Tag Archives: Rich Coleman

An open letter to Premier John Horgan of British Columbia

An open letter to Premier John Horgan of British Columbia   

12th January 2018

 

 Premiere Horgan.

 

 

A few years ago, I attended a screening of a movie called “Gasland” at the Edward Milne Community School in Sooke, BC and you were in attendance.

 

After the movie you spoke ardently and vehemently against fracking, announcing how you intended to fight it happening in BC.

 

Whatever happened to you that you could change so radically in such a short time?   Did your promise of that evening mean anything at all to you or were you just courting those in attendance for the viewing? 

 

During the previous regime I asked Rich Coleman numerous times to tell me where the water for the Petronas LNG plan was to come from and of course, he did not reply – no surprise there.   Then we hear that the answer he should have given was from hundreds of illegal and as environmentally unsafe dams as the infamous Mount Polley Mine tailings pond dam were being erected on almost every body of moving water in northern BC.   Are they still up?  I bet so as it appears you have been drinking the Petronas cool aid even after they pulled out claiming it didn’t make business sense to continue.  What makes LNG Canada think they can do what Petronas decided not to do, and I noticed that in announcing the joint venture between Shell, PetroChina Company, Korea Gas Corporation and Mitsubishi Corporation, Andy Calitz, CEO of LNG Canada, said the consortium would work closely with the provincial and federal governments but made absolutelyno mention of even considering the people of BC either aboriginal or settlers.

 

Of course not, we do not matter do we, Mr Horgan?

 

We are very used to BC politicians lying to us, manipulating us and flat out ignoring our wishes for decades, but particularly during the dictatorship of the Libertarian/Conservative government which you just replaced.

 

The vast majority of people in BC believed that you would be different.   How wrong we were!

 

Of course, we were happy that you asked the BCUC to hold public hearings on the Site “C” fiasco, and I was one of the presenters at the Victoria meeting.    Of all those who presented whilst I was there only three presenters who argued that this unnecessary and overpriced dam should proceed to completion. It was clear that they were representatives of the construction companies and therefore financially biased.

 

I read the reports from the BCUC and as they were not asked to make a clear recommendation they did not, but it was very clear to me that they and the vast majority of presenters thought this was a mistake from the start and should be scrapped as soon as possible to save billions of dollars being spent for an unneeded and yet limited amount of Hydroelectric power.

 

You have with your decision pandered to the corporate interests over the interests of the people of BC, put BC Hydro on a par with all those crooked power companies in the SE of the US where billions of dollars are being charged to their customers for power plants that have not been built and will generate no electricity.   Just as with BC Hydro future usage is being charged for now, and when that is gone without the increase in usage and no extra hydro available from an incomplete dam we can bet that you will approve yet more rate hikes to pay for a price overrunning and way behind schedule dam.  

 

This is not the way to start to mend BC from the years of BC Liberal (Libertarian) destruction Mr Horgan.

 

So, Mr Horgan, what price truth and honesty?   What is the value of your word and what makes you any different from the infamous Christy Clark who so diligently continued Gordon Campbell’s intentions to destroy BC by giving away all our carefully crafted commons to private enterprise?

 

I have difficulty in believing anything you have said recently as you have proved that you do not represent the people of BC.   I would like to think we could go back to the polls very soon, however, I happen to think that neither Rich Coleman or Andrew Weaver are any more interested in what the people of BC want to do with our once beautiful province than are you.   

What a mess.

 

Jeremy Arney

PO Box 52008, 

RPO Beacon

Sidney, BC

V8L5V9

250-216-5400

 

 

Actions, not words, are the ultimate results of leadership.

Bill Owens

 

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

Winston Churchill

 

As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever:

Clarence Darrow

A great relief for BC?

So now things are bubbling and boiling so to speak in BC.

There has been a fiasco going on under Christy Clark who promised huge royalties and great wealth for BC from the NE Gas exploration, fracking and piping to the coast of cheap LNG for overseas consumption.  Anyone who really looked at this project could see it was put up job and would never really happen. Our federal environmental and resources departments as well as fisheries and oceans were supposed to examine the business case for such a development before giving approval but in typical pretty boy fashion they acted for the cameras and not the people of Canada or BC.   Not only did they approve this fiasco but they also approved the site C dam being built (without that approval anyway) designed to provide “free” power to Petronas.  Can you spell competency?

Fracking takes huge volumes of water and many times I have asked Rich Coleman, the “Minister” in charge, where this water was going to come from and he of course never replied. Now we find that almost every bit of moving water in northern BC has already been dammed by a Petronas offshoot.

CBC did a small incomplete report on this as well.

This has been done without approval of any regulatory body but with the obvious knowledge of Clark and Coleman. No wonder he wouldn’t reply to my requests.   Change of power and suddenly the provincial engineers can talk about what has been going on.

