The Site C dam has lived many lives before its approval today by Premier John Horgan, from a twinkle in the eye of some BC Hydro engineers, to the target of multiple lawsuits, to two damning reports by the utilities regulator, to “the point of no return.”

Below, we’ve collected a few of the key moments in its life up to now.

• 1971: B.C. Hydro begins engineering feasibility studies for a potential third dam on the Peace River
• 1976: B.C. Hydro concludes that Site C, just upstream of Taylor, B.C., is the most feasible of the options on the table
• July 1980: B.C. Hydro releases an environmental impact statement, estimating the project might be completed by 1987 at the earliest; it also forecasts growth in power demand of 5.9 per cent for the following decade.
• Feb 13, 1981: The Globe and Mail reports that BC Hydro has applied for a water license to build Site C, then projected to cost $5.1 billion in 2017 dollars.
• May 3, 1983: BC Utilities Commission (BCUC) recommends against the project in a 315-page report, calling the utility’s demand forecasts “unreliable.”
• September 18, 1989: B.C. Hydro quietly revives Site C plan.
• November 30, 1993: BC Hydro CEO Marc Eliesen says, “Site C is dead for two reasons,” “The fiscal exposure is too great … the dam is too costly. Also it is environmentally unacceptable.”
• April 19, 2010: Premier Gordon Campbell announces the government is instructing BC Hydro to proceed with Site C. Cost is estimated at between $5 and $6.6 billion, though Campbell acknowledges the estimate is uncertain and based on old numbers. John Horgan, then energy critic for the NDP, tells the Vancouver Sun he believes the dam is unnecessary.
• May 17, 2011: Estimate of Site C cost pegged at $7.9 billion.
• May 18, 2011: John Horgan tells The Globe and Mail “The environment assessment process appears to be a sham.”
• August 2011: Environmental review begins.
• August 2013: Joint Review Panel (JRP) established to assess Site C for federal and provincial governments.
• October 14, 2014: Three-year environmental assessment complete. JRP concludes that Site C’s energy is not needed in the timeframe presented by BC Hydro. It recommends BCUC review Site C’s cost and alternatives. BC government ignores key JRP recommendations.

The Site C dam has lived many lives before its approval today by Premier John Horgan, from a twinkle in the eye of some BC Hydro engineers, to the target of multiple lawsuits, to two damning reports by the utilities regulator, to “the point of no return”. https://t.co/XxnUD4P68Z

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) December 12, 2017

• December 16, 2014: Site C receives provincial government approval. Cost now pegged at $8.8 billion.
• July 2015: Construction begins despite pending court cases launched by First Nations and Peace Valley landowners.
• January 2016: Premier Christy Clark vows to push Site C past the “point of no return.”
• January 23, 2017: Federal Court of Appeal dismisses lawsuit from West Moberly and Prophet River First Nations. Question of whether Site C violates treaty rights has still not been tested in the courts.
• May 9, 2017: NDP wins enough seats to form government, contingent on Green Party support. Green Party leader Andrew Weaver expresses strong opposition to Site C while Horgan declines to take a position, repeating a campaign promise to send project for independent BCUC review.
• May 15, 2017: Project has spent $1.75 billion.
• November 1, 2017: BCUC delivers its report saying Site C behind schedule and over budget, and power not likely to be needed. Says cost may exceed $10 billion.
• November 30, 2017: Expert panel briefs NDP government on Site C.
• December 11, 2017: NDP government greenlights Site C dam. Cost now pegged at $10.7 billion.
• December 11, 2017: Two Treaty 8 First Nations announce they will seek an injunction to stop work on Site C and will launch a lawsuit in BC Supreme Court on the grounds that Site C violates treaty rights.

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For years British Columbians have been left in the dark about the most expensive public project in our history.

All of that came to an end on Wednesday when the B.C. Utilities Commission (BCUC) issued its final report on the Site C dam.

The results are, well, damning.

"This report indicates had the Liberals put this to the commission four years ago, Site C would not be built,” Mark Jaccard, a professor at Simon Fraser University's School of Resource and Environmental Management, told the Globe and Mail.

Normally the construction of new electricity generating facilities can’t begin without B.C.’s independent regulator issuing something called a “certificate of public convenience and necessity.”

But the Site C dam never had such a certificate. Why not? It was exempted from review under the previous BC Liberal government.

That means construction on the dam began without any independent, in-depth examination of the costs of the project or the demand for the project. Seriously. The B.C. government skipped the regular review process and instead ploughed ahead with a mega project with no idea whether it was a) needed or b) the most cost effective source of electricity.

That’s led to calls this week for a public inquiry into how (and, perhaps more importantly, why) BC Hydro and the BC Liberal government made that decision

“I would like to see a full inquiry to investigate how BC Hydro executives and the previous government essentially conspired to manufacture the case for Site C,” Marc Lee, a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, told DeSmog Canada.

“As someone who strongly believes in public sector institutions and Crown corporations, to have our electricity utility lying to us, making up numbers and doing all sorts of spurious comparisons between its preferred option and the alternative is shameful.”

Shameful indeed.

Here’s just one example. In August, BC Hydro submitted to the BCUC that it had screened out solar energy on the basis of a cost estimate of $97/MWh in 2025. In response to a follow-up question from the commission, BC Hydro admitted the cost of solar is now only half that at $48/MWh.

While BC Hydro has argued for years that alternatives weren’t viable, the panel found that actually — even factoring in a $1.8 billion cost to terminate Site C and remediate the site — an alternative portfolio would still likely come in at a similar cost to Site C.

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Can you imagine what would have happened if we’d actually reviewed the options before beginning construction?

Given the unit energy cost of renewables is significantly cheaper than Site C ($32/MWh compared to $44/MWh in the panel’s assessment), it’s pretty clear we wouldn’t be building a mega dam if we’d done the analysis.

Since the panel couldn’t rely on BC Hydro’s assessment of alternatives, they came out with their own alternative portfolio. What did that look like?

Under the most likely demand scenario, B.C. won’t need any new electricity generation at all until 2039, when we’ll need to start building 444 megawatts of wind (Site C is an 1,100 megawatt project). The rest of demand growth can be met through increased efficiency, conservation and measures to decrease demand spikes (such as offering cheaper rates if you use power at night, rather than during the supper hour).

So for all of the propaganda about the need for the Site C dam, essentially the panel found that instead of flooding 100 kilometres of river valley, infringing on treaty rights and pushing farmers out of their homes, we could chill for 22 years and then build a bit of wind power. Seriously.

The panel found BC Hydro’s mid-load forecast for electricity demand in B.C. “excessively optimistic” and noted there are risks that could result in demand being less than even BC Hydro’s lowest demand scenario. This is why we have independent reviews, people.

The icing on the cake? The panel was “not persuaded that the Site C project will remain on schedule” and found “the project is not within the proposed budget of $8.335 billion.”

Completion costs may actually be in excess of $10 billion, the panel found, and could be up to 50 per cent more than budgeted.

When DeSmog Canada first reported that Site C was behind schedule and over budget more than a year ago, what did BC Hydro do? They attacked us via a press release and co-ordinated with the premier’s office to discredit our reporting.

It turns out BC Hydro and the premier would have been better off spending some time assessing whether they were making the right choice, rather than smearing journalists reporting the facts. 

British Columbians deserve to know why the people in power ignored all common sense and pushed ahead with a project that is damaging, unnecessary and fiscally irresponsible. A public inquiry is the only way we’ll ever get those answers.

