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Site C is a Hobson’s choice

Premier John Horgan and his government are in a no win situation as they face the task of deciding to kill or proceed with the enormously expensive Site C Dam project.
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It’s almost as if former premier Christy Clark had looked deep into a crystal ball a few years ago and concluded that her party had not a snowball’s chance of retaining power in the 2017 provincial election. How else to explain her decision to start construction of the Site C Dam and begin a bargain basement selloff of future power contracts? How else to explain her government’s decision to exempt Site C from a required review by the BC Utilities Commission?

I can’t think about Site C without the vision of armies poisoning water wells in anticipation of the enemy taking over their territory. Because that is exactly what Clark was doing, ensuring that if a new government couldn’t actually stop the project, it would be stuck with massive construction costs and over runs, and power contracts that could never allow the dam’s multi-billion dollar investment to make economic sense.

There is no doubt that Site C’s projected ability to produce power for the equivalent of 450,000 homes is a huge temptation, with its greatest appeal being the same as for any other dam project—it provides massive energy storage in a way that no other form of power production does. Think of a water dam as a huge battery, ready to provide power on demand at the flick of switch.

Think too, though, of the loss of arable farmland, the environmental devastation and the opposition by some of the First Nations that lay claim to portions of that land. And, not to be discounted, is $10 billion-plus project cost and how much of that money could better be invested in alternate power sources and efforts to decrease the demand for energy.

BC Hydro, compared to some US jurisdictions, has a woeful record of promoting conservation measures—some American power producers are routinely lowering demand by as much as four per cent annually over many years. Instead of taking advantage of new and innovative ways to decrease the use of energy, Site C actually makes our province more dependent on wasting energy so that we can get a better return on our investment.

I can’t imagine any politician wanting to be in Premier John Horgan’s shoes on this file. He and his government are tasked with either killing the project and wasting billions of dollars, or forging ahead despite knowing it’s a lousy way to spend money and is unlikely to produce any sort of reasonable return on investment. To their credit, the NDP have quickly abandoned any notion of simply delaying the project for as much as a decade, having accepted the BCUC’s report that it is the worst economic option on the table.

To put it bluntly, this government is screwed no matter what it decides now, and one can easily imagine Clark’s smiling eyes glowing with satisfaction. Horgan and his team are either going to have to stand up and tell the province that they are killing thousands of jobs—not one of which should have been created without a proper BCUC review in the first place, or that they are forging ahead with a project that is now simply too expensive to back out of.

Four centuries ago a livery stable owner in England named Thomas Hobson used to give customers a “choice.” They could take the horse nearest the door or take none. Hobson’s choice is exactly what this government has, and it is all the messier because to proceed with Site C will endanger its needed support from the BC Greens, who are even more opposed to Site C than the NDP.

I honestly don’t know which option I would prefer, but I would be happy to see Christy Clark standing before a court of law for the unconscionable decision she made to start the project without a thorough review her own government’s policies required. It’s shameful.