Now Petronas has pulled out.  What a relief for BC and for the people of NE BC who can think that maybe their drinking water will be safe to drink and the earthquakes will not increase.

Next ramification is that repulsive, unnecessary and dangerous site C dam.  What now is the point if that electricity is no longer needed solely for Petronas?  Can you imagine that anyone would deliberately bankrupt a crown corporation for the benefit of a corporation from Malaysia?    How much would be the bribe for that do you suppose?  A Board seat for both Christy and Hamish maybe?   Again the question must be asked why did the pretty boy ministers rush to approve this monster? was it because it was altready being built by one of their corporate heros, Ms. Clark?

Note to John Horgan:

It will take a lot of guts to cancel the site C dam and refurbish that whole area, but it would be welcomed by all of BC.  We do not need that power, never did, in fact our personal consumption of power is still falling.  If we did need more hydro power we could insert extra generators into our existing dams.  It is also time to stop paying all those run-of-the-river power companies for not producing any power as we do not need it (about $50 million a year in non-production profits), and stop BC Hydro buying from them at the absurd price gifted by one Gordon Campbell, let them sell what they can if they can on the open market.

The fact is that W A C Bennet built BC Hydro and dams that today would not probably be acceptable, with the idea that the people of BC would never be short of cheap efficient delivery of electric power. He even had an agreement with the seven western states to buy from us on a twenty-year fixed price.   He was not to know that a broken-down actor and a drunk from Quebec would get together and create an investment agreement (FTA) which would mean that his price would last as long as that investment deal.  You see there can be no increase in power costs across the border without both the President and PM agreeing so we are stuck, and NAFTA reinforced this.  California, being broke, still thinks we are gouging them!   Luckily it would appear that “The Donald” is determined to do away with NAFTA and we can then charge what our power is worth today.   Oh, by the way, run-of-the-river power is unacceptable to the Californians on the grounds that it is not environmentally green.

BC, just like the rest of Canada, needs to make sure that those we elect to REPRESENT our needs do just that and maybe just maybe with this precarious situation in BC we might have that happen.    It’s up to us to see that it does.

Peace, but get involved as it is your life.

Jeremy

Picking Bones with Christy Clark

An open letter to Ms. Clark, Premier of British Columbia.

 Ms. Clark I have a few bones I need to pick over with you.

When I arrived in BC in the late 1960s WAC Bennett was in the midst of building a province for the people of BC, creating crown corporations to look after our needs and provide for the future of the province.  Such corporations included BC Rail, BC Hydro, BC Medical Services and a very efficient and effective Highways department. The attitude of the people was one of “can do”, or  “will do” and helping others in trouble at all times of day or night was the normal.  His methods would not work today but at the time they worked well and his plan and aim was to improve the lot of all the people of BC.

 So here are some of the bones:

BCHydro.

Your BC Liberal party decided to sell off BC Hydro piece by piece and indeed this was started with the sale of the accounting process to Accenture before the Unions picked up upon this and so the Heritage Act was implemented by an angry Campbell, which made it impossible to sell BC Hydro.  This Act does not mention bankrupting BC Hydro and that is exactly what your predecessor proceeded to do, and you are continuing on this path.   High rates of purchase through corporate run of the river projects at a time when supply of power is at its highest and cheapest through our own dams, and ridiculously costly projects such as the Smart Meters, and now the Site C dam have all played their part.  At its best BC Hydro was providing a dividend to BC of around $300 million per year to go towards heath and education.  Since the asset to liabilities has now past the legally mandated point (80% – 20%) where a dividend can be paid and since Mr. Campbell cooked the books to include years of advance hydro billings so that he could get a payment of $600 million, BC Hydro is now in a real financial pickle and you are adding to that with this unnecessary site C dam.  Revenue for BC Hydro has fallen due to some extent to their very effective program to reduce the use of hydro in homes and businesses, and yet you continue to pile expenses on to BC Hydro which it cannot afford.  I know you claim that the dam is needed to power your LNG program, but where exactly is that now?   B C Hydro is carrying debt already that it cannot support and how long before your  BC Liberals succeed in breaking it?

B C Rail.

Surely this must go down as the most infamous deed ever perpetuated by any government in the history of BC.  From the promise not to sell BC rail prior to getting elected to actually going ahead with that sale and the subsequent perversion of the courts independence along with a tame prosecutor and bailing out those scapegoats elected to take the fall literally right before Campbell was due to be a witness, it can only be considered in the light of a premier who cried for forgiveness on TV after he was caught for DUI overseas and labelled as a criminal.  Such was his lack of shame that one could only expect what happened with BC rail and the subsequent loss of revenue for BC in favour of his eventual board seats.  Where were you when all this transpired Ms. Clark, and did you not learn anything from this betrayal of the people of BC?