This article also ran in the Victoria Times Colonist on Nov. 8, 2017.

Photo: Province of British Columbia

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Documents released on Monday reveal that B.C.’s climate plan under the previous Liberal government was drafted by the oil and gas industry in a Calgary boardroom, just as the province’s new NDP government moves to ban corporate and union donations to B.C. political parties.

The documents speak to long-standing concerns over the influence of political donations in B.C.’s political process. B.C. has long been considered the ‘wild west’ of political cash for placing no limits on corporate, union or foreign donations.

“I think this is deeply corrosive to our democracy and it encourages cynicism about politics,” Max Cameron, political science professor and director of the Study of Democratic Institutions at the University of British Columbia, told DeSmog Canada.

The documents, released to Shannon Daub of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives as part of her research with the Corporate Mapping Project, reveal that while the B.C. government under former premier Christy Clark hired a celebrated Climate Leadership Team and conducted public consultations, a parallel industry consultation process occurred behind closed doors in a boardroom of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

The BC Liberals have raked in cash from the fossil fuel industry, including more than $3.7 million from just the top 10 industry donors between 2008 and 2015.

Cameron said the documents, which include slides outlining industry working groups tasked with addressing carbon pricing and methane emissions, provide a much-needed glimpse into what exactly industry is paying for when making large donations to political parties.

“Reading these documents gives us some real insight into how it is that these kinds of donations can buy not just access to government but access to actually writing policy,” he said.

Clark’s Secret Consultations with Oil and Gas Donors Revealed As BC Introduces Big Money Ban #bcpoli @CCPA_BC https://t.co/nFjm9W8Vqx

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) September 18, 2017

Climate Leadership Team Unaware of Parallel Industry Consultations

B.C. handpicked a blue-ribbon team of 17 academic, business, environmental and First Nations stakeholders to form the Climate Leadership Team. That team made 32 official recommendations to the B.C. government, none of which were implemented in the province’s eventual Climate Action Plan.

Merran Smith, executive director of Clean Energy Canada, was a member of the team and said the fact that not a single recommendation was adopted “really says it all.”

Christy Clark’s government “allowed the oil and gas sector to write the climate plan for B.C. that is mostly status quo and has very little impact on B.C.’s growing climate pollution,” Smith told DeSmog Canada.

She added once the team made its recommendations to the government, their involvement in the crafting of the Climate Action Plan tapered off quickly.

“We had very few meetings with the B.C. government once the recommendations were created. It was clear that they actually had very little interest in doing anything with recommendations.”

Meanwhile, Christy Clark pointed to the recommendations at the UN Climate Summit in Paris as evidence of B.C.’s climate leadership.

Tzeporah Berman, a prominent environmental advocate in B.C. and member of the Climate Leadership Team said she had no idea B.C. was conducting parallel consultations with industry.

“I was shocked when I saw these documents,” Berman told DeSmog Canada.

“Consultation should be a transparent process and should be done with multiple stakeholders. These were secret meetings in Calgary where the oil and gas industry was rewriting B.C. policy. That's not consultation, it's corruption.”

Berman said the documents reveal an “unacceptable level of access and influence with the Liberal government.”

“They also help those of us from the leadership team understand how the climate plan that the Liberals put together really had no similarity to what the Liberals’ own climate team recommended,” she said.

The team worked hard for months to deliver a plan within a short timeframe and offered to meet with stakeholders to “problem solve any concerns” if that would help B.C. “ensure implementation” of the recommendations, Berman said.

But that offer was never taken up.

“From our end it was a bizarre process,” Berman said.

Fossil Fuel Companies Regularly ‘Craft’ Climate Plans

Laurie Adkin, professor of political science at the University of Alberta, said when it comes to government consultations with corporations, “secrecy is routine” and “transparency is the exception.”

“Even when governments reveal that they have met with representatives of private corporations, reporting on these meetings typically does not reveal which corporate representatives were in the room, or what their positions were,” Adkin told DeSmog Canada.

Adkin, who is a member of the Corporate Mapping Project, specializes in documenting corporate influence in politics and on university campuses.

Government consultation with industry is the status quo, Adkin said, while public consultation is meant to merely survey public opinion and “give the appearance that government has created meaningful opportunities for citizen input into policy decisions.”

“I do not believe that any climate change plan has been written, to date, in which the major fossil fuel corporations have not ‘directly crafted’ the plan,” Adkin said.

Adkin and Cameron agree the documents are reflective of “institutional corruption.”

“Corruption isn’t just quid pro quo of privately benefitting from your public office, it’s also a corruption of the institution, when the public purpose of the institution is undermined by private actors in a way that diminishes our trust in those institutions,” Cameron said.

“The goal of public policy is to serve the public’s interest, not to serve particular private interests.”

Leadership Team Hopeful Under New NDP Government

Berman said the oil and gas industry has too much political influence in Canada, but said she is hopeful the new B.C. government will “design policy to benefit the people and not just polluters.”

“I was very glad to see the carbon tax increase in the last budget,” Berman said.

“I think the next step is removing all the subsidies that the Liberal government handed out to the gas industry. We shouldn't be spending taxpayers dollars to help the fossil fuel industry expand in the climate era”

Berman said she also looks forward to the new government moving forward on the zero emissions vehicles targets and strengthening the clean fuel standard.

Smith said she is pleased the Climate Leadership Team had the opportunity to craft the recommendations when it did.

“The silver lining is that we still have a good, solid set of climate action recommendations sitting there, and we now have a Premier and government who is interested in taking climate action and building a clean growth economy for the twenty-first century.”

Image: Former premier Christy Clark at a Woodfibre LNG announcement. Photo: Province of B.C. via Flickr

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By Shannon Daub & Zoë Yunker.

Newly uncovered documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests reveal the cozy relationship between the fossil fuel industry and the last B.C. government went even further than suspected — all the way to inviting industry to directly craft the province’s climate “leadership” plan.

Let’s rewind for a second: back in the spring of 2015, then-premier Christy Clark announced the provincial government would create a new climate plan.

A 17-member climate leadership team was appointed and tasked with developing recommendations to meet B.C.’s greenhouse gas reduction targets. The government released the team’s recommendations in the fall of 2015 — allowing then-Premier Christy Clark head off to Paris for the December 2015 UN climate talks cloaked in the mantle of climate “leadership,” after four years of near-total inaction by her government.

That’s where things got interesting.

Documents obtained via Freedom of Information legislation indicate that while the Paris talks were underway, the government launched a closed-door three month-long process to work jointly with the oil and gas industry to revise and re-write the climate leadership team recommendations.

The process entailed five rounds of meetings over three months with all the key corporate players, from oil and gas producers to distributors. It was divided into working groups on the carbon tax; methane and fugitive emissions (i.e., from natural gas production, a significant source of B.C.’s greenhouse emissions); and electrification (i.e., the provision of cheap electricity to natural gas extraction sites and LNG plants in order to make gas production less GHG-intensive).

Notably, most of these B.C. government-organized meetings took place not in B.C., but in Calgary — specifically in the boardroom of the most powerful fossil fuel lobby group in the country, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP).

The documents include a power point deck dated January 2016 that outlines the process for the “Climate Leadership Team Recommendations – Consultation with Oil and Gas Industry.”

