We are getting barrow after barrow of barnyard droppings dumped on our laps and we should know it.
Premier Clark promised us huge LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) revenues in a few years. We would be debt free and have $100 BILLION in the to be created “Prosperity Fund”. That was at the start of the election campaign. Then it became a year after the next election. Now, according to Mike Smyth of the Province, this is 15 years away.
It’s all bullshit. For LNG to become a major export industry 15 years from now requires a phenomenal outlay of capital and it isn’t going to happen. Of course companies will, cross their hearts and hope to die, promise great things but they will not happen. We have only begun to learn about the reserves of shale gas and oil around the world but, in all likelihood, they will be everywhere and in abundance. Premier Clark and Finance Minister de Jong are telling us not to worry but it will all happen.
Well, then, would the two of you please outline the timetable for all this?
As Mario Cuomo said, “you campaign in poetry and govern in prose.” These promises however, are dangerous and deliberate nonsense.
Within the mandate of this government, it will try to break up BC Hydro and sell off the parts. Just like BC Rail, the government will retain residual ownership, in 900 years, to take back the dams. At the rate we’re going, this will have to happen. BC Hydro is awash in debt in its normal operations and new projects and is now facing an ever-increasing debt as private power producers (IPPs) provide power to BC Hydro at double-plus the market price and 10x what it can generate for itself from heritage assets.
This is the elephant in the room no one will talk seriously about – not the Premier, not the Minister of Finance, certainly not a government MLA, not Vaughn Palmer or Mike Smyth – it just throws its weight around unchecked.
Now BC Hydro is committed to a $10 BILLION Site “C” dam to subsidize the government’s dusty-eyed plans to make us all rich with LNG.
BC Hydro has only one source of revenue – you and me, the taxpayer and ratepayer – and when the government comes clean, the rate increases will be beyond our ability to pay.
This all started with the Gordon Campbell government and my bet is that privatization talks have been ongoing since then.
The balanced budget of Mike de Jong is bullshit too. In the first place, you can hardly say with a straight face that you’ve balanced a budget when, to make ends meet, you’ve sold hard assets for your revenue side. This is precisely like you balancing your personal budget by taking on a new mortgage or selling the car.
The real debt of the province per capita, under the Liberals, has quintupled. It will continue to grow at a frightening rate.
There’s insufficient money for current social funding, let alone increasing it.
This government’s election platform was a tissue of lies, but so what? It kept the bad guys out and left the white hats in control, didn’t it?
The Liberals have a hell of a lot to answer for. So do the NDP, who ran a pitiful campaign.
So do the nearly 50% of voters who stayed home last May 14.
What will Japans interest in our Lng and Korea mean to the equation