For this edition of The Flow I want to take us back to the beginning – in fact, before the beginning.

As many of you know, I was a cabinet minister in BC for five years back in the 70s. During that time we made several major changes in policy and let me use an example of one I made as Minister of Consumer & Corporate Affairs.
 
In 1978 I brought in a new Residential Tenancy Act to replace the old Landlord and Tenancy Act. This bill represented a marked departure from the old one. The rights of landlords and tenants were much changed.
 
The government had a handsome majority and if I had wanted to, I could have simply tabled the bill and crammed it through the legislature but this isn’t the way we did things.
 
To be honest I can’t remember whether I put the proposed bill out in a White Paper for comments or tabled the bill promising not to call if for hearing until affected people could be heard. It’s essentially the same thing.
 
It was not long before I heard it from all stakeholders, as we call them now. My deputy, Tex Enemark and I attended many meetings, each involving people angry about one thing or another. (Tex and I at one point laughed to ourselves that we must be doing something right since everyone was angry). We used the input to change many parts of the bill and - horror of all horrors - I even asked Norman Levy, my NDP critic, to meet with me and discuss the bill.
 
This wasn’t just Rafe Mair’s way – it was the government’s way.

The history of Alcan and the city of Kitimat it spawned has been, to put it mildly, spotted. The idea behind the original massive environmental disaster was to allow Alcan to reverse rivers, build lakes, install pipes and generators, construct dams, and run roughshod over the rights of First Nations in order to supply electricity to its new aluminum smelter and the “vicinity of the works” (if they had any left over after their aluminum smelting needs were met). The original agreement as enshrined in legislation was for an aluminum smelter, not a power company.

Over the years, in cahoots with the provincial government, Alcan did in fact become a power company - a big one - and its interest in smelting faded as the power dollars rolled in.

When I was part of the large group fighting Kemano II back in the 90s Alcan promised that this power was going to fuel a new smelter as well as the one in Kitimat … or was it two new smelters? Or perhaps four? It was difficult to keep count. As the struggle continued I was under considerable pressure from Kitimat and elsewhere to butt out - that Alcan was their buddy and would always keep its workers and their families close to their warm heart. The City Council of Terrace, which would have supplied much of the labour and equipment for Kemano II, passed a resolution declaring Terrace to be a “Rafe Mair free zone.”

One morning I interviewed Bill Rich, an Alcan VP who was quarterbacking Kemano II, and I got this usually taciturn executive to pound his fist on the table and say “you don’t seem to understand that Alcan is not in the Aluminum business … it’s in the power business!” In anger, veritas!

To cut to the chase, it began to dawn on the people of Kitimat that the smelter was shutting down lines, that Alcan was neglecting maintenance and modernization. And where were all those new smelters?

Watch five minute video of Alexandra Morton's recent press conference discussing her victory and what it means for the future of wild salmon on BC's coast
Having trouble streaming the high-res version? Watch video - medium resolution

We at Save Our Rivers Society are proud as punch of our Board of Advisors whose individual and collective knowledge of fish and their habitat easily outshines anything industry or the Campbell government can claim (though I admit that’s damning with very faint praise). In that truly august body of advisors is my hero, Alexandra Morton, who a couple of weeks ago, along with her co-plaintiffs, won a landmark lawsuit which declared that the Federal government has exclusive jurisdiction over fisheries and that fish farms constitute a fishery. The judge gave Fisheries and Oceans Canada a year to get its act together. It is a justified humiliation for the Campbell government.

Let me tell you a bit about Alex. She came to us from the United States in 1979 as a biologist studying whales. She fell in love with and married a Canadian biologist of similar inclinations – including marriage to this lovely lady. Tragedy struck when with Alex and their young son watched Robin Morton drown due to faulty diving gear.

A few years ago Alex became concerned at the number of sea lice in the channels in the Broughton Archipelago and the effect they might be having on tiny migrating wild salmon smolts. If there were a problem, was it in any way related to the Atlantic Salmon fish cages that were situated right in the paths of these migrating wild fish? She did her testing and to make a long story a bit shorter she found that there indeed was a relationship and that millions of small wild salmon were dying  from predatory lice so that large international fish farmers could ply their trade in nicely suitable, for them, channels.