The document is from the Ministry of Natural Gas Development, which led the “consultation”— not the Climate Action Secretariat, which coordinated the Climate Leadership Team (and, as far as the public knew, was the lead government agency working on the plan). The documents released also include agendas from one round of working group meetings on January 13, 2016, along with the attendee lists for those meetings.

These lists show that senior officials from the Ministry of Natural Gas Development, the Climate Action Secretariat and BC Hydro attended the January 13 meetings in person. We do not yet have access to the daily calendars for several other senior officials who we believe may also have been present.

Also in attendance were over two dozen representatives from at least 16 oil and gas corporations and industry groups, including the B.C. LNG Alliance (which also had a seat on the official Climate Leadership Team), Canadian Natural Resources Limited, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Encana, Imperial Oil, Nexen/CNOOC, Progress Energy (wholly owned subsidiary of Malaysian state-owned Petronas), Shell Canada, Suncor, Teck, Woodfibre Energy, CAPP and others.

Recall that when the climate leadership plan was released in the summer of 2016 it largely ignored the leadership team’s 32 recommendations, in what was dubbed by some as a “climate non-plan.”

Meet the Real Climate “Leadership” Team: Big Oil and Gas Corporations

Most troubling of all is that this was much more than a “consultation” process.

The documents obtained make it clear that in fact the process constituted an invitation to the country’s most powerful oil and gas companies to shape both the substance and language of B.C.’s next climate plan.

For example, the working groups on methane emissions and electrification were each asked to “refine language in CLT recommendation” and to “add detail and process direction” regarding timing and whether policy measures would be voluntary or regulatory. The working group on the carbon tax was asked to “ensure consistency with other jurisdictions” and to “determine ‘the art of the possible’ (how much and how fast).”

The working groups were asked to come together to “work on offsets.” The timeline for the working groups also include the action item “finalize language” for the “CLP Framework” (ie, Climate Leadership Plan Framework).

Our FOI request asked for minutes and/or summaries of the meetings and industry consultation process, but none were released to us. Pages 19 to 38 of the relevant records were withheld on the grounds they constitute advice or recommendations to a public body or minister (S. 13) and/or that they would be harmful to the business interests of a third party (S. 21).

Perhaps these missing pages are the minutes and summaries. Or perhaps they are something else. We have asked the Information and Privacy Commissioner to review the government’s decision to withhold these records.

It should be noted that it took two FOI attempts to even receive this much information. In July 2016, we submitted identical requests to the Ministry of Environment/Climate Action Secretariat and the Ministry of Natural Gas Development for documents relating to any meetings or other communication between the fossil fuel industry and senior officials in relation to a wide range of energy and climate policy matters starting in January 2016.

The Ministry of Natural Gas Development withheld all documents having to do with the industry engagement process and Calgary meetings.

The Ministry of Environment released the agendas for the January 13 working group meetings (just the agendas, no other contextual information). It was only through a follow-up request to the Ministry of Natural Gas Development (now part of the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources) that we obtained the fuller set of documents reviewed here. These should all have been released in response to our initial request, along with material from the other rounds of working group meetings (and who knows what else).

A Stunning Example of Institutional Corruption

In sum, the B.C. government carried out secret meetings in another province with an industry that is a top contributor to the BC Liberal Party to shape policy that ought to constrain that very industry — as any meaningful climate policy must do in relation to the fossil fuel sector.

Ironically, none of these meetings “count” as lobbying under B.C.’s current Lobbyist Registration Act, which doesn’t require meetings or communication invited by public officials to be reported by lobbyists. Meanwhile, no other sector — environmental organizations, First Nations, etc. — could even dream of this kind of access.

BC’s Last #Climate 'Leadership' Plan Was Written in Big Oil’s Boardroom (Literally) https://t.co/lUKX67Hsy9 #bcpoli @CCPA_BC @bcliberals

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) September 18, 2017

This is more than a case of ideological alignment between a corporate-friendly party and its corporate donors. It is a profound blurring of the lines between government and industry, who set out to make policy together behind closed doors, while what can only now be characterized as a pretend consultation process was acted out publicly.

This blurring of the lines is an example of what ethicists refer to as “institutional corruption:” a “systemic and strategic influence that undermines the institution’s effectiveness by diverting it from its purpose or weakening its ability to achieve its purpose, including…weakening either the public’s trust in that institution or the institution’s inherent trustworthiness.”

The whole charade also represents an abuse of the climate leadership team’s time and a mockery of B.C.’s claims to leadership during the Paris climate talks, not to mention a tremendous waste of public resources.

How much did the province spend on the climate leadership team process — convening the 17-member team for meetings, carrying out extensive climate modeling to support their deliberations (services that were contracted from the private firm Navius, no doubt at significant expense) and public consultation activities? How many thousands of hours of staff time were spent by ministry personnel to support it all?

B.C.’s new government has committed to more ambitious climate policies than what the previous Liberal government outlined in its non-plan last year. But with the fossil fuel industry accustomed to putting pen to paper on policy and regulation, a great deal of political will is required to move forward. And that ban on corporate donations to political parties? It can’t come soon enough.

   —

Shannon Daub is Associate Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives B.C. Office, and co-director of the Corporate Mapping Project. Zoe Yunker is Zoë is a graduate student in the Sociology Department at the University of Victoria and a research assistant with the Corporate Mapping Project.

This report is published as part of the Corporate Mapping Project, a research and public engagement initiative investigating the power of the fossil fuel industry. The CMP is jointly led by the University of Victoria, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ B.C. and Saskatchewan offices, and the Parkland Institute. In March, the project reported on the millions of dollars donated by the fossil fuel industry in recent years to B.C. political parties.  This research is supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

DeSmog Canada is a community partner of the Corporate Mapping Project.

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This is a guest post by Lisa Sammartino, the democracy campaigner for B.C.'s largest democracy group Dogwood. It originally ran on The Tyee.

Christy Clark rounded out her final days in office with a parting gift — not to British Columbians but to a loyal BC Liberal donor, Taseko Mines. The company donated more than $130,000 to the BC Liberals, and now they’ve scooped up Clark’s prize.

While members of the Tsilhqot'in First Nation were being chased from their homes by an aggressive wildfire, Clark’s outgoing government approved exploratory permits for the company to dig up their traditional, and constitutionally protected, lands — an area so culturally and environmentally important that Harper’s Conservatives rejected federal permits twice.

But then again, the federal Conservative party can’t accept corporate donations. Over here in the “Wild West,” Clark’s BC Liberals can, and did.

With a new government in the legislature and a new face in the premier’s office, laws to ban Big Money are finally on the way. The NDP has promised to bring in campaign finance reform as their first order of business and the B.C. Greens are planning to hold them to it.

But after decades of unchecked political power, fuelled by unlimited amounts of money from all over the world, still too many unanswered questions remain. British Columbians suspect the impact Big Money can have on the laws in B.C. That’s why we’ve fought so hard to rein in donation laws in the first place.

Political decisions should reflect the needs of the people who live and work in this province — not foreign corporations with large bank accounts. But it’s too late to close the door once the horse is already out of the barn.

Why B.C. Needs a Corruption Inquiry https://t.co/27QKNYJ5kV @DogwoodBC @BCLiberals #bcpoli #PoliticalDonations #MountPolley #HousingCrisis pic.twitter.com/6dsJ7gtL2r

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) July 26, 2017

Follow the money

Too many decisions — potentially made under the influence of Big Money — will still stand, even after we ban Big Money.

