Many people believe that BC Hydro’s current job #1 is enabling the delivery of water and cheap power to northeast gas fields. If true, that serves as proof that government policy is being dictated by one favoured industry – an industry that presently e…
Continue readingTag: Natural Resources
In-Sights: Favoured friends
After the Campbell Liberals were elected in 2001, influences of special business interests grew rapidly. Under Christina Clark’s leadership, non-renewable resource companies wield great political power and they use it to minimize regulations and …
Continue readingIn-Sights: Takin’ care of business, part x
As consumers, we are told that Canadian retail prices must be set above American because the costs of operation are higher north of the 49th parallel. For that reason, cars manufactured in Ontario have larger price tags in British Columbia than in Cali…
Continue readingIn-Sights: Truth found in numbers, lies found in words
I am reading budget documents and will soon be writing more about the provincial government’s financial smoke and mirrors but I have initial comments.Natural GasBC Liberals, particularly Premier Clark, are proving to be a fine investment for British Co…
Continue readingIn-Sights: Vanishing revenues
With land developers, the largest funders of the BC Liberal Party are natural resource companies. They’ve contributed millions of dollars to encourage government sympathetic to their needs. No administration in the province’s history has been as sympat…
Continue readingIn-Sights: Gas production ↑ 85%, public revenue ↓ 90%
To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity. – Douglas AdamsDays ago, Premier Clark averred that meeting needs of children in government care is dependent on new fundi…
Continue readingIn-Sights: Rich lands, poor people
GDP measures income, but not equality, it measures growth, but not destruction, and it ignores values like social cohesion and the environment. – OECDIf a province allows extraction of natural resources and takes back little or no share of produced val…
Continue readingIn-Sights: Distortions and half-truths but mostly outright lies
…the new British Columbia Prosperity Fund to ensure communities, First Nations and all British Columbians benefit from the development of a new liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry…
LNG development is poised to trigger approximately $1 trillion in cumulative GDP within British Columbia over the next 30 years and that means more than $100 billion will flow directly to the Prosperity Fund.
Province wide, LNG is expected to create on average 39,000 annual direct, indirect and induced full-time jobs during a nine-year construction period. As well, there could be as many as 75,000 full-time jobs required once all LNG plants are in full operation…
Factsheet
…Projected total revenues to government are estimated between $130 billion and $260 billion over the next 30 years. In order to maximize the benefits of these developments to future generations of British Columbians, the provincial government is establishing a new British Columbia Prosperity Fund…
During the election campaign, Liberals promised that LNG revenues would not only ensure a debt free British Columbia but gas production would also fund essential spending for health care, education and social services. They claimed their plan demonstrated the superiority of BC Liberal financial management because, after almost 40 years, Alberta’s Heritage Fund contained only $17 billion, a fund accumulation 1/10 or 1/20 the rate intended for B.C.
So that we don’t forget this good news, Northern Insight will calculate the accrued income that is coming our way. It updates regularly.
Bringing us some of the news that’s fit to print, and a little more, Dirk Meissner rewrote pre-election Liberal press releases for Postmedia, the company that chose to partner with Canada’s resource industries and their favourite politicians.
B.C.’s LNG plans on same scale as oil sands: Clark, Dirk Meissner, December 13, 2012:
VICTORIA — Premier Christy Clark says her government’s plan to export liquefied natural gas to Asia is British Columbia’s economic equivalent to Alberta’s oilsands.
In a year-end interview with The Canadian Press, Clark said B.C.’s LNG development ambitions will transform the economy, but the province must act quickly before the opportunity evaporates like gas into the atmosphere.
Clark, who has spent the last year describing her “bold” and “audacious” plan to turn B.C. into Canada’s job-creation engine, said British Columbians will still be cashing in on the benefits of LNG exports 50 years from now.
“Think about it in these terms: what oil has been to Alberta since the 1970s-80s is what LNG is going to be for British Columbia, nothing less than that,” said Clark.
“Energy output from LNG will likely be as big as the total energy output today from the oilsands,” she said.
…[experts] are on board in describing the opportunity as monumental and one that should be fast tracked.
“This is huge,” said Ron Loberec, Deloitte’s Canadian resources spokesman. “It’s a no-brainer.