The sea lice issue is simple to understand. Fish farms have hundreds of thousands of Salmon (hosts) with millions of lice that nail the wild salmon smolts as they run the gauntlet of these farms.

Alex was hit with everything but the ring post along the way - Fisheries and Oceans Canada threatened to arrest her for illegal testing; the fish farmers hired Hill and Knowlton, the world's largest PR firm, to discredit her - they also hired a flatulent discredited former Greenpeacer to try to discredit her. The Provincial Liberal government called into question her scientific integrity. She was pilloried by the local press, mostly ignored by the mainstream media, and constantly badmouthed by the “establishment”.

Before long, the world's acknowledged scientists in this field validated her work and her findings - some of them did studies of their own which confirmed Alex's work. She was peer published many times over - in the world's top journals, like Science - yet the fish farmers kept fighting. The ex-Greenpeacer attacked her personally; the governments ignored her findings and claimed that all the science was on their side; the mayor of Port McNeil, Gerry Furney, set up a picket line, complete with him badmouthing me on a loud hailer, to prevent my wife and me going into the archipelago to view the situation with Alex. I don’t mind admitting that I was scared for our safety.

The struggle between the time Alex got onto the sea lice issue and her recent court victory was such that I don’t know how she stayed the course. But she did and recently the BC Salmon Forum chaired by former House of Commons Speaker John Fraser confirmed, as if confirmation was needed, that fish farms and their lice pose a huge risk to migrating wild salmon smolts.

The legal victory has been pooh-poohed by the usual suspects but it has been a terrific morale booster for Alex and all of us who proudly fight under her leadership. Moreover, The Campbell government finds itself in the position of having to file their Notice of Appeal, if that’s the route they decide to go, right in the middle of the election campaign.

For the general public, however, this case means that the Campbell government stands shamed – at least they ought to feel ashamed – by a doughty fighter that took all the abuse they could give her, stood her ground and is gloriously vindicated.

Need I say how proud we at Save Our Salmon Society to have Alexandra as an advisor?

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As we at Save Our Rivers plow on, trying to inform the public about the BC Energy Plan and the privatization of our energy providers, we keep coming up against the notion that BC needs energy, badly and quickly. After looking at what BC Hydro has said, namely that we don’t, we’re told by the government to ignore Hydro.

But, the government says, BC has been a net importer for 7 of the last 10 years. So we checked with the Canadian National Energy Board which is responsible for exports of energy and they tell us NO! BRITISH COLUMBIA HAS BEEN A NET EXPORTER OF ENERGY FOR 8 OF THE LAST 11 YEARS (1997 - 2007)!

We point out that private power plants can only supply energy during the spring run-off, when we definitely don't need it, a fact demonstrably not dealt with by the government (which always does have the habit of avoiding the truth); indeed on this point the silence is deafening.<>This raises a pretty obvious question: If private power is not needed by BC - and, even if it were, private power companies will produce far more energy than we need and at a time we don’t need it - why the hell are they destroying our environment with the blessing of the Campbell government to create this power?

The only answer left to the puzzle is that this private energy will be for export, not for the needs of British Columbia’s domestic, business and industrial use.

But how can this be? The former Energy Minister and now Senator Richard Neufeld assured us over and over that BC was in serious need of power. The new Minister, Blair Lekstrom in a recent article in the Victoria Times Colonist said the same.

Well, folks, it remained for Donald McInnis, the president of Plutonic Power, the company seeking to build the biggest private hydropower plant in Canada, bigger than Site “C” would be, to blurt out the truth. McInnis recently stated that "You'd have to be in a coma to not see where the B.C. government is going; now we need consistency of policy and certainty of timelines … "

"An export plan is an obvious place for us to go."

The cat is out of the bag and the stated domestic need the government has peddled to us is just so much barnyard droppings.

Our rivers, up to about 700 applications now, will be butchered to warm California swimming pools. Moreover, once we embark down this slippery slope we’re in this forever. We will be, like Bre’r Rabbit, stuck to the tar baby.