Remember Mount Polley? The mining company whose tailing pond breach became the biggest environmental disaster in B.C.’s history? Imperial Metals has given more than $213,760 to the BC Liberals, $54,220 of which came from its subsidiary Mount Polley Mining.

B.C.’s Ministry of Environment knew about risks the tailing pond posed and issued five warnings to the company, but took no punitive action when warnings were ignored. Meanwhile, Christy Clark and BC Liberals ministers were flying to Calgary for a $1-million fundraiser hosted by Imperial Metals’ controlling shareholder Murray Edwards.

The mine was allowed to reopen two years after the disaster with no fines or criminal charges, and taxpayers are on the hook for cleanup costs.

To top it all off, the company is now allowed to dump waste directly into Quesnel Lake, where residents of Likely B.C. get their drinking water.

Ministry of Health researcher and PhD student Roderick MacIsaac committed suicide in 2012 after being fired from the ministry, along with seven other researchers. MacIsaac had been evaluating a smoking cessation drug called Champix, which was covered by B.C.’s pharmacare program. The drug, produced by international pharmaceutical powerhouse Pfizer, had previously been taken out of the pharmacare program in France because of concerns that it was causing serious mental health side effects, including suicide.

In 2012, the year of the firings, Pfizer lobbyists met with public officials twice and gave more than $3,000 to the BC Liberals. To date, the company has given the BC Liberals more than $45,000 and Champix remains in B.C.’s pharmacare program — side effects untested by provincial researchers.

B.C.’s real estate market is still out-of-control, and policy fixes have been tepid at best. In 2016, eight out of the 10 top donors to the BC Liberals were from the real estate sector, collectively giving over $1.5 million. But BC Liberal politicians were not only filling their campaign coffers; key ministers are actually personally profiting as young families were forced out of the city.

When he left politics, former Minister of Finance Kevin Falcon became a high level executive at Anthem Properties; his successor, Mike De Jong, personally owns eight properties; our previous minister of justice, Suzanne Anton, owns four. High level members of government have made millions from policies that make it easier to funnel dark money into Vancouver’s overinflated housing market.

Kinder Morgan, Trophy Hunting, LNG

These are only a few examples. When you start to see all of the political decisions that have been made to the benefit of Big Money donors and the detriment of British Columbians, it is really alarming. Texas-based Kinder Morgan’s unpopular pipeline approval in B.C., U.S. trophy hunting Super PACs’ pressure to influence over wildlife management, a Malaysian and Chinese state-owned LNG terminal proposed on top of a salmon spawning ground, a lobbyist turned government-appointed chair turned board member of a Las Vegas casino that landed a prime location next to B.C. Place, even the unresolved BC Rail sale… every corner of this province, every sector of industry, has an example to look at.

Like the Charbonneau Commission in Quebec and the federal Gomery Inquiry, B.C.’s own Corruption Inquiry is the only way we can get independent, unbiased answers to our questions and concerns, because it would have the power to subpoena witnesses and examine real evidence.

The Charbonneau Commission was a live courtroom drama; the characters being grilled were real mobsters, construction bosses, party fundraisers and powerful politicians. Putting whistleblowers and witnesses on the stand might be the only way to get real answers from decision-makers that triple-delete emails and had 10 weeks to cart out boxes of documents and clear out their computers.

British Columbians deserve to know whether, and how, donations actually impacted decisions made by politicians. And if they did, those approvals, permits and contracts must be sent back to the drawing board for real assessments.

If we truly want to shake off B.C.’s moniker as the “Wild West” of dirty politics, we need do more than bring in a new sheriff. Because, right now, British Columbians are still tied to the railway tracks.

Image: In the spring of 2014, Premier Christy Clark visited the Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia and met with CEO & chairman Tan Sri Dato’ Sahmsul Azhar Abbas. Credit: Province of British Columbia.

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By Jeremy J.Nuttall for The Tyee.

In the hours after the 2014 Mount Polley mine disaster, authorities were already concerned laws had been broken and the premier’s office was worried fallout from the tailing pond breach would “get in the way” of other planned mines, documents provided to The Tyee reveal.

Almost three years after the disaster, and weeks away from a deadline to lay charges under B.C.’s environment act, no charges have been laid and no fines levied.

The government’s initial reaction to the dam’s collapse is revealed in hundreds of pages of emails and other communications obtained through a freedom of information request and provided to The Tyee by Jessica Ross, an independent researcher and member of the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association.

Ross said she filed the FOI request almost three years ago and only received the documents July 4.

An email exchange between Staff Sgt. Kelly Dahl of the province’s Conservation Officer Service major investigations unit and Sgt. Richard Lebeuf of the Williams Lake RCMP documents raised concerns laws had been broken.

“From the Ministry of Environment's perspective — It appears there are several possible violations of environmental legislation that may have occurred related to this event,” Dahl wrote. He also expressed concern the federal Fisheries Act may have been broken.

Meanwhile, as officials assessed the damage done, some government staff were working to manage public reaction to the spill.

Premier Christy Clark’s then deputy chief of staff Michele Cadario raised concerns other proposed mine developments could be slowed by the disaster.

“Was there anything that could have been done that wasn’t to prevent this situation — are there better standards employed elsewhere that we should look at?” she asked in an email to a host of staffers, including communications people.

“We have a few new mines coming on stream and we don’t want anything to get in the way of that,” she wrote.

RELATED: British Columbians Saddled With $40 Million Clean-Up Bill as Imperial Metals Escapes Criminal Charges

Cadario and other government staffers raised the need to communicate with First Nations in the area and any impact on drinking water.

But they also made an effort to help mine owner Imperial Metals’ public relations efforts after the spill.

The FOI documents show government staff were concerned the company had not been heard from hours after the spill. One email from John Paul Fraser, head of government communications, said the company silence was “looking bad.”

Cadario offered a solution.

“I know the owner of Imperial Metals — I’ll text him and see if he can stir someone up,” Cadario wrote.

The company’s owner, Murray Edwards, has donated more than $400,000 to the BC Liberal Party since 2005 through Imperial Metals and his oil sands company. Edwards also hosted a private fundraiser in Alberta that raised $1 million for the party’s 2013 election campaign.

.@ChristyClarkbc Worried #MountPolley Spill Would Harm New Mine Construction, New Docs Show via @TheTyee #bcpoli https://t.co/59qXtUUvhC

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) July 17, 2017

After speaking to Edwards, Cadario wanted to ensure the company’s statement was being noticed by the public.

“I spoke to the owner Murray Edwards and he said an NR [new release] has gone out — Twitter traffic seems to still say that they haven’t heard from IM — Has that now been rectified?”

In another brief email Clark’s then director of communications Ben Chin said he had spoken to “Jas” about impending TV news coverage of the spill. The reference, following earlier emails on Global TV’s coverage, appears to refer to Jas Johal, then a Global reporter.

“Just finished talking to Jas… it’s just a heads up, not an interview request. He tells me the pictures at 6 will be very graphic. Imperial should get out in front,” Chin wrote.

Johal left journalism weeks later to work in communications for the BC LNG alliance. He was elected as a Liberal MLA for Richmond-Queensborough in May’s provincial election.

The dam containing the tailings pond at the Mount Polley copper and gold mine failed on Aug. 4, 2014, sending more than 25 million cubic metres of waste water into nearby Quesnel Lake and surrounding streams. The mine is about 60 kilometres northeast of Williams Lake.

