By John Horgan
Leader of the Official Opposition
VICTORIA – The citizens of B.C. have given me the privilege of working for them in government and the legislature for two decades. In that time, I helped build electrical power projects and supported job creation through sustainable resource development. I have devoted much of my efforts to ensuring B.C. families and businesses have an affordable supply of clean electricity.
This week, Premier Clark announced that she is ready to gamble $9 billion of your dollars to start construction of the Site C dam this coming summer. From what I learned in my years working for British Columbians – and from everything the premier has said and done – the last thing Premier Clark should be asking us is to do is trust her with $9 billion of our money.
There are three ways this $9 billion project must measure up before we can call it a sound public investment. It should deliver affordable power we actually need, create quality high-paying jobs for British Columbians and be demonstrated as the best value for our money. While Site C has the benefit of being a good non-emitting project, the premier’s politically-motived rush to move forward next summer fails on all three measures.
By 2017, BC families and industries will have seen their power costs increase by 80 per cent on the B.C. Liberal’s watch, including as a result of Premier Clark’s broken election promises on Hydro rates. Built on the timetable of a premier desperate to divert attention from her collapsing LNG plan, Site C will produce power we will not need at its completion date and will lose $800 million in its first four years of operation. That’s according to B.C. Hydro’s own documents. That will hurt families, hurt important industries and hurt the people who rely on those industries for their jobs.
When it comes to the job prospects for such a large investment, we can’t take the premier at her word anymore. She promised that her “jobs plan” would result in BC leading all provinces in private sector job creation. We’re at the bottom of the pack and almost every other week another coal mine or forest product mill is laying off workers, eliminating shifts or closing down altogether. The premier said her LNG plan would create 100,000 jobs for British Columbians. Now, her preferred proponent says its plan it to send high-value engineering work offshore and build its facilities with up to 70 per cent temporary foreign workers.
While Site C holds the prospect of creating a substantial number of jobs, the vast majority would be camp jobs in one small district of the province. Energy markets are changing. Lower cost solar panels, improvements in geothermal and wind and advances in building energy efficiency is giving us new alternatives to create as many or more high-quality jobs using non-emitting sources of power. And that’s not just in one place, but throughout the province. The Premier has decided to ignore those substantial prospects and, again, put all our eggs in one basket.
Finally, far from proving that Site C represents the best value for money, Premier Clark has refused to allow an independent oversight of either the Site C business plan or how the project compares to other energy sources in terms of costs, job creation and resulting Hydro rates. Until Site C is held up against a comparable investment in renewables and conservation, British Columbians won’t have a complete picture of the best value for our money. If the Premier is so confident in her decision to move ahead next summer, why will she not allow independent scrutiny of Site C and give British Columbians a complete picture? What could she possibly be afraid of? After the way she has bungled BC’s LNG export opportunity, the premier is likely afraid of British Columbians, afraid of them having more information, instead of just having to take her at her word.