Now, almost three years later, the so-called experts are proven to be no-brainers. They were drawn willingly or stupidly into participating as partisans in the 2013 BC election. Not only has the province not moved forward on LNG, it’s lost billions of revenues that used to flow from its gas fields. BC is not realizing additional revenues from natural gas despite returning billions of dollars to the industry through drilling and infrastructure subsidies. In fact, the province is no longer receiving material payments through royalties or the sale of petroleum and gas rights.
In-Sights: When industry buys a government…
Who knew that Christy Clark would make Gordon Campbell look like an effective, if somewhat dishonest, Premier. #bcpoli— Norm Farrell (@Norm_Farrell) December 4, 2015Did gas industry get a good deal when they bought a government? You betcha! #bcpo…
Continue readingIn-Sights: Ahem, indeed
A while back, I complained on Twitter that corporate media types were failing to report on the near complete disappearance of revenues from this year’s monthly sales of petroleum and natural gas rights. Northern reporter Jonny Wakefield had a quick one…
Continue readingIn-Sights: Trusted editorial content may not be trusted
Postmedia is a company in trouble. It cannot sustain crippling debt to American debt holders with revenues from traditional advertising, circulation and digital paywalls. One of its responses is Postmedia Content Solutions, which aims to elicit cash in controversial ways. Part of their sales pitch: We’ve learned that advertisers receive
Continue readingIn-Sights: Avoidance / Evasion: often a fine line
The price isn’t right, Corporate profit-shifting has become big business, The Economist: DURING THE TAX-EVASION trial of Leona Helmsley, a flamboyant hotelier, a former housekeeper testified that she heard her employer say: “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.” These days, multinational companies stand accused of taking
Continue readingIn-Sights: Huge cost, high risk, low government revenue, few permanent jobs, better choices
LNG and Employment in BC, Marc Lee, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Juy 28, 2015: This brief examines the BC government’s claim that 100,000 jobs will be created from liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects in this province. We find that this claim is not credible and that potential employment impacts
Continue readingIn-Sights: BC lumber exports drop $46 billion over 9 years
These graphs are drawn from softwood lumber exports data published by BC Stats. My aim is to compare results in recent years to those from the desperate nineties when wild-eyed anti-business socialists governed British Columbia. The NDP administered BC for nine complete fiscal years, April 1992 to March 2001. I have
Continue readingIn-Sights: Log exports update
Once again, we review log export reports from BC Stats. However, instead of repeating 163,452 data points from January 1988 to May 2015, I aim to demonstrate trends that allow conclusions to be drawn from the information. The quantity of BC raw logs shipped overseas has increased by 500% since
Continue readingIn-Sights: One other Commission of Inquiry is needed
I have no doubt the BC Liberal involvement with Big Pharma is at the root of high-level government decisions to knee-cap research into the safety and efficacy of more than $25 billion worth of pharmaceuticals sold each year in Canada. Drug research conducted by the Health Ministry and agencies like
Continue readingIn-Sights: Serving public or corporate interests?
The audio file below is a recording of my time with Ian Jessop June 17. We talk about LNG and resource taxation, inter-provincial cooperation on resource matters and oil spill response capability. Your browser does not support this audio
Continue readingIn-Sights: Remembering the desperate nineties
Much of British Columbia’s recent political history has been written by a Liars Club sponsored by beneficiaries of corrupt public administrations. One fable claims that BC Liberals rescued the provincial economy in 2001 after a decade of socialist mismanagement. Yet facts assembled by Statistics Canada paint a different scenario. I’ve
Continue readingIn-Sights: Farrell and Jessop on CFAX1070
The audio file below is a recording of my time with Ian Jessop May 26. We talk about credit rating agencies, provincial debt, contractual obligations, resource taxation and transit funding but we don’t deliver BC Liberal talking points like many others in media. Your browser does not support this audio
Continue readingNorthern Insight / Perceptivity: "Jobs, jobs, jobs" Or, maybe not
Your browser does not support this audioThe audio file above is a recording of my time with Ian Jessop May 12. We talk about jobs and natural resources but we don’t deliver BC Liberal talking points like many others in media. I urge readers to visit the CFAX podcast pages.
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