Investigators concluded the failure was the result of a design flaw.

Cleaning up the disaster cost the province $40 million.

A private prosecution of Imperial Metals and the B.C. government by MiningWatch was blocked in March by the federal government, which cited ongoing investigations. 

Image: Mount Polley mine disaster. Photo: Cariboo Regional District via Youtube

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By Matt Price for iPolitics.

Don’t think for a second that it’s Christy Clark’s nature to go quietly into the night. In response, the B.C. NDP and Greens may have no choice other than to forge a pact to work together in a snap election.

During the press conference in which Christy Clark responded to the agreement between the BC NDP and Greens to cooperate in a minority government, TV cameras caught a glimpse of her speaking notes. The biggest word written on the page was “humble”; apparently she was reminding herself to dial down her signature scrappiness and appear gracious.

Clark also went on to say she would not resign, but would respect the process by a drafting a throne speech and holding a confidence vote — and not right away, either, but a few leisurely weeks later. Then, she named a cabinet that included rumoured candidates for the Speaker’s job, thereby taking them out of contention. With a one-vote difference between Clark’s Liberals and the ‘GreeNDP’ alliance, the question of who will put up the traditionally neutral Speaker has emerged as a key one.

All of this has been done with cold calculation. After losing the vote on the throne speech, an apparently humble and gracious Clark could go to B.C. Lieutenant Governor Judith Guichon and claim there isn’t enough stability in the legislature for any party and request a new election. This would be for ‘the good of the people’, of course.

Guichon, a past donor to the B.C. Liberals who recently praised the late Grace McCarthy for rebuilding the Social Credit party, may very well grant that request.

Meanwhile, B.C. Liberal fundraisers have been busy replenishing all those corporate donations. One report had them depositing almost a million dollars in their bank account three days after the election. Another saw them raising $300,000 in the 48 hours after the NDP-Green agreement was announced.

Is Christy Clark Ramping Up for Another BC Election? #bcelxn2017 #bcpoli https://t.co/7J3M5cpTZP

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) June 19, 2017

Tellingly, the B.C. Liberals have now stopped self-reporting their donations, a practice they used to highlight instead of actually putting controls in place. In short, there will only be one B.C. party with full coffers able to wage a snap election — the Liberals.

Another clue that they’re positioning for the polls is the fact that they just pledged to drop their policy of subjecting transit funding spending in the Lower Mainland to referenda, something which helped wipe out their seats in that region.

After they raise their war chest, also look for their doomed throne speech to take a stronger stance on campaign finance reform, which was another of their festering wounds during the recent election. The B.C. Liberals aren’t preparing for opposition; they are preparing for prime time.

How can the NDP and Greens respond? The tribal logic that ruled until their recent agreement would have them back at each other’s throats at the ballot box. Broke and divided, they’d be vulnerable to a B.C. Liberal party learning from its mistakes — and significantly outspending them. Remember that under the current skewed first-past-the-post electoral system, the Liberals came just a few hundred votes from winning a majority of seats. They will fancy their chances in a rematch.

The only way I see the NDP and Greens being competitive in a snap election is to build on their recent agreement to cooperate in the legislature with a one-time agreement to cooperate during the election itself. They could take their legislative agreement and make it their joint election platform — but most critically, they could plan to not run candidates against one another in any riding. Incumbents would be protected, and in ridings held by the B.C. Liberals, the party that placed second in the recent election would run a candidate exclusively.

Not everyone who voted NDP will go along with voting Green instead in their specific riding, or vice versa, but most will. Moreover, the two parties would have a shot at a “cooperation” narrative that plays well and can attract new voters, particularly if successfully contrasted against a calculating B.C. Liberal party leader who needs to write the word “humble” on her speaking notes.

The end result of such an election pact would probably be a B.C. NDP majority, so the Greens would need to ensure that the NDP’s commitment to electoral reform is front and centre in the campaign. Moving to some form of proportional representation would mean that election pacts of this nature would be moot, and that legislative cooperation would become more routine, giving the Greens a real voice over the long term.

There is only a week or two until all this plays out. Whether B.C. is back at the polls right away or even a few months from now, if the B.C. NDP and Greens are serious about implementing their ambitious agenda, they may need to set aside their tribalism on the campaign trail. Otherwise they risk putting Christy Clark right back in the driver’s seat — and ready for at least four more years of driving the province in the opposite direction.

Image: Premier Christy Clark and her new executive council are sworn in by Lieutenant Governor Judith Guichon, June 2017. Photo: Province of B.C. via Flickr

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In the wee hours of Wednesday morning major news outlets like the CBC made the official call: the B.C. Liberals had won a minority government in the 2017 provincial election.

Except they haven’t … quite … yet.

Here’s how the numbers are currently being reported: B.C. Liberals 43 seats, NDP 41 seats, Greens 3 seats.

These numbers are far from final. As Elections B.C. states right up there on its website, these are primary voting results from an initial count. “Final voting results will not be available until after the conclusion of final count, which will commence on May 22, 2017,” the site states.

There are about 160,000 absentee ballots waiting to be counted and some too-close-to-call ridings like Courtenay-Comox are facing a recount.

But, as Simon Fraser University student Steve Tweedale put it, we don’t need a final count to know it’s false to report the election resulted in a B.C. Liberal minority government.

“Assuming the preliminary count holds up, the outcome of the election is a hung parliament (sometimes called a minority parliament), meaning that no single party has a majority of seats. Under B.C.’s parliamentary system of government, elections determine the composition of the Legislative Assembly; they do not determine the composition of the government,” Tweedale writes.

The B.C. Liberals won 43 seats, just one seat shy of a majority. It is true that Clark will remain premier for the timebeing but she must retain the confidence of the house to continue as premier. If she cannot, one of several things can happen.

In this hung parliament situation, “the norm is the current premier gets the first shot at it, gets the first opportunity to form government,” UBC political scientist Kathryn Harrison told DeSmog Canada.

Clark could try her hand at governing with a minority government but in each act of convening the house she would run the risk of losing its confidence.

“One option would be for the Liberals to take their chances, stake out their positions, the route they would propose to go in government in a throne speech and invite other parties to defeat them which is an interesting option — it’s a bit of a game of chicken,” Harrison said.

“They won’t expect the popular vote.”

Or Clark could choose to step down.

“Sometimes it’s in the interest of a government to control the terms of their defeat,” Harrison said.

If Clark did announce her resignation to the Lieutenant Governor the buck would pass to NDP leader John Horgan to become premier with a minority government. Horgan, like Clark, would need to maintain the confidence of the house to carry this out.

But the B.C. Liberals and the NDP might also jockey for the support of the Green party's three MLAs in the hopes of forming either formal or informal coalitions.

As Clark said last night, “I will work with the other parties to do what needs to be done to keep fighting to protect” B.C.

Here’s where things get very interesting. If you watched coverage of the election last night you may have heard that Andrew Weaver’s Green party “held the balance of power” meaning the Greens have the option to formally (by forming a coalition government) or informally (by maintaining confidence through the support of policy measures and budgets, for example) prop up either the Liberals or the NDP.

“In the days ahead there will be plenty of discussions taking place between all parties,” Weaver told a room of supporters last night.

A BC Liberal Minority Government? Not So Fast https://t.co/CHmRlPXpub #bcpoli #bcelxn2017 @BCGreens #electoralreform @bcndp

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) May 10, 2017

A Liberal/Green Coalition?

