scientist he was listening to was a disgrace to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and a fish farm industry suck. He was out of synch with every fish biologist in the world that deals with this issue. Christy Clark has been silent since the beginning and is silent now.
 
With private power companies (IPPS) the Campbell/Clark government has uttered nothing but falsehoods. I hate to dwell on poor old former Finance Minister Colin Hansen because he seems to be such a nice guy, but in a video blog the Liberals have now erased, he made half a dozen statements about so-called “run of river” policy that were plainly and simply falsehoods. These falsehoods were not minor little errors – they went to the root of the matter. Ms. Clark has not uttered a word of criticism – or strangely support – of this disastrous policy which even the Vancouver Province called “folly” and which a recent op-ed in the Vancouver Sun, published under the aegis of former Fraser Institute “fellow”, Fazil Milhar, roundly criticized.
 
This policy forces BC Hydro to buy from IPPs power they don’t need and must thus export at a 50%+ loss or use it at double or more what they can make it for themselves. This cost Hydro $600,000,000 last year and this is just the beginning of the reckoning. Not a word from our premier.
 
We have seen this policy drive BC Hydro to where they would be, if in the private sector, in bankruptcy protection with much worse to come. Not a squeak of criticism or concern from Ms. Clark.

We’ve seen this policy destroy one river, and its ecology, after another yet not a word from the premier at the time the policy was made when she was a cabinet member, later as a talk show host, or now as premier. Premier Clark, a supporter of the Prosperity Mine proposal at Fish Lake, now in charge of energy and the demise of BC Hydro, acts as if nothing was happening. And now she has pipelines and tankers to deal with.
 
It is critical to understand that pipeline leaks and tanker accidents are not risks but certainties. The Liberal government told the Federal government, in writing, some years ago that it did not oppose super tankers on the coast. In the recent Premiers Conference Ms. Clark hedged on the pipeline issue; she refused to take a stand.
 
This issue, like the private power issue, has no middle ground as in “you can’t be a little bit pregnant.” All the evidence she ever needs is there in logic – an unfettered risk is a calamity in waiting – and evidence of the colossal negligence of pipeline operators generally and Enbridge specifically. The decision is “yes” or “no” and there will never be more information needed than the premier presently possesses.

Silence implies consent. One of the penalties of consenting to the Liberal record is that no credibility remains.
 
As it is with the HST, as it is with the disgraceful deceit by this government from the outset, so it must be predicted for the future – an utter lack of credibility.
 
It is a millstone around Premier Clark’s neck she consented to.

It’s a millstone she can never be rid of.

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Christy Clark’s Silence on the Big Questions

Canada, Politics, WATER, Western Canada,
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I worry a lot when politicians are talking – usually double or even triple talk. Did I do that when I was in government?…Well it takes one to know one.
 
I worry even more when they say nothing, something that Premier Christy Clark finds impossible when fudging on motherhood “issues” and tossing out the usual barnyard droppings. What Premier Clark is very good at is deathly silence on matters of great consequence.
 
What is the premier’s stance on Independent Power Projects (IPPS) in the environmental sense?
 
Does she care about the enormous environmental impact they have? Has she considered the clouding of the river during construction? Is she concerned that the main river goes down to a trickle when it’s diverted into a tunnel? Does she concern herself with the clear-cutting for roads and transmission lines? It would be good to know.
 
Her only environmental pronouncement I know of is her support of the Fish Lake project which is not, to say the least, encouraging.
 
Does the premier care that because her government has forced BC Hydro to take IPP power when it doesn’t need it, Hydro must either sell it at a loss or use it instead its own much less expensive power? Does she even understand this? I ask because her spokesperson on the political panel on CBC at 7:40AM on Mondays clearly doesn’t.
 
Does the premier know that BC Hydro is carrying over $50 BILLION dollars in obligations to IPPs and that this increases with every new contract?
 
Surely Ms. Clark understands that this is the prescription for bankruptcy – or does she? Maybe she’s never had to balance a home budget and doesn’t comprehend these things.
 
Does the premier know that early in the Campbell regime – when she was deputy leader – her government told the federal government that it had no objection to oil tanker traffic on our coast? Do we take from her silence that even though a spill (and there are no good ones) is a certainty she doesn’t understand this or just couldn’t care less?
 
