Dear editor,
Christy’s mega-project mindset destroys our lucrative sustainable industries, and when the short-term jobs are done, leaves an enormous debt. Site C will flood one of the last freely flowing sections of the once mighty Peace River with the largest amount of adverse environmental impacts ever filed under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.
Site C will cost $15 billion ($1.4 billion interest costs): our children will die before it’s paid off in 2094. The geothermal industry could supply the same power for $3.3 billion with 1,870 permanent jobs to the 150 from Site C. The economy receives over $8 billion a year from farming and environmental benefits from the Peace watershed, but Site C will obliterate 31,500 acres of farmland and 25,000 acres of boreal forest to make power we can’t sell.
Clark’s next make-work project is a $3.5 billion Massey bridge. A proposed $500 million twin tunnel was ignored so that LNG tankers and coal freighters could travel up the Fraser River. But dredging and more vessels will damage habitat for the world’s biggest salmon run and the endangered southern resident orcas. The value of B.C. whale watching was $108 million in 1998, the 2012 Fraser fishery brought in $205 million. BC Tourism made $14.6 billion in 2014 and provided 128,000 jobs.
Clark claims B.C. is number one in job growth, but full time permanent jobs with benefits have actually decreased: without home sales taxes ($1.53 billion in 2015), her budgets would run deficits.
The world market for clean energy is $790 billion, with thousands of B.C. jobs waiting in clean energy technology, retrofitting buildings, and building new transit, housing, schools and infrastructure. Christy’s indifference to the natural world means she cannot provide a new vision for B.C. economic growth. It’s time for a government who can.
Gillian Anderson
Merville