It’s likely Clark will invite the Greens to join her cabinet, which they can do as Greens without crossing the aisle. But it is also likely that there will be some irreconcilable political differences that keep the Liberal and Green MLAs at loggerheads.

Weaver has yet to signal what his intentions are (although he did seem to suggest a preference for working with Clark in a controversial Global News interview) but throughout his campaign he stated banning big money in B.C. politics and electoral reform were up top on his list of priorities.

For years Weaver has campaigned to strengthen B.C.’s political donation rules, which currently allow unlimited amounts of foreign, corporate and union donations. The Green party has taken a strong stance on this issue by refusing to accept any corporate or union funds.

"Without any question, that's a deal breaker,” he said last week. “We've got to get the money out of politics.”

This could make the formation of a coalition government with the Liberals — a party awash in corporate cash — difficult.

The Green party is also committed to electoral reform, pushing for proportional representation in B.C. rather than the current first-past-the-post system.

“We support proportional representation because it is a fairer voting system, which encourages democratic participation and accurately reflects voters’ choices in the make-up of government,” Weaver said.

“It’s not obvious what the deal there would be,” Harrison said. “These are not issues that will be easy for Liberals and Greens to come to agreement upon.”

“Maybe financial reform,” Harrison said, “but electoral reform does not serve the Liberals' interests.”

On election night Weaver also stated his position on LNG is non-negotiable. Two LNG projects are approved in British Columbia — Woodfibre LNG in Howe Sound and Pacific Northwest LNG near Prince Rupert, which is projected to be one of the single largest source points of greenhouse gas emissions in the country, making it impossible for B.C. to meet its climate targets.

The Green party also pledged to cancel the controversial Site C dam, a crowning achievement and non-negotiable project for the B.C. Liberals.

So the differences in the Liberal and Green platforms seem pretty vast.

A NDP/Green Coalition?

As certainly as the Liberals will go courting the Greens, so will the NDP.

At a rally last night, John Horgan said a new government is in order.

“British Columbians have waited 16 years for a government that works for them, and we are going to have to ask you to wait a little bit longer until all the votes are counted and the final results of this election are known,” he said.

“But this is what we do know: A majority of British Columbians voted for a new government and I believe that’s what they deserve.”

A coalition between the NDP and the Greens seems easier to accomplish at least on the surface as the two parties share more general alignment on policies.

Of greatest significance is the NDP-Green alignment on two policies that would change B.C. elections forever. 

The NDP commitment to ban corporate and union donations falls squarely in line with one of the Green’s top priorities.

On electoral form, the NDP have also spoken in favour, vowing to send the issue to a referendum and campaign in favour of reform if if elected — also in line with the Green platform.

The NDP have also explicitly spoken out against the Pacific Northwest LNG project, due to significant greenhouse gas emissions and threats to the Skeena River salmon runs. So the NDP and Greens will likely have an easier time finding common ground when it comes to the LNG industry.

On Site C, the NDP have promised to send the Site C dam for an expedited review by the B.C. Utilities Commission, so it's also not hard to imagine the Greens and NDP finding common ground on this issue.

It’s possible a coalition with the Greens will give the NDP the political cover necessary to make several bold moves including banning big money in politics, moving to some form of proportional representation and possibly even scrapping the Site C dam altogether. 

Coalition a ‘Risky Proposition’ for Greens

The Greens will want to proceed carefully in their discussions with either the Liberals or the NDP, Harrison said.

“Coalitions governments are risky for junior partners,” she said.  

“I think for the Greens to enter a formal or informal coalition with either the NDP or the Liberals is a risky proposition because the junior partners in those coalitions tends to not fare well in the next election.”

The Green party will need to decide what its hardline tradeoff will be for supporting another party.

“Green parties internationally have a tendency to insist on some policy like a carbon tax — we already have one — as a condition for participation in the coalition and then get wiped off the map in the next election.”  

Yet there may be one key condition the Greens could place on their support: the promise of electoral reform.

“In this case I think the big win, the Holy Grail for the Greens would be a commitment to electoral reform for the system,” Harrison said.

The Green vote is depressed by the first-past-the-post system, Harrison said.

“It’s not that they don’t win seats, it’s that a lot of voters aren’t voting Green because they know their vote won’t count.”

A change in B.C.'s electoral system would both transform electoral politics in B.C. and would also change prospects for the Green party in the future, Harrison added.

“But it’s hard for me to imagine the Greens getting that concession from the Liberals because the Liberals have been the biggest beneficiary of the current electoral system.”

Image: Premier Christy Clark and Lieutenant Governor of B.C., the Honourable Judith Guichon, dissolve parliament for the 2017 election period. Photo: Province of B.C. via Flickr

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Provincial politics. There, I said them — two of the most boring words in the English language.

There’s no denying it. Provincial elections fail to capture the imaginations of citizens the way national or even international elections do.

Case in point: in the last B.C. provincial election, just 55 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot — 13 per cent fewer than voted in the last federal election.

I get it: most of us are just trying to pay the bills, put dinner on the table and make sure the kids get to soccer practice. There’s not exactly a whole lot of time (or energy) left to monitor several different levels of politics.

Yet Canadians have been captivated by the train wreck that’s been unfolding south of the border for the last six months — even though there ain’t much we can do about another country’s state of affairs.

So if you give a shit about the state of the world, now’s as good a time as any to focus on what you can change. If you’re a British Columbian, you’ve got a golden opportunity to make your mark in just one week from today.

In Canada, the provinces are responsible for managing things like health care, education, housing and natural resources — so, snooze-worthy or not, provincial politics have a major influence over our day-to-day lives.

Here are our Top 5 reasons to give a shit about the B.C. election.

1) Because It’s a Referendum on Big Money in Politics

When the New York Times devotes an entire article to how corrupt your province’s politics have become, calling it the ‘wild west’ of political cash, it’s time to sit up and pay attention.

Here are the facts: unlike many other provinces, B.C. has no limits on political donations. Anyone, including foreigners and foreign companies, can give as much moola as they want to political parties in our province.

A Globe and Mail investigation this spring found lobbyists breaking one of the few rules B.C. has in place by donating to the B.C. Liberals under their own names, while being reimbursed by companies, thus concealing the true source of the money.

An RCMP investigation is now underway into the practice. Meanwhile, the B.C. Liberals (who are not affiliated with the federal Liberal party and are actually strongly aligned with the federal Conservative party) announced they would return $93,000 in prohibited donations.

Thanks to these lax laws, the Liberals raised $12.6 million in 2016 — more than any other provincial party in power. The B.C. NDP meanwhile raised $6.2 million in 2016.

Despite the fact 86 per cent of British Columbians want to see big money banned from politics, the Liberals have defeated six NDP bills to ban big money in politics.

When asked during the televised leaders’ debate about how she’d regain British Columbians’ trust after the donations scandal, Clark said: “I think the thing that matters most to British Columbians is jobs.”

If corruption matters to you, this is your chance to get big money out of politics.  Both the NDP and the Greens have promised to ban corporate and union donations if elected.

2) Two Words: ‘Legalized Bribery’

In a system that’s been called ‘legalized bribery,’ Premier Christy Clark has been receiving an annual stipend of up to $50,000 from her party, financed by political contributions. This is in addition to her $195,000 a year salary paid for by taxpayers.