Moreover, if she and her government support these issues, why aren’t they boasting about them as good politicians always do when, like Jack Horner, they pull out a plum?
 
And what about pipelines? The Enbridge and Kinder Morgan lines will crisscross the province, over its most sensitive terrain and again, a spill is not a risk but a certainty – does that concern her?
 
Come to think on it, does the premier understand and does she care that BC hardly makes a dime out of these catastrophic oil transport deals?
 
What’s the premier’s attitude to the Highways Ministry paving agricultural land? Threatening sensitive wildlife preserves (in the case of Eagleridge they just paved it) and wildlife sanctuaries?
 
Does Christy Clark care that the Ministry of Environment – the resident eunuch in her harem – has virtually nothing to say on these matters because, thanks to her government, it’s a mere shell of its former self?
 
Does she care about anything except money?
 
Ah, Rafe, you must be fair here for she does say she cares for the family, although you’d never know it by the record of her government.

I think that the voters of BC are entitled to specific answers to these specific questions.
 
I also think that the best we can expect is platitudinous bullshit.
 
When Premier Clark flouts the fixed election term legislation passed by her and her government accompanied by passionate concern for democracy and fair play and calls a snap election, she will be asked these questions.
 
The Liberals were spared these questions in 2009 during an appalling campaign by the NDP – I don’t think they’ll be so lucky next time.
 
In the meantime, Damien Gillis and I of the Common Sense Canadian will be taking these issues by the internet and in person to every corner of the province and she should know that.
 

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Mainstream Media Blind to Real Environmental Issues

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Why is it that the mainstream media ignore the down and dirty part of the environment?
 
Yes, they do stuff on global warming and it’s good that they do but when it comes to local issues, apart from where Vancouver sends its garbage, they’re nowhere to be found.
 
Consider the fish farm issue. This from an earlier blog on this site:

The 2003 memo – recently made public via the Cohen Commission on collapsing Fraser sockeye stocks – contains some truly shocking passages for their candour and for how clearly they vindicate those who have been critical of DFO’s salmon farm science. Written by a respected DFO scientist, Dr. Brent Hargreaves, the memo severely attacks the credibility of a colleague, key salmon farm apologist Dr. Dick Beamish, whose science Hargreaves labels as “shoddy” and “unethical”, among other pejoratives. Here are a couple of choice passages:

“The research on sea lice that has been conducted by Beamish has been strongly and widely criticized in both the scientific community and the public media…I think to a large degree it was the inadequacies of Beamish’s research and conclusions that led to the lack of public confidence in DFO science…

…I also do not want to be directly associated, either professionally or personally, with either Beamish or his research…He always does exactly as he pleases, regardless of the (often negative) impacts on DFO staff and research programs.”

My question – why did Postmedia (Canwest in drag) have no space for this story? After all, the Campbell government based its entire disastrous policy on fish farms on Beamish’s rubbish!
 
The facts on the Campbell/Clark energy policy are no longer in dispute. These environmental catastrophes, built and operated by big private sector companies, produce power that BC Hydro is forced to take but for the most part can’t use and must either sell at a huge loss or use it instead of the must cheaper power they can produce themselves. BC Hydro would be, if in the private sector, in bankruptcy protection or even bankruptcy itself. Anyone who tries to balance the household budget understands this; so does the Clark government as did Campbell before but they’re too scared to admit it. Premier Clark hopes that it will go away but I can assure her that it won’t!
 
This is not a story requiring Postmedia coverage?
 
The Rupert Murdoch/News of the World scandal should make us all question our newspapers, especially Postmedia and the David Black papers. I don’t for a moment believe that either of these groups is hacking into private computers. I assure you that this is not my issue here. What the scandal does is alert us to the probably deliberate lack of coverage of environmental catastrophes, thus raising the clear question, WHY?
 
As the story goes, when a man gives his wife flowers for no reason, there’s a reason. And there’s a reason here.
 
I freely admit my bias – I don’t like the Postmedia papers and didn’t like them when they were Canwest or Pacific Press and before. But I tell you that there’s no malice here – just decades of demanding that they report what’s happening in our province fairly as news and critically as editors. I’m a lifetime British Columbian – damned near an octogenarian – so this goes back a long, long time.
 
