B.C. Journal: Liberals hold telephone town hall to connect supporters to leader Clark

With less than one hun­dred hours to go until the polls close in British Columbi­a’s 2013 provin­cial elec­tions, par­ty lead­ers Christy Clark and Adri­an Dix are keep­ing busy sched­ules. As I report­ed ear­li­er today, Adri­an is spend­ing most of his Sat­ur­day in the Van­cou­ver sub­urbs. He was in Coquit­lam this morn­ing for the pan­cake break­fast with Chris Wil­son (where I had a chance to meet him), then North Van­cou­ver, Burn­a­by, and Sur­rey dur­ing the afternoon.

Pre­mier Christy Clark has­n’t made as many stops, but she is out and about — just not in her own rid­ing.

At 9 AM she paid a vis­it to Sealand Avi­a­tion in Camp­bell Riv­er, then trekked to Abbots­ford to pro­mote Dar­ryl Ple­cas’ can­di­da­cy at his cam­paign office.

A lit­tle while lat­er she showed up at Peter Fass­ben­der’s cam­paign office in fast-grow­ing Sur­rey to do the same thing.

And this evening, she and the B.C. Lib­er­als are hold­ing a province-wide tele­phone town hall so that sup­port­ers can con­nect with her and ask (pre­screened) questions.

I’ve been lis­ten­ing in to the tele-town hall for around a half hour; it’s just wrap­ping up. I was kind of hop­ing to hear Clark artic­u­late some spe­cif­ic pol­i­cy direc­tions from the plat­form, but most of what I’ve heard is boilerplate.

Con­se­quent­ly, I haven’t learned much except that Clark and the Lib­er­als real­ly like LNG (liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas) and are eager to help big oil com­pa­nies drill like there’s no tomor­row. Clark even answered a ques­tion about edu­ca­tion and school fund­ing by piv­ot­ing to LNG. (She claimed the devel­op­ment of LNG would allow schools to be amply fund­ed with­out need­ing to raise taxes).

The B.C. Lib­er­als’ plat­form talks about exploit­ing LNG as if it was a renew­able resource that will pro­vide jobs indef­i­nite­ly. But this isn’t true.

Nat­ur­al gas does burn more clean­ly than coal or oil, but it’s still an exhaustible fos­sil fuel. Burn­ing it pro­duces emis­sions and it can­not be extract­ed with­out harm­ing the envi­ron­ment — con­trary to what the Lib­er­als say in their LNG plat­form plank:

LNG: Jobs and prosperity

Under our feet lies as much ener­gy as Alber­ta has in its oil patch. It is in the form of nat­ur­al gas, a clean­er alter­na­tive to oil or coal, in the North­east cor­ner of British Columbia.

Today, our mar­ket for nat­ur­al gas is in North Amer­i­ca, where we only ship it via pipeline.

Tomor­row, our goal is to have a Liq­ue­fied Nat­ur­al Gas indus­try that will add val­ue to our abun­dant nat­ur­al gas resource by ship­ping it by sea to Asia where it cur­rent­ly sells for over five times the North Amer­i­can price. By real­iz­ing this vision we can deliv­er jobs, oppor­tu­ni­ty, and a lega­cy for future generations.

What we are doing about it

LNG facil­i­ties are cur­rent­ly pro­posed by busi­ness groups that include some of the world’s biggest ener­gy com­pa­nies — Shell, Impe­r­i­al, Chevron, British Gas, Petronas, SK & ES of South Korea, Inpex and the Chi­nese Nation­al Off­shore Oil Cor­po­ra­tion, to name some of the major play­ers. It’s no fantasy.

The projects means 39,000 jobs to British Colum­bia dur­ing con­struc­tion with anoth­er 75,000 full time jobs once in oper­a­tion. We can cre­ate $1 tril­lion in eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty and cre­ate the BC Pros­per­i­ty Fund with $100 bil­lion over 30 years.