“No elected official in the U.S. is allowed to get a stipend; that would be bribery,” said Dan Levin, a New York Times reporter covering Canada. “I lived in China for seven-and-a-half years; in China or Russia this would just be called ‘corruption’ or ‘nepotism.’ But here, it’s just ‘legal.’ ”

That salary top-up led two groups to file a court challenge to overturn the government’s decision on Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline due to alleged conflicts of interest between the premier and project proponents, who have given $560,000 in political contributions over six years to the Liberal party.

A week after the New York Times turned its glaring spotlight on B.C., Clark finally announced she’ll stop the controversial salary top-up. But the B.C. Liberals still haven’t made any commitment to get big money out of politics.

While Clark has been raking in close to $250,000 a year, during the 16-year tenure of the B.C. Liberals, the cost of living for ordinary British Columbians has skyrocketed — from housing and child care to health care premiums, Hydro bills and ICBC rates.

Entire campaigns have popped up to stop the squeeze on younger British Columbians and fight for $10 a day childcare. If the ability for working class people to get by matters to you, cast a ballot, mmmmkay?

3) Because The Largest Mining Disaster in Canadian History Went Unpunished

When a dam broke at the Mount Polley mine in August 2014, it unleashed a four-square-kilometre lake full of mining waste into Polley Lake, Hazeltine Creek and Quesnel Lake, a source of drinking water and major spawning grounds for sockeye salmon.

You might be thinking: that sounds really shitty, but surely it’s not the government’s fault?

Oh how we wish that were the case. But a two-year investigation by B.C.’s auditor general found that compliance and enforcement expectations were not met after a “decade of neglect.”

The report said that to reduce the risk of “unfortunate and preventable incidents like Mount Polley,”compliance and enforcement should be separated from the Ministry of Energy and Mines Ministry because the ministry’s role to promote mining development creates an “irreconcilable conflict.”

But guess what? The government ignored that recommendation and continues business as usual. In fact, the government approved another mine with a massive tailings pond just like the one at Mount Polley, even though an expert panel said to stop doing that. Alaskans downstream are so worried about their salmon rivers that they’re practically begging the B.C. government to get its shit together.

Meanwhile, Mount Polley and its parent company Imperial Metals got off without a single fine or criminal charge for the largest mining accident in Canadian history.

To add insult to injury, British Columbians have been left on the hook for millions of dollars of clean-up bills for the Mount Polley spill.

And now, just days before the writ dropped, the B.C. government approved a permit for Mount Polley to discharge mining waste directly into Quesnel Lake. Seriously.

You’d almost think there was some corruption at play or something.

P.S. Mount Polley and its parent company Imperial Metals have donated more than $200,000 to the B.C. Liberals since 2005.

4) Because We’re Still Killing Grizzly Bears for Trophies

Since we’re on the topic of totally screwed up things that B.C. allows because of unlimited political donations, let’s talk about grizzly bears. About 300 of them will be killed this year so that hunters can hang their heads on the wall at home.

Many grizzlies will be killed in B.C.’s provincial parks and protected areas. Many will be females. This will happen despite the fact 90 per cent of British Columbians want to see trophy hunting banned.

Photo: Dogwood

Why? Money talks yet again.

Guide outfitters — who can earn as much as $20,000 for helping a foreign hunter bag a grizzly bear — have donated nearly $62,000 to the B.C. Liberals since 2005.

Fun fact: a 2012 study by Stanford University in conjunction with the Center for Responsible Travel found that bear viewing groups in the Great Bear Rainforest generated more than 12 times more in visitor spending than bear hunting.

Most recently, wealthy hunting society Safari Club International donated $60,000 to the Guide Outfitters Association of B.C., bragging in a since-removed Facebook post about “working … to prevent the NDP from getting elected.”

The NDP have vowed to end the trophy hunt, as have the Green Party.

Safari Club International spent nearly a million dollars lobbying in the U.S. last year, including on legislation related to species such as elephants, wolves and polar bears. Handy fact: One of their members was responsible for killing Cecil the Lion.

Ahem, did we mention this is your chance to get big money out of politics?

5) Because We’re Losing Our Place in the World

There was a while there when B.C. was praised for being a leader in tackling climate change, while maintaining one of the strongest economies in Canada. That time is over.

A recent L.A. Times piece focused on B.C.’s new “embrace of fossil fuels.”

“Now, however, Canada’s West Coast is striving toward a very different kind of cutting edge: British Columbia is positioning itself to become a global leader in exporting fossil fuels, with plans to nearly triple crude oil exports through a controversial new pipeline and vastly expand production of liquefied natural gas to be sold in Asia,” read a recent piece in the Los Angeles Times.

Premier Christy Clark has been a big pusher of any and all fossil fuel development, including a stunning about-face on Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain oil pipeline. Meanwhile, she decided to ignore the recommendations of her expert panel on climate change.

It’s gotten so bad that even former B.C. Liberal premier Gordon Campbell —who’s given precious few interviews — had some choice words for B.C. in the Los Angeles Times article.

“They still say that they take pride in having a revenue-neutral carbon tax,” Campbell said. “If you do, then what are the next steps you take? The journey’s not done. We started it with some good, strong policies that I would have liked to see carry on. But it’s up to the current elected leaders. There are leaders and there are followers.”

Even if climate change isn’t No. 1 on your priority list, chances are you don’t want B.C. to become a laggard on the global climate file just as the world accelerates toward a clean energy economy.

This no-holds-barred approach to natural resources has antagonized B.C.’s First Nations, who are calling on their friends and allies to vote for anyone but Clark.

“The Clark government has virtually neglected the people of British Columbia in her obsessive pursuit of large-scale resource development projects,” said Grand Chief Stewart Phillip at a press conference this week.

Grievances include the B.C. Liberals’ continued musings about LNG, even though the market appears to be dead, and their bull-headed approach to the Site C dam, which Phillip described as a “sleazy, political make-work project to shore up the failings B.C. Jobs program.”

Why is Clark so enthusiastic about fossil fuel exports? It could have something to do with the 22,000 meetings her government has had with fossil fuel lobbyists since 2010. Or with the roughly $4 million in donations her party has received from oil and gas companies since 2008. Just sayin’.

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For years, the B.C. government has touted the benefits of developing a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export industry — and while some of those benefits may be legit, one of them almost certainly isn’t.

That’s the claim that exporting natural gas from B.C. will somehow result in emissions reductions in China.

Let’s back up for a second.

Exporting LNG involves first fracking for gas in B.C.’s northeast, a process which causes earthquakes, uses epic amounts of fresh water and leaks the potent greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere at a rate 2.5 times higher than what the B.C. government has been admitting.

Once the gas is extracted from the ground, it will be sent via pipeline to terminals on the coast, where it will be cooled to -161 C in an energy intensive process. If those plants used electricity to run their compression stations, just one large LNG plant would use roughly equivalent to all of the power from the Site C dam. But these plants won’t be using electricity for the most part — they’ll be burning gas to run compressors to cool gas into a liquid ready for transport to foreign markets.

In the ultimate hypocrisy, B.C. isn’t allowed to burn that gas at home to create electricity because it’s too dirty. Bit of a head scratcher, right? After the gas has been liquefied, it will be loaded on tankers and theoretically sent to Asian markets.