LNG and the fracking process in North East BC and the Sacred Headwaters:

I have asked your Mr. Coleman (yours because he obviously does not work for the people of BC who pay his salary) many times just where he plans to get the water needed for this process but because he doesn’t know he ignores me.  There have been numerous potential investors in this process but I imagine they are dropping off like flies because they too know that there is a limited supply of water, and because the potential costs to them of permanently damaging the Sacred Headwaters and the aquifers there, so they are not as gung ho as you would like to believe.  Without investors there will be no LNG program and no need for huge amounts of Hydro. Is that why you are now asking Alberta to buy hydro power  produced eventually from a dam which will destroy many acres of agricultural land and First Nations treaty lands which include burial grounds and hunting grounds as well as their traditional crop growing area?   This whole concept is a nightmare for the people of north east BC but a potential for profit for some greedy and uncaring corporations.  They do care about their bottom lines however and I suspect the cost of claims against them for damage to the water tables will make even them stop and think.  

B C Medical Services:

Hello Maximus and Compass and goodbye BC medical services. Yes that’s right a US company organises BC medical services, and a UK company looking after our hospitals. I am assuming that you have renewed the Maximus contract and plan to spend more money overseas instead of having very capable BC people do the work.  There you go, and you claim that costs are rising and of course they are.  You cannot expect a US corporation to do the same work as that which was done so efficiently and locally by our own BC staff at anything but a profit.  At one time BC medical services was a very reasonable and effective plan, now I can barely afford to make my monthly premiums as at the age of 75 – nearly 76 – I have to pay some $75 a month for a service I hardly use, and for the benefit of some fat cat somewhere in the US.  It never fails to amaze me that your ultra conservative party and leaders, and that includes you, feel that increased costs by contracting out work and thereby loosing jobs here in BC is an effective way to supply a need.  The constant complaint that health costs are raising rings hollow to me because they should always be measured against revenue.  If the costs are almost constant but are still classified as a percentage of the falling revenue then yes they do appear to be a larger piece of the pie; fact is though that through tax cuts and your friend Harper’s reduction in payments to the provinces for health, the pie is decreasing in size, whilst the health costs remain relatively steady thus taking more of the decreasing pie.

Eliminate the external costs of contracting out, re hire locals and watch the change.

ICBC  more affectionately known back when it was created as Moscow Mutual

Mr Barrett introduced the Insurance Corporation of BC because he wanted to corner the automobile insurance profit to help pay for his excesses in other spending.  The fact we lost such companies as Allstate completely in BC was of no importance to him no matter how well they treated their customers.

Now of course ICBC has its talons into everything from acting as receiver general for BC, to having its own courts and rental cops (integrated police forces), and using money in trust to invest in shopping centers.  The aim of ICBC adjusters is to make sure that the minimum amount be paid out on claims, and their service generally is very antagonistic and unfriendly.  They are supposed to work for the people of BC and be helpful in our time of need, as were their predecessors, but they are anything but that. 

Work Safe BC, previously  known as Workers Compensation of BC:

Designed to bring about settlements between employers and employees who got injured on the job without going through costly court battles usually won by the employers who had more money for lawyers, and leaving badly injured workers to fend for themselves it was an excellent idea welcomed by both employers and workers. Their work almost invariably bought about safer work places without lost production.  This current newly named group is more interested in nit picking and flexing their muscles at the behest of their provincial bosses.  Has safety increased since the switch from WC to WS?  Doubt it because generally all were looking at the costs of being unsafe anyway.  But as another strong arm of the provincial government under a catchy name, as per conservative practice, the supposition that safety is more of a factor is a mute point.  I cannot say about claims as I have been fortunate enough to have avoided such a thing since about 1995.

 The Senate of Canada

For at least a decade but especially during the last 4 years, the Senate of Canada has become the last place in Canada where any nonpartisan sober second thought could be expected to take place.   Your fellow conservative Harper wanted to simply starve it to death by not appointing any new Senators (in contradiction to our constitution but what did he care), and he could do that without losing his majority hold on the votes there, whilst the NDP want to abolish the place.  Now we have a new concept on the appointment of Senators which would include public and provincial suggestions and approval.   You have publicly rejected this new concept on the grounds that BC does not have enough representation.  That is a matter for the constitution Ms. Clark and has nothing to do with the quality of those who would, should and could represent BC in the Senate of Canada.  I do not appreciate that the premier of the province in which I live is more interested in making conservative points than looking out for the people of BC, but even in my most optimistic moments I cannot expect a leopard to change its spots.

 

 That is enough for now, but believe me there are more bones, such as the health and education of my children and grandchildren, and indeed now two great grandchildren, for whom I fear for the value of their lives in BC.   You are threatening their environment ( Mount Polley mine comes to mind) as well as depriving them of the safety net social services so carefully built by WAC Bennett many years ago.

 

Jeremy Arney

BC Resident