BC Hydro needs restraints
Perhaps an even more vile set of falsehoods is BC Hydro’s continuing claims that demand for electricity by its BC consumers has been growing steadily. That has led to excessive…
Norman Farrell
Natural resource giveaway
British Columbia sees itself in competition with Alberta to attract gas exploration and production companies. As a result, both provinces have been in a race to the bottom. By giving…
Private contractors dependent on public money
Paul Starr of Princeton University wrote The Limits of Privatization. In the paper, he discusses an effect in which influence on government now comes from the “enlarged class of private…
Tax expenditures
Tax expenditures, represent a tax break that government offers people and corporations in support of policy objectives. It’s forgone revenue, or money that government doesn’t collect, but could if it…
Disinformation campaign
John Horgan’s Government is condoning a disinformation campaign that would make despots of the world proud. And, we’re paying plenty for it. Corporate media is today publishing BC Hydro propaganda…
Omission of truth becomes a lie
In real terms, the BC government’s natural resource revenues in 2018 were 37% of the level in 2001, despite material increases in output.
Still buying high, selling low
In the current year, BC Hydro expects to export electricity for a price of C$26,500 per megawatt hour. Compare that to the C$91,403/MWh paid independent power producers in the fiscal…
Opprobrium
The analysis by Richard McCandless would be headline material if corporate media were paying attention to the public interest. Burdens imposed on ratepayers measure in the billions and traditional journalists…
Paying $185,000 for each job
BC’s fossil fuel industry benefited from credits worth $902 million in fiscal year 2018 and $4.2 billion in the past five years. Each of the jobs in oil and gas…
Malfeasance and mismanagement
BC Hydro and the energy ministry employ many people paid salaries of hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. But, these people don’t work to save ratepayers’ money but to…
NDP hides financial information and misleads the Legislature
Tax expenditures are subsidies delivered through the taxation system. These promote policy goals of government but are subject to far less scrutiny and disclosure than direct spending. The primary beneficiaries…
Economic illiteracy in Canadian media
The Fraser Institute declares Tax Freedom Day each year. It is an inaccurate trick to further interests of the millionaires and billionaires for whom the “charity” works. Many of those…
A Theatre Near You
We felt outrage over this and other indignities experienced by persons of colour in the USA. For some reason though, we paid no attention to segregation in our own community.…
Die große Lüge
My writings in the past have decried BC Hydro directors and executives surrendering to corporate inertia. Inappropriate rigidity has led to failure in many badly run corporations and it now…
We are the cause, we are the solution
BC Government webpages pay little or no attention to climate change as a driver of wildfire. Public servants have sound advice for homeowners and recreationalists but government provides few comments…
Forget what they say, watch what they do
Pal explained that I had wasted time reading platforms and promises. He said the only method of judging real intentions is to scrutinize a politician’s finances. Give me a list…
Bitter old man
A person shilling for the pension funds management business complained about my recent article revealing extravagant salaries at the BC Investment Management Corporation (BMI). He wrote that I was a…
The Gravy Train accelerates
BC Investment Management Corporation (BCI), the public pension fund manager in this province increased compensation costs by 30% per dollar of funds managed in fiscal year 2017-2018. It already paid…
Site C provides work of questionable quality to a mostly transient workforce
The NDP promoted its PowerBC program in the 2017 election. Had they been sincere, government would be keeping a promise to voters and they would now be preserving Peace River…
Canadian natural resources almost given away to mostly foreign owned producers
In Norway, with 5.3 million people, upstream petroleum companies are subject to a 27% petro tax plus a special tax of 51%. Alberta petroleum tax is less than 4%. BC’s…