VIDEO: Response to Site C decision

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz71ZBya8Y8[/embedyt]

The British Columbia government has decided to proceed with building Site C. This has been a controversial project right from the start and after sleeping on it, here is my response to the decision.

Transcript

I have heard the tremendous outpouring of emotion regarding the government’s decision to continue building Site C.

I have read your emails, and answered the phone calls. I have heard your pleas. I feel your emotions.

Frustration, anger and sadness. Our government, has chosen to throw good money after bad!

My Green colleagues and I wanted to cancel Site C, that was our campaign promise.

The BC NDP would not budge, so in our Confidence and Supply Agreement, we committed to send it to the BC Utilities Commission for a review, for the first time.

Frankly, the BCUC report said what we thought it would say. The economics of Site C are marginal at best! The project is late, and already over budget.

Now the government says this project originally estimated to cost five to six billion dollars, over eight billion when the BC Liberals approved is now going to cost us more than $10 billion. If we are lucky. The BCUC report said it could even be higher.

With the economics suspect at best, and the reality we can get the same power from a distributed portfolio of alternatives, I figured the government would finally consider the negative impacts to the environment, agricultural land and of course the opposition of First Nations.

The government committed to renewing relationships with Indigenous people. Every Minister in Cabinet is  mandated to the full implementation of the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People.

I have said this government will be measured by their actions not their words. And, certainly not by how many times they open press conferences by recognizing traditional territories.

In this regard they have failed. Now we have the threat of a billion dollar civil suit for treaty infringement, and a threat of an injunction, further putting the decision to proceed, at peril.

In the end, these costs were not considered in the decision.

They chose politics over sound, evidence-based decision-making.

The government has tried to frame this decision as being about affordability, funding for education, daycare, housing and transit.

They have said this was a difficult decision. In reality, the difficulty that has been exposed, is the desperate attempts to reframe this bad decision.

The government made a choice. They chose to cancel bridge tolls on the Port Mann and Golden Ears bridge. A decision I and my colleagues vigorously opposed.

That ill-conceived promise made in the heat of the campaign, while chasing the BC Liberals down a rabbit hole is going to cost British Columbia billions.

Cancelling the bridge tolls cost more than four billion dollars, that was brought straight onto the provincial debt and is more than the debt that Site C would have cost. So no matter the spin, like I said this was a choice.

The bridge toll decision put us in a corner, and now future generations will be saddled with the cost of this awful political decision. Pure politics.

We laid out a positive vision for the future of energy policy in British Columbia. We have so much potential in our Province and I was hopeful right up to last moment that the government was going to embrace that vision. They did not.

I share your frustration. Site C was a boondoggle made by the former BC Liberals government. Now this BC NDP government owns it. Now Site C is their project, and we all are going to pay for it for a very long time!