This week, let's talk about public versus private power and let's just deal with the financial folly this government has embarked us upon.

When, in 1967, W.A.C. Bennett took over the BC Electric Railway Company and other private producers he had three objects in mind - he wanted to secure our needs for power well into the 21st century, he wanted British Columbians whether in their homes or in their businesses to have reasonably priced power and he wanted BC Hydro to contribute any profits it made back to the people so that his vision would produce schools, hospitals and other social benefits for our citizens. And it has worked wonderfully well. We have always had power - so much, in fact, that we've become wasteful but that's another story - our rates both industrially and domestically have been amongst the lowest in North America, if not the lowest, and BC Hydro makes a profit for us of close to a billion dollars a year! Who would want to mess with this? Only fools, right-wing ideologues and the Campbell government - probably all the same thing!

Here is what happens. Under the Campbell idiocy BC Hydro must pay hugely inflated prices to private operators, who thus make staggering profits. Well, you might ask, where does that money go and what happens to BC Hydro's profit that we get back? The answer is sickeningly simple: the money that used to go to BC Hydro to maintain its operations and pay large dividends to the people of BC now goes to shareholders of large multi-national corporations. As you see your Hydro bill go up both at home and by costs passed through from industry, and pay higher taxes to make up for the lost dividends from Hydro, you can comfort yourself with the thought that Californians are using your power, your fish, your environment and in due course your water as they clip the dividend coupons for shares made rich by what used to belong to you and me, British Columbians.

This is the biggest theft of public assets in the history of our Province. Our government gives away our power, our environment and our profitable public utility and, get this, we the people of British Columbia pay out of own pockets for the privilege! Isn't it great to have a business-like government?

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Let's look first at the environmental issue. The government would have you believe that the proposed so-called "run of the river projects" produce "green power" with a very small environmental foot print. This is 1984 and George Orwell's "new speak" where black is white, evil is good and where "big brother" will look after you.

The truth can be simply found. Just go to the three PowerPlay videos on this website and see for yourself. Look at the size of the streams and the size of the power plants! Look at the extensive roads built in and the heavy equipment involved! Remember that each one of these plants must have transmission poles and lines going many, many kilometers so that they can hook up to the grid. And remember building these roads and transmission lines will almost always involve clear-cutting. Bearing in mind that this will happen to hundreds of rivers and streams all over Beautiful British Columbia is this the supernatural wilderness you envisage for your kids and their kids?

Whether the flow of water is controlled by a dam, a weir or a tunnel the result will be that up to 95% of the water will be diverted for up to 20 kilometers or more. No fish can survive this and even if you could somehow truck spawning fish upstream there simply is no way to get the fry back downstream without them being ground to mush in the turbines.

Would that it ended there but it doesn't, for once you lose the fish you lose the birds and bears that feed upon them. You lose both the fauna and the flora and you no longer have an environmentally protective valley. And this will repeat itself in hundreds of valleys in every corner of the province.

How green, how environmentally sensitive does this seem to you?

Next week I'll tell you how this is a terrible idea even if you couldn't care less about the environment.

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One must be aware of these facts - Campbell & Co are doctrinaire right-wingers from the school of Milton Friedman and the Fraser Institute and they really believe the propaganda they spout. Let me give you an example from my own experience. Many years ago I interviewed Michael Walker, then executive head of the Fraser Institute. He maintained that all rivers and river banks ought to be privately owned because then, he alleged, the best possible use would be made of that river. I pointed out to him that in the UK and Europe proper that theory had prevailed and the result was that the rivers were used as sewers for industry and farmers. Walker wasn't convinced such that after the show he phoned me at home to continue the debate. I asked him "what if one of the owners has a fishing camp and the mill upstream put industrial black liquor into the river destroying the fishing camp?" He replied that the fishing camp could sue and would not understand that firstly that would be too late for the fishing camp and secondly what chance would a small proprietor of a fishing camp have against a multinational pulp mill?

This dogma exists today and then some. The Campbell government believes in private ownership of rivers and streams with the right to produce private power to sell to BC Hydro then into the North American grid. In a future column I'll deal more closely with the calamitous effect this has on the environment but let's just look at the question of private power.