Despite all that, Clark has had the audacity to claim both in the Liberal platform and in The Globe and Mail that Pacific NorthWest LNG could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 60 megatonnes. Yes, you read that correctly. Clark argues that creating a huge fossil fuel export industry in B.C. will somehow reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

Thankfully, the policy experts over at the Pembina Institute are very skilled with their calculators and have thoroughly debunked that claim.

Clark’s claim is based on the assumption that LNG would only displace coal, which is a fallacy. As Pembina has pointed out before, LNG from B.C. would not only compete with carbon-intensive fossil fuels such as coal, but also with low-carbon sources of energy, including nuclear, hydro, solar and wind.

Take Pacific NorthWest LNG. The Petronas-backed terminal plans to export 20.5 Mt of LNG per year via its Lelu Island facility (which just so happens to be in critical salmon habitat).

Pembina’s Josha MacNab writes:

“The project would result in annual carbon pollution totalling around 9 Mt (carbon dioxide equivalent, or CO2e) from its export terminal and associated upstream operations in B.C. Tanker transport and burning of the exported LNG for electricity generation would emit an additional 61 Mt (assuming a 1 per cent methane leakage rate during shipping and downstream operations in export markets). As such, the total emissions associated with PNW LNG are estimated at about 70 Mt per year.”

Now, even if all of that LNG did displace China’s current average energy mix (coal accounts for 73 per cent of Chinese electricity), LNG exports from Pacific NorthWest LNG would reduce global emissions by just 12 Mt (about a sixth of what Clark claimed).

However, it’s likely to be much worse than that.

“Looking at the overall energy mix does not give an accurate picture of what is happening in China’s energy system,” MacNab writes.  “Last year, while total electricity generation in China increased, coal-fired generation decreased by three per cent. Meanwhile, zero-emitting generation rose by 9 per cent, driven by large increases in solar and wind power. (Grid-connected wind capacity grew by 34 per cent, while grid-connected solar capacity rose by 74 per cent.) As such, all incremental power was provided by low- and zero-emitting sources of energy. This trend is expected to continue.”

As a new source of power, LNG from B.C. would most likely compete with other new sources of power.

“This is especially true in China, where electricity demand is still growing, and the legacy coal fleet is still relatively young. China is unlikely to shut down coal plants that are already built and have operating life remaining,” MacNab writes.

“Given recent energy developments in China, the claim that B.C. LNG will only displace coal is unfounded. Rather, the opposite scenario — that LNG from B.C. will displace low- and zero-emitting power sources — is more likely.”

If LNG does displace renewables, Pacific NorthWest LNG could increase global carbon pollution by 70 MT per year (more than all of B.C.’s current total emissions), Pembina found.

So there you have it: Clark’s claims about LNG reducing global greenhouse gas emissions are flat-out false.

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Only two weeks remain until Election Day in British Columbia and one of the biggest questions to be answered between now and then is how many millennials — voters between the ages of 18 and 34 — are going to get out to vote.

“In the past, we’ve had a really low youth voter turnout,” Raaj Chatterjee, a third-year engineering student at Simon Fraser University and organizer with Young Climate Voters B.C., told DeSmog Canada.

“I think that’s starting to change,” Chatterjee said.

“Especially with events in the States… a lot of people are waking up to being more involved or at least know what’s going on in politics.”

Federal Election Brought Major Bump to Youth Vote

During the 2015 federal election, there was a massive spike in the number of young people who headed to the ballot box: voter turnout for the age category of 18 to 24 spiked to 57.1 per cent in 2015, compared to only 38.8 per cent in 2011.

The difference? Liberal leader and now Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Young voters adored him: his approval rating among British Columbians aged 18 to 34 hit a stunning 71 per cent a day before the election, compared to 27 per cent for Stephen Harper.

Unfortunately for youth voter turnout advocates, there is no Trudeau-like figure in the upcoming B.C. election. In fact, millennial perception of the three major party leaders is extremely low: when asked by Insights West who would make the best premier, 17 per cent picked the NDP’s John Horgan, 14 per cent picked the Green Party’s Andrew Weaver and only seven per cent picked current premier and Liberal leader Christy Clark.

That leaves a full 62 per cent — or almost two-thirds — of young voters who aren’t sure. However, it’s that block of undecided voters that often end up determining the outcome of an election and 69 per cent of millennials feel it’s time for a change in government.

“It’s interesting: a lot of people plan to vote, but not a lot of people knew how they were going to vote yet,” says Emily Glass, organizer with Dogwood, referring to recent conversations with students. “I think it speaks to the reality of my generation, that we seem to be less partisan and the conversation looks different.”

Will Youth Voter Turnout Decide the BC Election? #bcpoli #bcelxn2017 https://t.co/mlrjeiTYKa @dogwoodbc @SamaraCDA

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 25, 2017

Housing and Poverty Rank As Highest Issue For Young Voters

Millennials appear to be driven more by issues than by particular parties. In a recent Insights West poll, just over half of people in that age group pegged “housing / poverty / homelessness” as the most important issue facing British Columbia, compared to only 27 per cent of people over the age of 55.

The environment was the second most important issue to young voters (alongside healthcare). For older voters, environment ranked fifth, below other issues like education, the economy and accountability.

The big question is if young voters are going to show up on May 9. In 2013, only 39.8 per cent of people between the ages of 25 and 34 who were registered to vote actually voted. That’s compared to 74.2 per cent of registered voters between 65 and 74.

Over 50 Voter PopUps In Vancouver Attempt to Familiarize Voters With Process

One of the big inhibitors for young voters is their lack of permanent address and awareness of the registration process.

That’s where strategies like the Voter PopUp — designed by the nonpartisan democracy organization Samara — can come in.

According to John Beebe, Samara’s manager of outreach, the tool was developed during the federal election and is now being piloted in Metro Greater Vancouver in partnership with Elections B.C.

“It’s really a tool for community-based organizations to help engage their communities and demystify the voting process,” Beebe told DeSmog Canada. “It does that in a very simple but very powerful way by allowing community organizations to set up mock polling places: you have ballots, and ballot boxes, and voting screens and all the elements that you would experience when go into an actual polling place.”

The over 50 Voter PopUps in Vancouver don’t specifically target young voters, with locations including food banks, drop-in shelters and libraries.

But Beebe says that young people with higher education experience already participate in voting at a relatively high rate, whereas young people who have not attended post-secondary education at all or who may not have a stable income participate at a “very, very low rate.”

That fact is exacerbated by the failure of political parties to perform actual outreach to young people.

“They haven’t because they’re cynical and think young people don’t participate,” he says. “It’s this catch-22 situation, where they don’t think young people participate and don’t meaningfully reach out to young people, and then young people don’t participate because no-one’s meaningfully connecting with them.”

Millennial Focus on Issues Over Parties

Both Chatterjee and Glass say their organizations are deploying similar tactics, including helping young voters register and providing information about the voting process.

Other efforts have been used by the likes of the B.C. Federation of Students, which set a goal of 10,000 voting pledges from university students with a particular focus on “peer-to-peer persuasion.”

“Of course it looks different when there’s an election or certain campaign points, but we’re always organizing in neighbourhood teams,” Glass says. “I’ve found that is one of the most effective ways to reach youth. If they’re interested in an issue more so than partisan politics. Between elections, that’s the moment to have those conversations.”

As we’ve seen with recent elections, the undecided voters can make all of the difference. So come May 9, the result could come down to which party did the best job engaging with millennials — and how many young voters ultimately make it to the ballot box.

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