Tag Archives: Site C Dam

Silly Season 2019

What a crazy world we now inhabit, but for how long.

Summer gets hotter, winds get stronger, water falls, pulses, gushes and destroys, and fires rage and burn homes but not trees.  We are being given a message and the leaders are ignoring it.   The children and young adults are not and we still do nothing. The constant need for power combined with political and corporate greed control us and will until its too late as long as we continue to buy useless “stuff” pushed on us by non-stop advertising. Do you really need a 50 cycle washing machine? A cell phone which is going to make you sick and maybe even give you cancer? A car which thinks for you and is controlled by your cell phone? A veggie or vegan burger called plant-based or beyond meat? A drug which has side effects worse than the supposed condition and can include death?  On the other hand, you do need to know which communication companies are in a rush to alter your electrical makeup with 5G, but will you pay attention to the side effects which you cannot avoid whether you have a cell phone or not?

Here in Canada, we are into an election cycle or totally stupid season.  Promises are made that have no real chance of success and costings are well hidden making them more attractive simply to get your gullible votes.

Take taxes for instance:  Promises are made that the very wealthy will be taxed more which is overdue and fair, but only if overseas dummy corporation tax havens are outlawed. I have, and even promoted, the concept that all businesses operating in Canada must use a Canadian incorporated and based bank and pay taxes on any profits prior to any money being sent overseas.   Of course, if investments must be made overseas, and why not, then there must be employees operating that business not simply a dummy account somewhere numbered or not.   Then there are so-called tax credits. What a joke that is.   Tax credits are listed under the section which includes personal allowances etc. and are discounted down to 17%.    That is, of course, a sleight of hand by anyone’s measure and if one doesn’t have an income sufficient to have that credit take effect then of what use is the credit anyway, discounted or not?

Taxes, of course, are a huge part of the economy of any country, especially here in Canada, and are used to pay for services which we have been promised.  Naturally, we do not have enough income from taxes to pay for everything so costs are passed off to the provincial and municipal governments, which have even more financial responsibilities.   Classic “pass the buck” down the line instead of up the line.

Another factor to take into consideration here in Canada is the interest on the national debt which must be paid out of taxes and is, in fact, the largest single yearly cost to our federal government.

How many of our current crop of deceitful political parties even understand the economic reasons for using the Bank of Canada instead of international banks and investors?  The answer is all the small parties except the Libertarians, and yes that includes the Communists, Rhinoceros and the Marxist Leninists, which makes them more Canadian people-orientated that the big 4 (5 if you include the Bloq).  Of course, the big 4(5) are corporately funded and lobbied to the extent that their hands are tied, or so they claim.    However, since income to the federal government is so important, they conveniently forget that the Bank of Canada, designed and created to fulfil Canada’s financial needs, charges a minimum interest to cover their operating costs and any money left over is returned to the Minister of Finance to help with government expenses.  You would think that it is a no brainer and indeed it is.  Excuses given by Ministers is that the Basil 1,11 and 111 agreements do not allow us to do this.  But those Basil agreements are between privately owned central banks, to which our publicly-owned bank should not have been signed on without a referendum or plebiscite from the people of Canada.  Did we agree? Were we even asked?  The answers to those questions are no we were not.   It wasn’t even a government agreement.  So why is our publicly-owned bank or government bound by it?

The inhabitants of this land for thousands of years are treated like vermin by the descendants of immigrants in much the same way those early immigrants treated them.  Maybe there is some movement to treat them as humans but it is very slow, grudging and inefficient.  Plots of land to which they have been herded give them little or no access to hunting, clean water or even air.  Mines, drilling and other extraction on their unceded lands are carried out with the full permission of governments which do not have the right to allow it, and most often there is no benefit to the rightful owners of that land, and I do not mean the crown.   Actually, our aboriginal people think of it as land that was given to them by their creator to look after, and we are stopping them for doing so.

Which political  parties today are talking about the Mount Polley damn disaster, or the unholy mess in northern Alberta where Bitumen is being mined, or the erection of Cite C damn in Northern BC, not to mention the Unis’tot’en peoples’ burial grounds and trapping lines being assaulted for corporate profit for which they have been offered no share, and to which they do not agree?  One major party has absolutely no interest in anything to do with First Nation, Inuit or Metis rights and another promises top priority and neither they or the third party have any intention of crossing their extraction buddies and their offshoot corporations.

Where exactly do personal attacks tell the people of Canada anything except that it is OK to be prejudiced against an opponent because that opponent stands in the way of their power? Is that what we want our children to be taught?