We will devastate our environment so that American states don’t have to ruin theirs. We give up the handsome profits BC Hydro has provided the provincial treasury as we export our power, our environment and our revenue. We will then become hostage to Chapter 11 of NAFTA whose rules, because it is a treaty, will trump any legislation Ottawa or Victoria may pass.

The truth of the matter was told us, the citizens of BC, not by Premier Campbell but by the president of the biggest player in the private energy game.

Premier Campbell’s credibility is that of the clock that strikes 13 – he cannot be relied upon for the truth.

If the government won’t change, we will have to change the government.

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Earlier this week, Damien and I went to Powell River to learn about Plutonic Power’s project in Bute Inlet. We will also be attending the company's public comment meeting in Campbell River on Feb 2, then hosting our own event in Courtenay on Feb 3 from 7-9 PM at the Florence Filberg Centre, seeing as the company and government EAO have not deemed it necessary to hold a meeting in that community.

Here is a bit of a summary of the project:

Proponent:  Plutonic Hydro Inc. / General Electric would have a 60% controlling interest
Number of creeks dammed: 17
Total Annual Output: 2,980 GWh
Total Estimated Project Cost: $4 billion, making it the largest single private power project in Canada
Estimated Annual Gross Revenue: Approximately $300,000,000 - 40 year contract including indexed escalation = approx. $16 billion
Wildlife affected: grizzly bear, salmon, resident salmonids.
Power lines: 428 km
Roads: 265 km
Bridges: 100 bridges
Production: 1027MW
Total crown land grants required for all of the above: Up to 45,000 hectares

Now a few notes of comparison with Site C:

It would only require only approx. 8,000 hectares of crown land in total (vs. up to 45,000 for the Bute) but would deliver significantly more power throughout the year (4,500 GWh vs. 2,980 GWh from the Bute project) and would be much more valuable "firm power"  The cost of power generated from Site C would be about half of that generated by the Bute project.

Plutonic's proposed project, then, is bigger than Site “C”, indeed the biggest private hydropower project in the country.

Let me make it absolutely clear that Save Our Rivers Society is not in favour of Site C. There is no need for Site C. It’s instructive, however, to note that BC Hydro is acting like they want it to proceed. We will vehemently oppose such a move. Having said that, the Site C situation does present an interesting contrast between what Hydro does to get public input and theCampbell government’s approach for private power proposals.

The Plutonic Power project in Bute Inlet – remember it’s bigger and far more environmentally intrusive than Site C - has involved NO, ZERO public hearings on the merits of the project. It will have had three on the “terms of reference” for the Environmental Assessment Office but Zilch on whether it should be done in the first place. Premier Gordon Campbell makes those sorts of decisions all by himself and they somehow, by the most amazing of circumstances, they always favour his corporate friends.

BC Hydro, on the other hand has had 48, yes 48 public hearings where the public can question the merits of the proposal and they plan more!
 
It becomes more and more obvious that the Campbell government doesn’t give a damn about the public.

If the government won’t change then we’ll just have to change the government.

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In an astonishing move last week, BC Hydro, a Crown Corporation, contradicted its boss, Gordon Campbell, saying that BC’s power requirements had lessened and therefore significantly cut back its recent "clean power call"; indeed, apparently we only need 60% of what the government alleged we needed as it embarked on its disastrous energy policy. We at Save Our Rivers Society know the story goes much deeper than this.
 
This message is astonishing and truly takes the breath away, especially when you realize its true import. BC Hydro has, since the 1960s, been the power prognosticator. It was Hydro that crunched the numbers and advised the government of the day how much power would be needed in the longer term – erring on the generous side - backed up with figures and complete with recommendations. We must assume, then, that even BC Hydro’s recent figures contain an exaggeration factor lest they err on the short side (indeed, according to SFU energy expert Dr. John Calvert, BC Hydro has been forced by government policy to include unwieldily and unnecessary "insurance" buffers in its calculations for our power needs). If we accept Hydro’s latest figures (and why shouldn’t they be more reliable than figures prepared by Campbell bedding down with Alcan and private power producers?) the Campbell government’s entire energy policy rests on an erroneous calculation of our needs.

But Gordon Campbell doesn’t care about this and is indifferent to energy calculations. Why?
 
