Rafe Mair Online

The admission by Dave Cobb, President of BC Hydro, that Hydro is spending 100s of millions for energy they don’t need came as a shock, except for Damien Gillis and me and others, notably the Wilderness Committee, who have been saying this for three years without a peep out of the government. It’s too bad that Mr. Cobb didn’t stand up and be counted by way of a press conference – instead his remarks were leaked. It could still cost him his job, although if he were fired, he would get a pretty penny in severance, to be paid by us of course.

The response by Energy Minister Rich Coleman is what I would expect from a member of this appalling government, though I did harbour hope, in vain, that the minister is made of sterner stuff. He simply replied that they had no plans for any more private power at this time, but they’d be sticking with the underlying policies that justified IPPs – criticized by both Cobb and the recent panel report on Hydro. Continue Reading »

The response of the private power industry (IPPs) to the recently released study on BC Hydro is goofy even against other barmy statements they make.

The defence against the charge that their power costs many times what BC Hydro can make it for themselves is that BC Hydro has paid for its facilities long ago so doesn’t have any capital costs whereas IPPs must build new plants.

Of course that’s true – AND THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT!!!

Why should BC Hydro (that’s us folks) pay huge rates to cover the construction of private dams when they can get the power from their own system at a fraction of the cost? To pay a triple, quadruple bonus to IPPs so they can build power plants that ruin our rivers and supply us with hugely dear power is plain and simply nuts – yet that’s what the Campbell/Clark Government has been doing for 10 years!

Repeat after me – Vaughn Palmer and Mike Smyth too please: “We have never needed IPPS, don’t need them now and won’t need them in the foreseeable future.” Continue Reading »

What do families have to do with the environment?

Quite a bit, actually.

The Campbell/Clark government is looking for an issue to run on and the Family is the answer the backroom boys and girls have decided is the best one.

This decision is sure as hell not based upon the government’s great successes in this ministry. In fact they have been a near disaster if not a full one. Mind you, in fairness, this isn’t the area that’s good to any government and the NDP had its share of problems but the point is simple – why would the C/C government run on a failure?

Easy – everything else has been worse. Continue Reading »

Photo by Ian McAllister/Pacific Wild

The Campbell/Clark government has done it again. Now wolves will be wiped out in BC because, it’s alleged (by ranchers), that their cattle are being slaughtered by wolves. Ranchers are friends of the government while wolves are not. The constituencies where cattle are ranched are constituencies the Liberals must win if they’re to win the next election.

Wolves are endangered such that Americans are bringing them back to National Parks in order to keep the species alive. Noble as that is, it’s rather a surrender to the same troglodytes who slaughtered the buffalo (bison) with the last vestiges now in parks, not on the plains, reduced to being objects of tourist’s cameras.

The wolf has had a terrible press over the years from writers of fairy tales to ranchers. In fact they are a magnificent example of highly developed animals that, in contradistinction to us humans, mate for life and are part of a pack led by an alpha male. Humans should have their sense of community. Continue Reading »

Until a couple of months ago I had never heard of “fracking”. I now understand why. And I should have known.

Governments, by long standing habit, don’t like smarty pants environmentalists to learn what the hell is going on and thus be able to alert the masses for those masses can mess up the process. The BC government’s policy was neatly summed up by Finance Minister Kevin Falcon when he was Transport Minister. Frustrated by boo-birds who were always asking questions, going to public meetings and demonstrating said the Chinese “don’t have the labour or environmental restrictions we do. It’s not like they have to do community consultations. They just say ‘we’re building a bridge’ and they move everyone out of there and get going within two weeks. Could you imagine if we could build like that?” Continue Reading »

It’s August 1 – British Columbia Day.

This being a relatively new holiday, we have not really come up with a tradition such as we have on Thanksgiving and Christian holy days. One might think of May 24th, the significance of which could not be stated, I don’t think, by 1 in a 1000 British Columbians. It was the birthday of Queen Victoria and that did have significance when I was a boy, at least for those who were devout British Empire folks who sang the old version of O Canada which contained “at Britain’s side, whate’er betide, unflinchingly we stand.”

For some reason, one couldn’t go swimming or even run through the sprinkler until May 24th although no one could explain just how it warmed up so much from the previous day. It was also the day most schools had their sports day.

Perhaps, to use an oxymoron, we should start a “new tradition” and devote some time to thinking about our province, its traditions, its history, its beauty and how we can best pass all of this on to coming generations. Continue Reading »