The fact is that Canada is rife with hatred, prejudice and discrimination of all sorts. Is this being addressed even obliquely?  Hardly.  In fact, it is being promoted by some parties, the members of which seem to have forgotten that their ancestors, or even immediate parents were/are immigrants seeking a better life here in Canada.  I know that is why I came here, to raise a family of Canadians in a beautiful, welcoming country full of possibilities for those who are willing to work for it.   Boy, am I disillusioned now!

The young people today are interested in having futures for themselves and their children on this planet now being destroyed at a greater rate for a few dollars and are any of the parties really listening to them? or are they making empty promises they have no intention of keeping simply to get their votes?  

Once upon a time Canada meant something in the world, now we are just a pawn to corporate power game. We do not lead by example any more. We do not do something because it is right to do it, but simply do what we are told.  Our sovereignty like our diplomatic value are both at zero, because of political allegiances owed to states such as Israel or The US with their totally terroristic approach to the world.

But:

This time we just might have enough disillusioned people here in Canada to have a widely differing set of politicians and parties in our House of Commons, and a  minority government to be supported on good legislation for the people, and bad legislation either amended or thrown out, again for the benefit of the people of Canada rather than corporations whose bottom line and CEO bonuses far exceed the benefits to humanity.

It’s up to us, so let’s get out and vote for the real candidates who will represent you to Ottawa not Ottawa to you, who will swear an oath of allegiance to the people of Canada, not a foreign Queen…. And that excludes Liberal, Conservative and NDP….maybe even the Greens…if only they could adopt the Bank of Canada instead of international banks and investors and become real Canada supporters…Ah well.

We live in a world of internet information false or not; cell phone computers rule our lives and control our thoughts and actions and we allow consumer products designed to spy on us and to shorten our lives (smart meters, 5G networks etc.,) to change our electrical bodies and weaken our ability to think for ourselves, even to communicate with our fellow humans, and this is progress?

Rock on Greta Thunberg, Autumn Peltier, Malala Yousafzai and all you young people, take control please because you are showing more sense and courage than all our politicians combined.

 

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

Welcome to 2018.

So what was all that stuff about 150 years of Canada last year anyway?

 The politicians from four separate settler sections (provinces?) banded together and formed a corporation called Canada with the permission of the British monarch in 1867. 

 What?  Is that what really happened?

 So the politicians of Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia figured out a way to fleece their people of more money through a different level of government taxation.   Did the people of those 4 “provinces” have a say in this?  Was there a referendum of any kind?   What part did the indigenous people of those areas have to say about this development of their traditional territory, or were they so subdued by the invading settlers and soo sick from introduced sicknesses that they didn’t understand what was happening?  What about the Royal Proclamation of 1763?

 Thus the corporation of Canada was formed, subject to the whims of the British parliament and their monarch.   Who actually owns that corporation now?   We know for sure that it is not the people of Canada, however, we are responsible for all the debts that this corporation accumulates. Has this changed at all in the last 150 years?  No, just more provinces assimilated thereby creating a larger tax base for the quasi-federal government which it can hardly be claimed was or is today totally legitimate.

 At what stage in those 150 years were the people of the expanding Canada asked if that was what they wanted?   Even today our dysfunctional federal government asks for opinions and then ignores them as if they were not made.  There has been talk about sovereignty, but I would argue that since our politicians swear allegiance to the monarch of a foreign country we are hardly a sovereign nation.  It would perhaps be more realistic to swear that allegiance to the Bank of International Settlements, an offspring of the IMF, which in fact own us lock stock and barrel through our national debt to them.   Or perhaps they should swear allegiance to the Pope as I understand that Canada still tithes to the Vatican, or maybe the State of Israel which tells us who to like, approve of, fight or even criticise (or not) and our politicians pay much more attention to them and their wishes than they do to the people of Canada.   The thought of our politicians swearing allegiance to the people of Canada is of course sacrilege to them.

 When did we the people of Canada ever agree to this?  When were we ever asked? And please don’t say that we give our approval every 4/5 years through an election and that we are a democracy.   A democracy means the people have a say and that does not happen in Canada as our so-called representatives simply do what they are told by their party caucuses (read leaders) or they will lose their jobs. Freedom to actually represent those who elected them does not exist with any real hope for a future in Canadian politics.

Did we consent to this treachery?  I know I did not.   Where is the mandate our politicians received from the people of Canada to do this? Did your MP ask you for your approval on this? When was a referendum held to give MPs that mandate to represent a dictator to you rather than you to a legitimate parliament? 

 When did we agree that our federal politicians should swear allegiance to a foreign monarch?