An oppor­tu­ni­ty this good faces lots of glob­al com­pe­ti­tion. Pre­mier Christy Clark and Today’s BC Lib­er­als have worked dili­gent­ly to enable LNG as an eco­nom­ic gen­er­a­tor for decades to come.

It’s hard to imag­ine a rosier pitch for LNG. This plank reads like it was writ­ten by lob­by­ists for big oil com­pa­nies. (And per­haps they did help write it — who knows).

We agree that LNG facil­i­ties are no fan­ta­sy. And that should be of great con­cern to all of us here in the Pacif­ic North­west. If we let oil com­pa­nies build all the wells, pipelines, and ter­mi­nals they want, we’ll be sanc­tion­ing mas­sive envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion and per­mit­ting the release of bil­lions more tons of car­bon diox­ide and oth­er cli­mate cri­sis-caus­ing pol­lu­tants into the atmosphere.

Is that real­ly the “lega­cy” we want to leave for future generations?

Our ances­tors mined west­ern North Amer­i­ca in the 1800s and ear­ly 1900s with­out regard to the cost or con­se­quences. Envi­ron­men­tal sci­ence was­n’t a sci­ence back then. They did­n’t know what we know about the envi­ron­men­tal ram­i­fi­ca­tions of blow­ing up moun­tains or inject­ing a brew of tox­ic chem­i­cals into the ground.

Read­ing the B.C. Lib­er­als’ plat­form, you’d think they don’t know, either. What cen­tu­ry are they liv­ing in? They call them­selves “Today’s B.C. Lib­er­als”… appar­ent­ly because they’re too embar­rassed to run on their record. No doubt they’d like British Columbians to for­get about the scan­dals of Gor­don Camp­bel­l’s gov­ern­ment (we in Amer­i­ca would say admin­is­tra­tion). But many are deter­mined not to for­get.

Clark and her par­ty have spent more time and mon­ey cam­paign­ing over the last few years than gov­ern­ing, the NDP’s can­di­dates like to say.

Judg­ing by what I’ve seen and heard, plen­ty of British Columbians share that view and are ready for a change. The NDP has worked hard to cap­i­tal­ize on this sen­ti­ment by mak­ing “Change for the Bet­ter” its offi­cial cam­paign slogan.

Clark, mean­while, has­n’t done her­self any favors. She’s been so inef­fec­tive at gov­ern­ing that it was per­haps fit­ting she spoiled her own bal­lot by vot­ing for her­self instead of the Lib­er­al run­ning to rep­re­sent her rid­ing. (In British Colum­bia, a can­di­date does not have to live in the rid­ing he or she rep­re­sents — and Clark does­n’t. She lives just out­side the bor­der of Van­cou­ver — Point Grey).

Con­sid­er­ing how much mon­ey Clark’s gov­ern­ment has spent cam­paign­ing, I was sur­prised when I joined the call to hear Clark answer­ing ques­tions from a speak­er­phone. The pre­screened callers (many of whom sound­ed like unde­cid­ed vot­ers up until they said “You’ve got my vote”) were com­ing in more clear­ly than Clark and her facil­i­ta­tor, who inter­posed lav­ish praise of Clark in between Clark’s boil­er­plate-filled answers and ques­tions from callers.

Most of the callers cho­sen to par­tic­i­pate in the tele-town hall were women; it seems Clark and her par­ty feel that they need to shore up their sup­port among women. Recent polling — includ­ing a poll released today by Angus­Reid Pub­lic Opin­ion — shows that women pre­fer the NDP to the Liberals.

The BC Lib­er­als have not released a cam­paign sched­ule for tomor­row but there’s no chance Christy Clark won’t be out and about. The NDP, for its part, has announced a big after­noon ral­ly at the Van­cou­ver Film Stu­dios in the city’s film dis­trict. I’ll be at the ral­ly, which will fea­ture NDP leader Adri­an Dix and oth­er NDP candidates.

Look for more cov­er­age of the B.C. elec­tions here on The Advo­cate tomorrow.