BC United Party fears economic impact as Site C nears completion

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — The Site C project is approaching completion, and some members of the BC United Party are concerned about the province’s future.

Several members of the party visited the dam site on Tuesday, June 18th, for a tour, followed by a press conference at the Pomeroy Hotel in Fort St. John.

At the conference, Peace River North MLA Dan Davies expressed his concern that Site C is one of few remaining “mega-projects” in the province.

“These are huge projects that employ hundreds of thousands of people all across the province, that are all great paying jobs, and there is nothing in the queue coming up that will even be anything near those projects,” Davies said.

“That is going to be a huge negative impact for all of us here in British Columbia unless the government makes some changes, which, we’re not seeing anything like that.”

Peter Milobar, the MLA for Kamloops and the Critic for Labour in the Official Opposition, said one of the major obstacles against starting new “mega-projects” is an NDP initiative called CleanBC.

The provincial government’s website describes CleanBC as “the government’s plan to lower climate-changing emissions by 40% by 2030.”

“To hit the targets for 2030, they essentially, over the next five to six years, have to shut down the BC Economy,” Milobar said. “That’s the only way they will meet their emissions targets.”

“That means a hit of $28 million a year to the [gross domestic product or GDP] of BC, it would set us back to 2013 income levels for people’s households — about an $11,000 a household per year drop in income — and anywhere from 100,000 to 200,000 jobs lost in British Columbia, as well.”

Milobar agreed that emissions need to be reduced, but said that the NDP government’s plan was to reduce emissions “on the backs of every British Columbian” by shutting down the economy.

When asked what the BC United Party would do to counter emissions, Davies said the party would scrap CleanBC, with the goal of lowering global emissions by providing liquid natural gas (LNG) to countries that currently rely heavily on coal.

“We need to be doing things smarter, and having global impacts on the economy, and one of those things is keeping our people employed, improving our economy, and getting our LNG overseas.”

Energeticcity.ca has reached out to the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, and the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Low-Carbon Innovation, to learn more about the issue.