British Columbians would be fools to believe anything put out by our government and its MLAs. For example, they can’t deal honestly with its energy policy because to do so would expose the utter stupidity of it.
I wrote last time about pipelines and bitumen tankers on our Coast and how spills are inevitable.
Alberta has had three major spills since April and when deducing the response of industry and government the word blasé comes to mind.
Energy Minister Ken Hughes said, “The problem is we have 400,000 kilometres of pipeline and occasionally, we will have a spill.”
Premier Alison Redford was even more laidback saying spills “happen sometimes and are part of balancing social and economic factors.”
That’s the old pepper, premier — if Enbridge builds its 1,100-kilometre line in B.C. over 1,000 rivers through the Rockies and Coast range and it has inevitable spills, executives can look at your photo on the wall inscribed, never mind, boys, spills “happen sometimes.”
In fact, this quote will be so comforting to B.C. MLAs they, too, will have these inspiring words in their offices.
There is another matter on which you can expect to be fed barnyard droppings if you ask your local MLAs about – the government energy policy. From the time I first studied it, I couldn’t believe what I was reading.
The Campbell/Clark government literally gave licenses to dam rivers and forced B.C. Hydro to buy it at over double the market price and 10 or 12 times more than they could produce it for themselves. The business-minded government forced Hydro to buy high and sell low. And Hydro is still spilling water over its dams and taking private power at many times the cost.
Here’s some high class hypocrisy to toss into the mix.
One of the essential reasons the Campbell/Clark government gave for its amazing private power decision was that we must stop using fossil fuels for making electricity. Never more will this government send even a whiff of fossil fuels into the atmosphere. What good little boys and girls we are!
Three companies are involved in liquefying natural gas and exporting it out of Prince Rupert to distant waypoints. The problem is it takes a lot of electricity to convert natural gas into LNG and B.C. Hydro refused to give them a deal. Bad enough that they were already egregiously subsidizing private power companies – no more. So, the companies went to the government with their dilemma and guess what Premier Photo-op did?
She declared natural gas was no longer a dirty foul fuel but, for the LNG folks only, it was clean as a hound’s tooth. Presto! Green power! Fire when ready!
A couple years ago the B.C. Utilities Commission criticized the Liberal “rivers policy” and said that B.C. Hydro could use its Burrard Thermal plant that fires natural gas in small quantities. But this government says no to Hydro, even when it’s short of water, yet the LNG folks can use it forever! The Liberals, in their present pre-election mess need to get all the campaign donations they can, don’t they?
As they sung in that wonderful satire, Li’l Abner, “the country’s in the very best of hands.”
