I find myself in a pissing match with Dr. Andrew Weaver, leader ot the BC Green Party.
It occurred over this week’s column in the Common Sense Canadian, printed below. Dr. Weaver’s fulsome complaints can be found on Facebook.
The column is about the Energy Policy of the Green Party and was prompted by Weaver supporting the Liberal Energy Policy in the 2009 election with Independent Power Producers (IPPs), sweetheart deals with BC Hydro and so on, a policy that Joe Foy from the Wilderness Committee, Damien Gillis and I campaigned against all around the province, while Weaver campaigned for it. It stunned us that an environmentalist party could support such a destructive, bankrupt policy.
As I’m sure you know, the policy turned out even more badly than we feared and I wanted to know what Green policy is now and sent Weaver four emails between the 22nd & 27th of March. It turned out that he did not get the first three because there was a period missing. Oddly, not one was returned marked “undelivered”. Dr. Weaver is upset about this but it’s irrelevant since all I was requesting was his current policy and before I wrote the article i listened to an interview Weaver gave to Ian Jessop on CFAX on 12/14/15 where he confirmed he still supported the IPP program, admitted it had been a disaster, and confirmed he was all for private power rather than public. I have provided you with a link to the show, below.
Was the Jessop interview fair?
I have now listened four times and I think it was tough but very fair. Remember that Weaver, an environmentalist, was throwing out a philosophy of private power, something I have never heard from a environmentalist in my life. To have a policy of abandoning W.A.C. Bennett’s policy with BC Hydro is an extraordinary proposition to make any time much less on a talk show off the top of your head unbacked with extensive planning and evidence. Frankly, I can’t think of a more stupid political policy to spring on the voting public at this stage.
More importantly, Weaver was appalling in his non-defense of the policy blaming not the policy or the companies but the government for a lack of policing that was never planned in the first place, an “oversight” sharply criticized by Damien and me in 2009 while Weaver supported the plan. His acknowledgment that IPP’s were failures while offering some convoluted advice as to how BC Hydro could somehow get the power directly to its customers, sounded bloody awful. If he was surprised at that line of questioning, Weaver really is in the wrong business. If this was a serious suggestion, this was a strange place to launch it and I must say so inarticulate, he may be lucky in that no one knew what the hell he was saying.
Weaver has it in his head that it was somehow my duty to call him and talk to him before I wrote the article, which is nonsense. Having once refused to “pre-interview” a President of the United States I wasn’t about to start now. I needed, as you will see, but one fact from Weaver and once that was fully covered by him on the Jessop Show, I no longer needed to talk to him.
I must emphasize this was never planned as an interview but as editorial comment on the Green Party’s energy policy if it had not changed since 2009 and Weaver confirmed to Ian Jessop that it had not. This was all I wanted.
I conclude by saying I had high hopes for the BC GREENS but there is no way I, as an environmentalist, could support a party that stood for the Gordon Campbell/Christy Clark energy plan that has ruined so many rivers, their ecologies and fish runs while driving BC Hydro into de facto bankruptcy. Unhappily Dr. Andrew Weaver does support this policy and returning to pre-W.A.C. Bennett private power days.
Sadly too, Dr. Weaver is a whiner, something a successful leader cannot ever be.
Here’s the link to the CFAX podcasts. Go to Ian Jessop, find December 17 at 1:00 pm and it’s half way through the hour.
http://www.cfax1070.com/Podcasts
Here’s the link to the Common Sense Canadian article:
http://commonsensecanadian.ca/rafe-weaver-bc-greens-backing-private-river-power-sham/
Can’t help but think that his stand on IPP’s is a massive political
boner for the Greens in the next election.
I think they stood to make some pretty big inroads.