By Nadine Moedt (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: February 27, 2013
Premier Christy Clark is putting all of BC’s eggs into one environmentally and economically murderous basket. Her “Prosperity Fund,” proposed three months before the election, relies on the extraction and export of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from northern BC.
BC’s LNG-based economy would basically be another version of the Alberta oil sands, making money by extracting the resource and sending it via tankers to Asian markets.
The forecasted economic advantages of tapping into this massive resource store is tempting; by 2020, we could be making anything from $4.3 to $8.7 billion in revenues each year. This is enough to eliminate BC’s massive $56 billion debt by 2026, according to Clark’s speech. Clark spoke of eliminating the provincial sales tax, investing in education and in “vital infrastructure.”
Clark’s projections, however, are under a fire of very legitimate criticism from opposition. According to Maclean’s, NDP leader Adrian Dix cites previous predictions by the Liberal Party gone wrong.
“They were dramatically wrong over six months in terms of natural gas revenues,” he said. “A government that has over time … been completely wrong and completely out of step on its estimates, one has to take its estimates with a grain of salt.”
It’s difficult to put much stock in a prediction made over 30 years in the future when Clark hasn’t had much luck with forecasting a mere six months down the road. The plan itself seems poorly thought out, with little detail given to investment in the necessary infrastructure and how it can be expected that the province will be able to increase the tax on LNG while still maintaining investments.
The government seems all too eager to gamble on a single resource with no backup plan in sight.
In Clark’s Throne speech, she writes that such an emphasis “will be a transformational change for our province and we cannot afford to be shortsighted.”
I had a good laugh at Clark’s version of shortsightedness. According to Clark we are being “shortsighted” by missing out on the opportunity to tie our “prosperity” and economic development to the destruction of the environment, and ensuring we have an infrastructure based on a non-renewable resource.
A recent study put out by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives trumps Clarks plan all together. The report argues that Canada is falling in to a “staples trap,” due to the Canadian economy being so closely intertwined with carbon producing industry. Countries that spiral into this trap, relying too heavily on natural resources can fall into a “dangerous cycle.”
“Our concern is that Canadian policy makers who were so quick to jump on the bandwagon of us becoming an energy superpower forgot those lessons of the potential downside of a staples-based strategy for our whole economy.”
The link between our economy and carbon-producing industries make it difficult to address climate change issues without hurting the economy. In the future there may be a dying market for oil due to environmentally concerned countries.
This study particularly addresses our strong emphasis on bitumen from the Alberta tar sands, but is relevant to all extraction of fossil fuel resources. Why follow Alberta down the path of certain environmental and economic destruction?
Clark’s Prosperity Fund is as shortsighted as it gets; it’s a get rich quick scheme that needs a bit more thought put in to it before BC can be won over.