There have been good years such as when the late Marjorie Nichols, the late Jack Wasserman, Allan Fotheringham, Jim Hume held the government’s feet to the fire – especially the government that I was in. In doing that, they were true journalists and we all, government and the public, were better informed, thus better for it. 
 
Today’s columnists know that if they get down and dirty on some subjects they don’t get printed. This isn’t some idle comment – I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t have grounds to. And I understand that these folks have families to raise, mortgages to pay and kids to educate. I learned about this myself as I saw what happened to broadcasters if the clientele that feed their station doesn’t like what’s being said about them. In my opinion, that’s why columnists were fearless and stubborn about attacking the NDP (which they were right to do) – there were no major advertisers angry at a pillorying of the hated “socialists”.
 
Today, if one wants to see the present government held to account one reads the Globe and Mail (I never thought I’d live long enough to have that coming from my pen!)
 
The Globe and Mail is still pretty tepid in its role as critic but I see their BC section with Mark Hume, Gary Mason, Justine Hunter and others delving into subjects – not with the thoroughness that, say, Vaughn Palmer with the NDP fast Ferry program – but they at least open the subject to daylight where Postmedia fears to tread.
 
I don’t flatter myself by thinking that Postmedia and Black won’t cover anything I’m on – that may be coincidence even though the coincidences are many. However I am reminded of the story of the courtroom in the Southern US where smoking was permitted. The lawyer for the plaintiff continually puffed on a cigar even though the judge asked him several times, politely, to desist.
 
At the end of the case the judge found for the defendant whereupon the lawyer for the plaintiff complained that the judge shouldn’t have decided for the other side just because he, the plaintiff’s lawyer smoked a cigar.
 
The judged replied, “counsellor, that’s not why I decided against you”.
 
“Well, Your Honour,” said the losing lawyer, “that’s a better reason than any you gave in your reasons for judgement!” 
 
The Vancouver Sun bleats that it is “Seriously Westcoast”, which is classic George Orwell’s “Newspeak” and has all the credibility of an ad singing the praises of cigarette smoking.
 
The public has two options as I see it  – read the Sun because of Rex Morgan MD and the Province for Luann and get critical examination of issues from blogs they trust. There’s a danger, of course, that this leads to only getting information that supports your views but in working through the papers searching for the comics and sports pages one can’t help reading the government line if only by osmosis.
 
As we say with the Common Sense Canadian (TheCanadian.org), we must fill the content gap of the mainstream press by being our own media.
 

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A-G Report Confirms BC’s Sham Environmental Assessment, Enforcement

Canada, Energy and Resources, Pipelines and Supertankers, Politics, WATER, Western Canada, ,
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Vindication always feels good but as you read the Auditor-General’s report on the BC Environmental Assessment Office (BCEAO), which reports to the Ministry of Environment – it’s the government’s licensing and enforcement arm – the warm feeling of vindication quickly vanishes and you are swamped with the realization of what this government’s gross neglect has done and continues to do to our province.

 

The full story is the front page headline story in today’s (July 8) Vancouver Sun which indeed speaks volumes, considering their usual affection amounting almost to servility towards the government, the Fraser Institute, the fish farming industry and the like.

 

The report is not complicated. This quote from the AG, John Doyle, says it all:

 

I raise my eyebrows whenever conditions are placed on a [project approval] certificate which aren’t enforceable or measurable, I ask the question, what’s the point?

 

What the government needs is a single focus on compliance to make sure what the government requires to be done, is, in fact, done. (emphasis added)

 

Of some note is the “pie chart” showing that the BCEAO rejects 0.5% of applications! 

 

Mr. Doyle has shown how inadequate – too weak a word – the process is on the record. Now let me tell you how the environmental scam looks from the trenches.

 

Along with colleagues in the environmental field like Gwen Barlee and Joe Foy of the Wilderness Committee, Damien Gillis and I have attended a number of BCEAO public hearings and I would rather have a root canal without anaesthetic than attend another. And, speaking of roots, the main frustration goes right to the root of the matter.