Because his energy policy isn’t about BC’s needs but is a commitment to private power producers to create power for export - while dangerously handing over control of our water resources to foreign companies - and as long as that’s large enough to look after BC as well, there’s no problem. To put it bluntly, this government is committed to an ever-increasing development of private power for export which will always have enough left over to look after BC – at exorbitant prices, of course.
 
What is also remarkable is that BC Hydro, which has been doing power predictions for decades, also sees that BC can handle its own long term requirements by conservation, upgrading and building new generators on existing dams and taking back the power we’re entitled to under the Columbia River Treaty. In short, there’s no need for any private power projects.
 
We now have, in graphic terms, the Campbell energy policy which says to private power producers “Come one, come all - build as many dams and diversions on our rivers and streams as you can and sell the power to places which wouldn’t dare do to their rivers and streams what we’re doing for ours. All we ask is that you make sure that BC gets power at the grossly extravagant price we’ve forced Hydro to pay you.”
 
The truth from BC Hydro has served to expose the devastating ideology of the Gordon Campbell energy policy, a policy for private pockets not the public’s need.

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I think we should all give some thought as to why W.A.C. Bennett bought The BC Electric Company and set up BC Hydro and Power Authority as the only source of power save those “grandfathered” like the West Kootenay Power and Light Company incorporated in 1897.
 
This was not Mr. Bennett’s only foray into the field of public expropriations. Back in the sixties he also bought Black Ball Ferries (now BC Ferries) and the Pacific Great Eastern Railway (rebranded as BC Rail).
 
Mr. Bennett saw a province that needed to open up. He knew that Black Ball Ferries would not take on unprofitable runs meaning that important communities would not be serviced. If the government ran the ferry system it could take losses on some runs justifying them in the name of expansion. Similarly, the Premier understood that no private railway company would put in unprofitable lines, so for the same reasons he bought Black Ball he bought out the PGE. Mr. Bennett knew that for a ferry company or a railway the bottom line every year was critical while the government could take the longer view knowing that losses up front would be offset by tax and other revenues in the places subsidized.
 
Premier Bennett had the same motives for creating BC Hydro. He knew that relying on the private sector would throttle development and result in very high rates. The result has been that BC Hydro has brought us a plentiful supply of cheap power.

The Campbell government has semi-privatized BC Ferries and only the lack of a willing buyer has kept it in the limbo it’s in; he got rid of BC Rail to CN; he sold off Terasen (formerly BC Gas) to the former president of Enron, Richard Kinder' s KinderMorgan; and now he has laid the groundwork for the destruction of BC Hydro.

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When evaluating the government's policy of private power plants on hundreds of our rivers and streams there are a number of issues raised.  Just one of those – but a hugely important one – is what happens to the environment when a plant is built on a river. To answer that one must understand what a river is.
 
It’s a hell of a lot more than just running water. It is, in fact, an ecosystem all of its own. The fish it contains, even though they may be resident fish such as Bull Trout, Dolly Varden (a close relative), resident Rainbow Trout or Cutthroat, they play a vital role in the health of that ecosystem. Birds such as eagles and ospreys prey upon them; bears depend upon them; the insect life and surrounding plant life depend upon a healthy fish population. One need only look at the pitiable plight of Grizzly Bears who, because fish farms are wiping out their vital pre-hibernation food, are pawing the shores looking for small crustaceans. This process causes the loss of carbon sequestration formerly provided by the trees, thus increasing greenhouse gases and climate change.
 
The power plant hits in a number of ways. During construction there is a lot of silt in the river. Fish don’t breathe well, to say the least, in silty waters. Then there is the loss of up to 90% of the water to damming or a diversion. This diversion can be close to 20 kms and the water may or may not be sent back into the river bed. In one large project in the Kootenays they propose to divert five rivers and dump the water into the Duncan Lake below!  Fish are not noted for an ability to walk or survive losses of water.

But the environmental impact doesn’t end there. There must be many roads built into and throughout the site and they must be big enough to handle large diesel machinery, which itself creates major greenhouse gases for several years throughout construction. Obviously these roads not only have an impact on wildlife, they open up previously wild country, wild country that is part of Supernatural British Columbia!  Then there are the transmission lines which may run a 100 km or more which require clear cutting again, with a deleterious effect on wild life.

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