BC NDP and Official Opposition Leader John Horgan (BCNDP.ca/youtube)
I suggest that everyone listen to this immediately – it is John Horgan, leader of the BC NDP, promising to shut down Site C and make up the energy difference through conservation, wind and solar power (listen here yourself to his CBC Daybreak North interview from Monday morning).
Site C is something that never should have happened, certainly not for decades to come. It has always been a bad idea and totally unwarranted based on the lack of power needs of BC Hydro and our province. There have been predictions by BC Hydro to justify this project but they neither justify it nor dispel the reality that BC Hydro always overestimates its power needs by a considerable amount.
The challenge for Mr. Horgan, in my view, is to stop Site C and at the same time decrease, not increase, Independent Power Projects (IPPs) which are ruining our rivers and bankrupting BC Hydro while making foreign investors unjustly rich. I’ve no doubt that Mr. Horgan has addressed this issue – if he hasn’t, there’ll be no shortage of experts addressing it for him.
Changing the game
This announcement, at least at first blush, is a game changer. Mr. Horgan is no longer tied to the apron strings of Christy and her LNG fantasies. This is extremely timely given the news over the last 30 days or so which all but set the funeral date for LNG and gazillion-dollar Prosperity Funds and debt elimination in this province. Christy can hardly, at this point, announce that she will cancel Site C too, and since that decision will be hugely popular as the facts come out, she is stuck flogging a dying horse, if not one that’s already been put down.
This decision will also give Horgan an issue where he is once again the Leader of the Opposition, not simply saying “me too” to LNG propositions put forward by Christy and her poodle, Rich Coleman – the beat cop who, like Walter Mitty, fantasizes that he’s become a world expert on energy.