Mr. Campbell - along with former Alberta Premier Ralph Klein incidentally - believes that there should be competition in the electrical energy business and that to achieve that goal, hundreds of rivers and streams must be exploited for power by private companies. He rather gives off the impression that these will all be friendly little Mom and Pop operations where in truth licenses by the dozen are being picked up - for a song, I might add - by large multinational companies who know a good thing when they see it. These licenses are worth a fortune because BC Hydro is compelled by the government to pay massive royalties since it will no longer set the cost of power - that will be set by the international, for which read the energy short United States of America market.

What happens then?

Your electricity bill skyrocket but that's not the end. You'll have passed on to you the increased costs to industry.

But it gets worse. Instead of a BC Hydro able to turn a profit and give that back to the citizens by way of a dividend to the public treasury, the private companies will make the profit - in fact government guaranteed huge profits - and will ship it to their shareholders, most of whom live elsewhere.

Let's pause here for a moment. This policy, to which the government has given the innocent sounding name "Run of the Rivers" does not create a competitive market at all, Quite the opposite - these private companies are monopolies all with prices set not by local market forces but by the government and which will always be nice and sweet because they will be based on the needs of power hungry California not power rich British Columbia.

But there's worse yet. Public power companies like BC Hydro are not considered part of NAFTA when they trade into the American market but once the power system is private, NAFTA is in play which means that British Columbia can never reduce its supply to the United States unless it reduces it commensurately at home. We will be, as Messrs Klein and Campbell want it, part of the North American grid and no longer masters of our fate. This is why Campbell & Co have taken the transmission lines away from BC Hydro and set up the BC Transmission Corp. This new Crown Corporation, BCTC, will - and you can bet the ranch on this - be privatized right after the next election should Campbell win it thus destroying Public Power in this province and making our power subject to NAFTA and the huge appetite of states like California. Remember, the actually BC Hydro bureaucracy has already been privatized when the government contracted it out to that ugly stepchild of Enron, Accenture. With the power run privately, supplied privately, and sold privately ? well, welcome to NAFTA folks because your power company suddenly and literally "went south" with your energy, your environment and your money along with it.

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The charge has been leveled against the Save our Rivers Society that if our goals are met the NDP might get back in.

We have no such ambition and we support no political party. Our members vary in their political tastes just as the broader community does. One of us served as a Socred cabinet minister.

Here's the message we take to all political parties. We believe that the assault on the environment and on Public Power means this: we must  ask every candidate whether they stand firm for Public Power and oppose the Run of the River program which will seriously disable hundreds of rivers and streams in this province. Our advice then is to vote only for a candidate who will publicly take that stand. You know, of course, that government MLA will use weasel words and say that they commit to public power, that is BC Hydro and that the Run of the Rivers program is "Green power". This is simply not true - what is undeniably true is that if BC Hydro is forced to pay high rates to private owners of power plants that will devastate the rivers and streams and slowly but surely strangle what's left of BC Hydro.

The government, with the help of Ralph Klein and the Fraser Institute, wants private power so it can stick to its Milton Friedman/Fraser Institute philosophy and state. In support of this policy, they allege that power will now be subject to "market forces". Let's think on that for a moment - private corporations will be given private monopolies and will be paid what the Campbell government forces Hydro to pay! That's free enterprise? That's the market at work? Give me a break!

The Campbell government also says that unless BC Hydro can find power without new dams, without fossil fuel plants and conservation or in part, at any rate from wind and tidal power, that private power is the only option open to them. That is the Campbell government's precise position in their Energy Plan. This is rubbish. This not an either/or proposition but rather is the creation of a false picture then like Little Jack Horner promotes private monopolies for an answer and says "what a good boy I am to have found this solution!"

The government's Energy Policy isn't a policy at all but a way to sacrifice our rivers and streams thus cripple and kill off BC Hydro so that private capital (nearly all offshore) can make buckets of money at the expense of BC citizens. In essence citizens lose the revenue that used to come from BC Hydro to build schools and hospitals and that revenue is given to shareholder not the public.

The result is that we donate our money and our environment to private companies and their shareholders while slowly but surely strangling BC Hydro.

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