Dear Editor,
On Wednesday April 1st, a crowd of more than 250 people packed the Gleneagles Golf Course Club House in West Vancouver to hear the presentations of opponents to the proposed Woodfibre LNG plant in Howe Sound. The opening was done by members of the Squamish Nation The audience was made up of people from the Howe Sound and the Sunshine Coast, and many from West Vancouver.
At this evening, and at previous public meetings organized by the above groups, the point was driven home that this project and, the drive for exporting LNG to Asia, don’t make any environmental or economic sense for BC. Environmental concerns are pretty obvious and there is not as much room to maneuver, as we have found out with earlier industrial development, not only in the Howe Sound, but in many places in the world. However, when it comes to economics, things become a bit fussy.
Economics is not a science; it is a set of economic ideas all about how we design our society. This should mean we have choices. Do we share the wealth with many or, keep the wealth accumulation for one small group? Do we sell of our resources for next to nothing, or do we make sure we get our a fair share back in taxes and royalties? Do we treat this land, we live on, as a colony or do we make it into to a well functioning sustainable society?
The dominant set of economic rules in Canada, when it comes to resources, has been to treat the land as a colony. We rely heavily on foreign investors, negotiate very few requirements to add value, and have low taxation on the units of resources exported or, as is the case with LNG investments in BC, tax only the net-profit of the company.
During the last 150 years in BC, we thought this worked well. Many of us profited off the sale of resources coming from the very rich lands here. Many did so well, they didn't notice that the investors, mostly foreign, made hundreds of billions off of BC's resources. Now we see the downside: BC is in debt. There is no heritage fund filled with the billions of royalty taxation on fishery, forestry and mining.
Something went wrong.
It is clear that Christy Clarke’s election promises were all about LNG heritage funds and 1 million jobs paid-off for her. But winning an election is only the start, and we need proof that the government live up to its promises instead of repeating the mistakes made over the past century or so. Now that the Environmental Assessments for a number of LNG projects are underway, it makes total sense for an economic assessment of the whole BC LNG project, to see if it is really such a good deal, as we are all made to believe it is.
Anton van Walraven