 Does my dissent on anything get listened to by our representatives? No it does not as they were and still are busy lining their future pockets with corporate board seats when they are thrown out of power to pay attention to any of the people.  Christy Clark of BC is a prime example of this.  Once she knew she could not form a government she could not wait to get out of politics and start getting her rewards for her part in the destruction of BC, started by Gordon Campbell, and who knows how much he has made, maybe as much as Mulroney with his FTA give ways.

 

 

Are we:

Still really a Dominion under the British monarch’s control?

A corporation listed on the stock markets?

A subsidiary of the BIS?

A lackey to Israel, the Vatican and Washington?

Or just another country without a people ratified constitution?  

OR maybe all the above.

What we do know we are not is a democratic country with a functional government working for us as the people of Canada.

 Recently in BC there was hope that a new premier would finally start doing things for the people of BC, and yet again our hopes have been crushed as he is binding our great grandchildren to years of indebtedness through a dam we do not want or need but the corporations of the world do.  It is amazing that once Horgan gave the approval to continue the Site C how quickly corporations around the globe jumped on board to take a piece of this pie, and no one (especially our politicians) is really objecting. 

Question:  Who is really paying for this dam?

 Clearly, those we elect have no desire to represent us, but every intention to do what they can to line their pockets at our expense and the whole thing is a sham.   Why are we still allowing this to happen?   Are we scared that we will be personally attacked by our national rent-a-cops (RCMP)? Are we scared that our “benefits”, paid for by our own labour, will be taken away?  Or are we really scared by the thought of freedom from tyranny?  Or perhaps we are still enamoured with the concept of “things” on the “never-never” scheme as we used to call it when I was still in England.   “Things” that show we are as good as the Joneses or Trudeaus, and yet just as useless.

 Back in the 1200s things got soo bad in England that the Magna Carta came into being to slap King John down;  the landowners of that time have been replaced by the corporations of today which have no compunction in owning a king or two. Maybe we need a peoples’ BC Magna Carta to take the new “King John” and his masters down now. 

 Maybe these last slaps in the face by Horgan will awaken the people of BC to just what we can be without puppets such as he.  Party politics of today doesn’t work for the people; both the National Party of Canada and the Canadian Action Party which wanted to work for the people, not big power were destroyed showing that people parties as such do not work either in today’s corporate political climate. So forget the BC “parties”; develop and support and vote for local independents in the next election, and maybe create a separate country called British Columbia, answerable only to the people of BC and free from the Ottawa shenanigans and dictates of very doubtful legality and free from corporate plundering. Let’s work with our First peoples here in BC to create a real, free and democratic country for all of British Columbia.

Food for thought?

Jeremy

Site C Dam

Here is my presentation to the BCUC on 11th October 2017:

 

My name is Jeremy Arney a resident of North Saanich.

Thank you for the opportunity to present to you and welcome back into the Site C fray.

I wish to acknowledge the Songhees upon whose territory we are meeting.

 

You have heard the financials for BC Hydro and I will not go into those except to say that I am well informed of them by Eric Anderson of Gabriola Island who I believe presented to you yesterday, and it is only by fancy and deceitful accounting that the 80:20 ratio is maintained in order for a yearly dividend to be paid to the province by a virtually bankrupt BC Hydro.

The question here is: Do we need Site C and if so why?

In my view, we do not.

Over the last few years, the demand for electricity in BC overall has declined in spite of BC Hydro forecasts that it would increase.   Dams built in conjunction with the Columbia River Water Control Agreement have served us well and it is my understanding that additional turbines could be fitted to these dams without affecting that agreement and of course more hydro could thus be generated should we require it.

We also have the environmentally disastrous and seasonal only operations called the run of the river projects from which BC Hydro has been obliged by the previous government to purchase their power at a higher rate than that for which they can sell that power either to Alberta or export it to the USA.

In that regard two points:

The State of California has designated our run of the river projects as environmentally unsound and “not green” and therefore will not purchase hydro from them.  On January 15th 2014 the California Energy Commission found that our Run of the River projects did not conform to the California Renewable Energy Resources Act.

Then there is the FTA and now NAFTA article 605 which states that we (Canada ) can increase our percentage of energy exported to the USA but we cannot reduce it and any price change upwards must be agreed to by both our PM and the US President.   This means that the promotional price set for 20 years by WAC Bennet of the Socreds is still in effect today as FTA was signed within that 20 years.   Our current Minister of Foreign Affairs who has taken the renegotiations of NAFTA away from our Minister for Trade has shown no signs of wishing to even consider this and so it will not change.

