Gwen and I raised three adult children in North Vancouver. Each lives in this community, as do our seven grandchildren. Before retirement, I worked in accounting and small business management. Since 2009, I have published commentary about public issues at IN-SIGHTS.CA.
David Card’s Nobel Prize carries with it a cash prize of more than C$700,000 but the economist may experience greater satisfaction from credibility the award lends to his findings. Those conclusions challenged conventional wisdom and have been steadily disputed by “useful idiots” of the evil geniuses who control economies of the world.
John Horgan’s crew had a truckload of hard hats ready to go when they formed government in 2017 and the last thing they intended to do was alter the controversial Site C project, secret deals BC Hydro had with private power producers, LNG promotion, and science-free facilitation of fracked gas production. Going forward with the status quo would cost tens of billions of dollars in unneeded construction and fossil fuel subsidies. It would also exacerbate extreme events from climate change. But following BC Liberal policies would dull the Official Opposition and silence many right-wing critics. The Premier decided that was smart politics for his party…
BC Hydro and government overseers have long claimed electricity demand is growing at a rate of 40% over 20 years. In fact, demand has not grown since 2005. What did grow was the average unit price consumers paid BC Hydro. That increased 115% in the 20 years from 2001 to 2021.During that time, natural gas production in BC more than doubled and public revenues from gas almost disappeared…
John Horgan is involved in a political game that could be called, “Look at This, Not at That!” No one can argue with the need for energy consumers to use non-destructive, clean renewable electricity in place of fossil fuels. Encouragement of that shift is vital to human survival. But another part of the Horgan plan is to increase use of fossil fuels while pretending there are no harmful emissions of carbon caused by burning coal exported from BC ports or by liquefaction, transportation, regasification, and consumption of natural gas in other jurisdictions.
While John Horgan’s government has been using billions of public dollars to improve profitability of private producers of fossil fuels, University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC) professor Élyse Caron-Beaudoin has been examining effects of natural gas production on people living near BC gas fields…
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you’ve always gotten.” That was the advice of Jessie Potter, the featured speaker at the opening of the 1981 Woman to Woman conference.
In 2021, we see strange people in BC — humans I suspect Dietrich Bonhoeffer would categorize as stupid — mobbing to prey on politicians, healthcare workers, hospital patients and now school children. For thousands, the restraints of decency are lost. Bonhoeffer’s words might help to explain the behaviour…
Husband, dad and small business owner Sean Wood posted an item on Facebook that is worth our attention. With permission, it is repeated…
There is much written here about BC Hydro and 17 years of flat demand for electricity by the utility’s residential, commercial and industrial customers. Despite that, in the first quarter of fiscal year 2021-22, the volume of BC Hydro’s purchases of private power from IPPs increased 21% over the same period the year before…
The NDP government is blundering on with construction of the Site C hydro dam on unstable ground, despite availability of much lower-cost energy sources. It is the same government that BC’s Auditor General found has not effectively overseen the safety of dams in BC and did not adequately verify or enforce compliance of safety standards…
Concern is skin deep: all of the parties climate platform policies are grossly insufficient, the climate villains are still in firm control, and any informed outsider would see a nation in deep climate denial…
Fossil fuel producers — and governments captured by the industry — know full well that methane is a serious contributor to climate change. Invisible and odorless, the super powerful greenhouse gas has greater — variously estimated from 25x to 84x — global warming potential than carbon dioxide in the 20 years following release. Scientists believe methane is responsible for about a quarter of the increase in global temperatures caused by humans…
The science is clear. We must act today to address climate change. Goals for reduced emissions in 2030, 2040 or 2050 are simply inadequate. Yet politicians sitting on both sides of Canada’s parliament — along with the governments of British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan — are determined to keep increasing production of fossil fuels. They say production must increase today so that we can afford reductions in the distant future.
In less than 6 years, Canada’s Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner dealt three times with our ethics shy PM:
Trudeau Report (Aga Khan)
Trudeau II Report (SNC-Lavalin)
Trudeau III Report (WE Charity)
Climate science demands immediate reduction of greenhouse gases. Electricity can replace fossil fuels for many uses, but how that energy is generated and distributed is vitally important. As a monopoly able to charge whatever it needs to survive, BC Hydro can stumble along, perhaps for another 20 years, relying on legacy technology. But as the utility’s prices rise, customers will look for other solutions. When that happens, call the corporate undertaker.
British Columbia is not just North America’s largest coal shipper, it plans to be a major LNG exporter. Destructive public policies demonstrate the hold on Canadian politicians enjoyed by private vested interests and lobbyists. Otherwise intelligent people have turned into fools who pretend climate change can be ignored or dealt with by comforting words as long as money can be made from fossil fuels.
Old friends recently moved and mementos stored long ago were rediscovered. One photo was from our days at UBC. It showed a young and future Prime Minister of Canada.
In the year ended March 2021, BC Hydro bought 14,630 gigawatt-hours of electricity from independent power producers (IPPs). The utility paid $1,403,000,000 for that power, an average of $95,899 per gigawatt-hour. Meanwhile, BC Hydro sold surplus electricity on trade markets. It realized $42,520 per gigawatt-hour on those sales, a per-GWh difference of $53,379.
At the legislated deadline, and just before the last holiday weekend of summer 2021, BC Hydro released its financial results for the period April 2020 to March 2021. The utility’s annual service report contains pages of interest to serious analysts, but most of it is bumf, likely read only by the company’s PR minions. But a few pages reveal information that government would rather people ignore…
It is interesting that Jonathan Wilkinson’s federal department is called the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change and George Heyman’s BC job is Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy. Neither is called the Ministry of Climate Action or Ministry of Climate Change Solutions…
Restoring old relationships? Are human physicians still needed? https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2852952 Will Autonomous AI Exceed AI-Aided Physicians as the Best Medical Care?…
That 78% perception-vs-reality gap is wild but not shocking given how local news skews toward the rare violent incident over…
For reasons unclear Donald Trump has decided to threaten voters. In North Carolina he said the following... https://www.rawstory.com/trump-midterms-2677870795/ President Donald Trump told…
Mr. McCutcheon’s essay? Brilliant and thorough analysis. Unlike our politicians juggling contradictory what-ifs, his example doesn’t stop with what might…
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Believe me, taxpayers in Greater Victoria grouse about having to pay for our treatment plant, but I suppose we were…