BC's Watershed Election

"Environmental blah blah" is how retiring NDP MLA Corky Evans describes the privatization of BC's waterways under the guise of addressing climate change. So-called "green" run of river hydro projects, also known as independent power projects or IPPs, divert water into a pipe several kilometres long and then into a turbine before returning it to the same watercourse downstream.

Among the over 500 streams and rivers staked by private companies so far, the Plutonic Power and General Electric Bute Inlet Project plans to divert and dam 17 streams and rivers, while constructing 445 kilometres of transmission lines, 314 kilometres of roads, and 104 bridges. Across the inlet from me, the Sea-to-Sky corridor has stakes for 110 streams and rivers.

How did this happen? The 2002 B.C. Energy Plan forbade our formerly very profitable Crown corporation B.C. Hydro from producing new sources of hydroelectricity. Further, BC Hydro will now be forced to buy energy from the new private producers at $120 megawatts per hour for which they will receive $60 in the market. Well, you know Gordo and privatization : BC Rail, BC Ferries, healthcare,

What about local opposition? Silenced in June 2006 when Campbell passed Bill 30 to retroactively abolish local zoning authority over them.

Who supports the run of river projects? You mean apart from speculators and Liberal-led astroturf orgs like BC Citizens For Green Energy? Well, there's David Suzuki, economist Mark Jaccard, and environmental activist Tzeporah Berman who started the foundation PowerUp Canada just to promote them.

And why are we doing this again? To sell our "green" energy to the US. says Berman, through what Gordo referred to at the last PNWER summit as "electric transmission corridors".

Coincidentally, Suzuki, Jaccard, and Berman all made media headlines in the last few days criticizing the NDP for not supporting Gordo's "gas tax". Not that they support Gordo, they say, just "his environmental leadership". That would be the Gordo who gutted the BC Environment ministry and supports fish farms, the Gordo of Gateway Pacific and twin Enbridge pipelines from the Alberta tar sands to Kitimat, the Gordo of expanding the oil and gas indutry in the north and building more roads and bridges instead of light rail and public transit, the Gordo of offshore drilling and renewed tanker routes ... that Gordo.

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"SPP : Kill it, recast it, or rebrand it"

is the recommendation of Sarah Ladislaw, member of the North American SPP Energy Working Group and fellow at CSIS - the Center For Strategic and International Studies. She was speaking at a CSIS book promo/discussion group in Washington DC last week for The Future of North America 2025 : Outlook and Recommendations, edited by Armand Peschard-Sverdrup.

You'll recall the public outcry up here in April last year when the CSIS NA2025 panel convened in Calgary and director Armand B. Peschard-Sverdrup was quoted as saying :

"It's no secret that the U.S. is going to need water. ...
It's no secret that Canada is going to have an overabundance of water.
At the end of the day, there may have to be arrangements."

According to comments they made last week, the panel has not changed its position on that.
"Canadians have no water management, " said Bill Nitze, adding that while "North America is water-rich, southern California and Mexico are not." He recommended setting up "water markets and water banking", plus expanding the powers and budgets of the International Water Commission(US/Mexico) and the International Joint Commission (US/Canada) to "manage water in all three countries".

Noting that "the SPP has gotten a bad name on the centre-left in Canada" where it is "seen as a vehicle for business interests to exploit resources, including bulk water exports from Canada" he further advocated the importance of "a game changer" and "giving it a different flavour" by "getting people to talk differently". In a recommendation from the floor, Diana Negroponte of the Brookings Institution suggested adopting the word "coordination" in place of "integration" and panel members duly noted her advice to "avoid the word integration".

Answering a question about the current stagnation of the SPP, Ladislaw advised expanding the focus from the federal to the state/provincial level, a tactic we have already seen in groups like PNWER and Atlantica.

"Based on the EPA experience," said Bill Nitze, "if you provide money, lots and lots of money, for local needs, then you can get co-operation. Federal governments have enough money to make this happen".

This was easily up there as the most boring hour and a half I have ever spent so you guys out there owe me big time. Conjure up, if you will, a high level discussion of Germany's annexation of Austria in 1938 discussed entirely from the point of view of making the trains run more efficiently.

PNWER and Cascadia

"I think there is a very strong, natural pull of the region called Cascadia," Premier Gordon Campbell says in an article on the Discovery Institute website last year.

The Seattle-based Discovery Institute, rather better known for its crusade to teach intelligent design/creationism in schools, is a Cascadia partner with PNWER, a US-Canada public-private sector regional lobby group composed of legislators and business leaders from Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, B.C., Alberta, and the Yukon Territory. They are sponsored in this endeavor by Exxon, Enbridge, Encana, British Petroleum, Terasen, Cominco, - well, you get the general idea.

Gordon Campbell is hosting this year's PNWER event starting Sunday July 20 at the Bayshore. Speakers include Stockwell Day, Gary Lunn, Monte Solberg, US Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins, Canadian Ambassador to the US Michael Wilson, and industry stakeholders.

So let's hear it from the fans :

Premier Gordon Campbell : "Working together means we're working on both sides of the border to achieve our goals."

Stockwell Day : "PNWER has had a profound impact on policymaking."

PNWER executive director American Matt Morrison on TILMA : “We did have something to do with the B.C.-Alberta agreement, which I think is a great model that needs to be expanded."

Gosh, I guess that means PNWER is to TILMA what CCCE was to the SPP.

To follow the money : a great post at Owls and Roosters.