When a big financial donor to Liberals wanted to acquire publicly owned BC Rail, Liberals pretended the railway was a money loser with little value and sold it, despite an election promise not to do so. Then, they quietly distributed the railway’s extensive land assets in sweetheart deals with friendly developers. After that, government spent millions of taxpayer dollars to induce guilty pleas and end the infamous BC Rail scapegoat trial.
BC Hydro: your primary role is NOT asset builder
We know Gordon Campbell crafted a story that people in BC should have enough domestic generation capacity to cover the most extreme shortage of water we could imagine. Like any unethical insurance salesman he consciously omitted telling the public what certainty of supply in a highly unlikely year would cost.
A private room where customers deliver bags of cash
Liberals believed Dirty Money involved “victimless crimes” so they chose to tolerate illegal behaviour that provided a boost to economic activity. The Campbell/Clark Governments were more interested in gaining political advantage. Families faced with unaffordable housing & others affected when thousands died from illicit drugs would describe it differently. The corruption was anything but victimless.
Enough said
Wind energy has become crazy cheap in the United States: With lowest costs approaching $10 per MWh and lots at under $20 per MWh. Site C power may cost $120 MW.
Good news, bad news
Bill Good is in the news this week. David Ball wrote about this news reader turned political activist in the The Star Vancouver. In years past, Mr. Good was a favourite subject of this blog, even though he seemed to have little regard for bloggers…
Fugitive emissions and fugitive revenues
Between 2004 and 2017, the quantity of natural gas produced increased by 64% and the royalties, which once measured over $1.5 billion annually, disappeared.
Open letter to BC NDP
The recent revelations about the supposed “decision process” regarding continuing with Site C, as detailed by Sarah Cox, are totally unacceptable. The public now knows that there never was any intention… to Stop Site C.
Government review of BC Hydro is specious
Some may be able to moderate use of electricity from the provincial grid but almost no individual can stop being a BC Hydro consumer. That fact obliges politicians to ensure the company is operated with maximum efficiency for the benefit of every citizen, not the relative handfull that are rewarded by BC Hydro’s misconceived spending plans. Sadly, the Horgan Government does not agree. Utility policies and company management are almost unchanged during the last 11 months and the recently announced review is specious.
Canada’s plan: do the opposite of what is promised
Delegates from 195 countries met in Paris for the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had a plan to address climate change and “take on a new leadership role internationally.”
Canada inflating the carbon bubble
Canada, British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan are today committed to pumping billions of dollars into the inevitable carbon bubble. Delaying transition to renewables to extract additional wealth from fossil fuels is dangerous Smarter people than Notley and Trudeau prefer a different approach.
Corporate interest outranks public interest
Many citizens — although not In-Sights readers — will be shocked to learn that credits owed natural gas producers soared by more than $1 billion from April to November 2018. That increase is two and a half times more than the total gas royalties received by government in the three fiscal years ended March 2018. The $3.2 billion balance owed to producers ensures that royalty revenues will remain at paltry levels throughout the Horgan Government’s present term.
Ferry innovation? Wazzat?
The Havyard shipyard announced that it received a contract to build seven battery-powered ferries for Fjord1, Norwegian transport conglomerate. The news comes after the operators of the first all-electric ferry in Norway, the ‘Ampere’, reported some impressive statistics after operating the ship for over 2 years. They claim that the all-electric ferry cuts emissions by 95% and costs by 80%. Unsurprisingly, the potential cost savings are attracting a lot of orders for new electric ferries and for the conversion of existing diesel-powered ferries…
Climate change denial and the economic policy of idiots
Committing billions of taxpayers’ dollars to ensure the public carries all economic risks of the Trans Mountain project is not only financially unsound, it requires a commitment to climate change denial similar to that of Trump’s EPA assassin Scott Pruitt. The positions of Canada and Alberta show absolute ignorance of today’s economic world…
Unreliable narrators
In British Columbia, ethical rules of news gathering are not always followed. Some offences are minor, others are significant…
Financial destruction of BC Hydro
Simple financial analysis demonstrates that management of BC Hydro during recent years was thoroughly incompetent. Largely, that is explained by policies and people imposed by BC Liberals on a utility that had served the public proficiently for more than four decades…
Masking BC Hydro’s financial condition
Under BC Liberals, BC Hydro stopped using regulatory accounts for rate smoothing and used them instead to hide the true state of the utility’s financial condition.
The race to the bottom is over
In the fiscal years 2016 and 2017, natural gas royalty payments totalled $291 million. However, credits owed producers increased $748 million so, if the province bothered to record these obligations as was recommended by the Office of the Auditor General, the royalty account had a two-year deficit of $457 million. A decade ago, two fiscal years — 2006 and 2007 — produced gas royalty payments of $3.7 billion (2017 dollars) from substantially less production.
BC Hydro aims to mislead citizens about domestic consumption – updated
If we had experienced more truthfulness from BC Hydro, the province would not be spending billions on Site C. Not only is the project an option more expensive than alternatives, domestic demand does not support the addition of any new sources of power beyond those involving upgrades of existing generating facilities.
Organizational inertia and Site C
The decision to proceed with Site C was not based on need for power by BC consumers. Demand is this province has been more or less unchanged since 2005… While the NDP has done much to change the direction of government in BC, they’ve been paralyzed when it comes energy policies. BC Hydro has been a troubled organization for years and it will not be rescued by timid actions. That’s bad news for every BC business and ever resident who consumes electricity.
Priorities
There is a small group of people — BC Liberals and friends — who viewed BC Hydro as a giant faucet for disbursement of cash. It is a costly reality for consumers of electricity in British Columbia…
in-sights.ca 
[…] If David Eby’s government supported or acquired the Hecate Strait project planned by Oceanic Wind Energy Inc., power could…