 

These meetings are not to decide whether or not the proposal is acceptable on environmental grounds, but what the environmental assessment process ought to include! In other words, it’s a done deal so the wisdom of the project is moot. It’s “sit down and shut up and, in Mr. Mair’s case, stop saying ‘Bull Shit!’”

 

It’s also interesting to note that, with private power applications at any rate, the company gets to pick the venue for the “hearing” and they’re noted for picking halls too small which are situated as far as possible from where the interested population lives. Examples abound but the one for the Glacier/Howser private river project was a doozy. In that latter case, the main population is in Nelson so the company scheduled meetings in the villages of Kaslo and Meadow Creek (population a few hundred, tops)! Pretty neat, huh? But to the dismay of the company and the government, more people attended the Kaslo hearing than live there (1,100 of them in a town of 1,000)!

 

It may seem picky, but appearances are very important – perception is reality – and the first thing one notices is the chumminess between the government people and the industry people. They eat together, sip one together and then the Chair, while declaring those concerned about the merits of the project as out or order, permits the company spokesperson to sing the “virtues” of the project to his heart’s content.

 

What cannot be overestimated is the indictment of the government implicit in this report, considering that the Director of Environmental Assessment is a public servant appointed by the Minister which, in practice, means with the approval of cabinet including the premier. Public servants are selected because they will do as they are told which, of course, is their duty.

 

Without ministerial direction to allow the public to deal with the merits of a proposal, the Executive Director has no right to do so. The environmental policy of this government is to do nothing to safeguard our environment and nothing is done. To operate the sham process we have is worse than not even going through the motions because the latter case would at least be honest not an exercise in duplicity.

 

What this tells me is that every environmentally approved project under this regime must be opened for review and done immediately. Then the government must forthwith provide an environmental process wherein the public can make representations on the merits or otherwise of the project.

 

Once upon a time municipal bodies had the right to grant or withhold zoning approval of certain projects. This ended a few years ago when the Squamish-Lillooett Regional District was faced with zoning the Ashlu River private power project. The District held public hearings throughout the district, found opposition to the project overwhelming, and denied the company its required zoning – with a vote of 8-1 against.

 

Unable and unwilling to permit its corporate friends (Ledcor) to be subject to the law, Premier Campbell passed Bill 30, which took away from municipal authorities, retroactively, the right to zone this sort of project. Thus, the only opportunity of the citizen to question the wisdom of a project was snatched from them and thrown in the garbage pit by Campbell & Co. Citizens can turn down a Wal-Mart or fast food joint but when it comes to an enormous project that will affect them big time, they are legislated out of all right to ask questions and air their views.

 

What this scathing report does is add further evidence of this government’s utter indifference to the environment and we had better do something about it as the pipeline people apply for their permits and other private power companies want to bugger up (pardon the technical language) more rivers for the profit of large corporations and their foreign shareholders.

 

Mr. Doyle’s report tells us that for all practical purposes there is no environmental assessment process in our province.

 

There we have it – the game may be crooked but it’s the only game in town.
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Premier Gordon Campbell announcing his resignation

Was the Gordon Campbell Government Truly Corrupt?

Canada, Politics, WATER, Western Canada,
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Was the Gordon Campbell government corrupt? Does it matter?
 
The answer to both questions is a resounding YES!
 
For the purposes of this article I define corruption as “acting against the public good for political or other gains for the government party and/or its members, to the exclusion of meaningful public input”.
 
Let me summarize the Campbell corruption:

  • In 2001, Campbell, while saying the NDP left a threadbare cupboard, promptly gave a huge tax cut to the better off, mostly his supporters
  • Campbell, after raging at NDP ministers who allegedly misbehaved, got thrown in jail for drunk driving, promptly forgave himself and stayed in office.
  • Campbell, after I showed him a vial with Pink Salmon smolts covered in sea lice stated to me, “I saw a billboard showing salmon spawning and vowed that my grandchildren must be able to see this sight” – then promptly doubled the number of fish farms and pilloried the world’s scientists who confirmed the sea lice problem.
  • Campbell, after vowing in the 1997 and 2001 elections never to privatize BC Hydro, promptly unleashed just such a program.
  • Two men were charged with crimes involving the 990 year lease of BC Rail and on the eve of his former Finance Minister and his own call to the witness stand, Campbell promptly ended the case by paying $6 million to the miscreants’ lawyers.
  • In the 2009 election Campbell and his Finance Minister declared that their 2009 budget was accurate then admitted right after the election that they were more than a billion dollars out, claiming that they were blindsided by the Recession. In fact, the Finance Minister had to know of the true state of affairs or was grossly negligent or the Finance Ministry should fire its senior people for the warnings (reduced sales tax etc.) were all there.
  • In the 2009 election Campbell and his Finance Minister claimed that an HST was not in the radar screen then announced it right after the election. It turned out that two months before the election the Finance Minister had a Ministry document in hand which criticized an HST and it must be assumed that the Campbell government had been in negotiations with the Federal government months before – these things don’t happen overnight.
  • The Campbell government, taking the lead from Alcan, produced an Energy Policy which transferred the right to produce new energy from BC Hydro to the private sector then, through the mouth of Finance Minister Hansen, lied about the policy of private power.
  • The Campbell government has brought BC Hydro to the position which, if they were a private company, would be in bankruptcy protection or actual bankruptcy.
  • The Campbell government has done less than nothing on the oil pipelines and oil tankers issue, leaving it an open invitation to companies to bring on stream dead certain environmental catastrophes to our pristine environment both on land and in the ocean

It’s noteworthy that after Campbell resigned in disgrace the Liberals promised a testimonial for him either at the leadership convention or its annual party conference, neither of which have happened in the hope the public will not see this oversight as part of Christy Clark distancing herself from the ex premier – which it is. (Perhaps such a testimonial did occur on the quiet, maybe in the basement of the Fraser Institute or after midnight in the editorial offices of the Vancouver Sun or Province.
 
What has this to do with Premier Clark?
 
Just everything, that’s all.
 
To start with, Ms. Clark helped draft the 2001 Liberal platform which, amongst other things, promised not to privatize BC Rail. In fact she was in office during the planning and/or implementing many of these policies and it’s noteworthy that she didn’t contradict any of the Campbell outrages while in radio because she wasn’t remotely independent.
 
The real issue in the next election is a simple one: Will Premier Clark succeed in making us forget the harm perpetrated by her corrupt predecessor? You can be damned sure that she’ll not bring it up!
 
What does this mean in real terms?

  • The bankruptcy of BC Hydro, which will remain only as a conduit by which the private producers (IPPS) funnel their ill-gotten gains to their shareholders abroad.
  • It means that more and more of our precious rivers will be dammed (IPPs prefer the word “weir” in keeping with the Orwellian “newspeak” that abounds with these guys), with clear cuts for roads and transmission lines.
  • It means that new pipelines and enlarged old ones will carry the sludge from the Tar Sands to our coast with the mathematical certainty of environmental disasters – without our government making a nickel out of it.
  • It means that supertankers will proliferate on our coast again with the mathematical certainty of catastrophic spills.
  • It means continuation of the phoney environmental hearings where the public is denied its right to challenge the need for the project in the first place.
  • It means that the already truncated BC Utilities Commission, which overseas (or is supposed to) all energy proposals, will be abolished or maintained as a lame duck puppet of the Liberal Government
  • It means that the private sector will, unhindered, do as it pleases to our environment.

People like me will be jeered as being “against progress, against profit and anti-business”.
 
In fact what I’m doing is urging that environmental decisions be made by the BC Public, not party hacks supported by corporations that couldn’t care less about our environment – nor should they be expected to, for their obligation is to make profits for shareholders.
 
I’m trying to get across that there is a limit to what we can do to our environment, much including our farmland. I’m reminding folks that history teaches us that unrestrained industry will go after the last fish in the ocean, cut down the last stand of trees and ruin without a blink any rivers it needs for power or a sewer or both.
 
I ask this: If not now, when do we decide that enough is enough?
 
The truth of the matter is that Christy Clark has no greater concern for environmental issues than Campbell has, such that in the next election she must be assessed on that basis. Elect Clark and fish farms will flourish, lakes and rivers will be contaminated, BC Hydro will die, farmland will be destroyed, and the public will continue be shut out of the approval process.
 
We know all this because Clark has perpetuated the corrupt policies that Campbell initiated.
 
If we re-elect a Liberal government, we know what it will mean and we will deserve what we get. 
 

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