One of the stated needs for Site C was for more power to be transmitted to Petronas, which has now pulled out of the infamous LNG production, and for mining companies such as Imperial Metals at Mount Polley Mine and probably the Red Chris Mine as well. Since both are already operating why do we need more hydropower for them?

One question as to the actual safety of the Site C is that the banks which are supposed to hold the “lake” are not stable and should the worst happen and the Site C collapse will it take out the other 2 downstream dams and how far into Saskatchewan will the resulting torrent of water flow?

There is no proven need for this dam and the cost of refurbishing the area is lower than that of completion.

Now is the time to stop it, and I urge you to do just that.

Thank you.

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

Trudeau and Bitumen Pipe Lines

Jeremy Arney on Bitumen Pipelines.

 After agreeing to the toxification of the Sacred Headwater Aquafer in NE BC  via the LNG fracking process, and a damn  (Site C ) being built on very unstable foundations and based on absolutely false need, Prime Minister Trudeau made three announcements on tar pipe lines and I offer these comments:

 Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline never an environmentally sound project either for the First Nations communities along it’s route or for BC’s interior and coast including the Great Bear Rain Forest, Douglas Channel or Hacate Strait, is now dead. Thus we can expect Enbridge to use Chapter 11 of NAFTA to claim perceived lost profits in the billions if not trillions of dollars in the near future.  What I can say is that the previous government would probably have just thrown taxpayers’ money in a large volume at them as they did with Abitibi Bowater. It remains to be seen what the Liberal government will do.

 Kinder Morgan’s twinning Project to Burnaby BC has been approved without the promised new improved revue panel and without the input of all people of BC, particularly those who will be affected by a spill, but with some oversimplified reviews by the same unqualified NEB.

This was supposedly balanced by the ‘promised’ Tanker Ban on the northern coast (way overdue and very welcome), and increased spill response capability from the coast guard.  Just what this later will be is anyone’s guess as at yet no method of cleaning up dilbitumen spills in the ocean is known; all that is known is that the dilutent used is toxic, and the bitumen will form into balls and sink. Oil spill booms will do nothing.  The effect this will have upon the ocean wildlife is completely unknown.

Until this problem is solved there should be no approval of this pipeline.  Yes, this product is already moving but with the 7 fold increase in supertankers the risk of a spill also increases by a factor of 7.

 The Enbridge Line 3 is another dilbit pipeline, with a lesser degree of hard terrain to cover and is supposedly a more up to date line into the USA, but again without the promised new review process. 

Question I am always asking is why are we not refining this tar in Canada?  We constantly ship this raw product south at a low price and buy back the refined products at a high price reflected in our pumps all across Canada.

The price of oil (or tar) has gone from $100 a barrel to $30 a barrel and the price of gasoline at the pumps in Victoria BC has stayed steady at $1.13 per liter with a change upwards in the summer.  Simple economics should show that refining in Canada would be a win win situation.  Our cheap exports would be down but so would our expensive imports. It seems to me that our trade imbalance is partially due to this current practice of sell low and buy high on our major export/import products.

 The simple measure of refining our gunk here would make a vaste difference to our economic situation and we could even export refined product at a price which would benefit us all.

 There is another aspect to this that should be taken into consideration.  The percentage of a product we can export to the USA,

 From NAFTA:

Article 605: Other Export Measures

Subject to Annex 605, a Party may adopt or maintain a restriction otherwise justified under Articles XI:2(a) or XX(g), (i) or (j) of the GATT with respect to the export of an energy or basic petrochemical good to the territory of another Party, only if:

 

  1. the restriction does not reduce the proportion of the total export shipments of the specific energy or basic petrochemical good made available to that other Party relative to the total supply of that good of the Party maintaining the restriction as compared to the proportion prevailing in the most recent 36month period for which data are available prior to the imposition of the measure, or in such other representative period on which the Parties may agree;

 

What this means is that we can not reduce our percentage of total Bitumen extracted from the sands and exported to the US, so in order to supply any bitumen to China, for instance, we will have to supply much more to the USA at a rock bottom price to maintain their percentage of our production

 On the other hand we have no history of supplying  refined product to the US as we buy it all from them,  so we are not tied by that percentage problem.   Win – win situation.

 Surely someone in the Canadian government has thought of this bitumen percentage because you can be sure that the US has it well under control, and are just waiting for us to try to export some of their percentage of our bitumen anywhere other than to them.

 Incidentally this was originally in the FTA as well, and obviously too good for the US to relinquish.

 What a mess!

 Jeremy