On 11 May 2013 the Vancouver Sun published a list of 20 hot topics in the
upcoming BC election with the positions of the four major parties. Based upon
their responses, the BC Liberals have put a lot of their eggs in the Liquified
Natural Gas basket.
The BC Liberals are proposing that LNG be expanded greatly in BC over the coming
years, and the revenues from that will be fed into a BC Prosperity Fund. This
Prosperity Fund is listed in four of the twenty topics:
Housing/poverty: No specific housing promises, but creating of an
LNG-funded BC Prosperity Fund will help ease affordability problems.Energy/pipelines/LNG: Preconditions demanded before support for Northern
Gateway, Kinder Morgan; LNG to fund new BC Prosperity Fund. Support Kitimat
oil refinery, new fracking rules.Balanced budgets/debt: Limit government spending growth to GDP; create BC
Prosperity Fund for debt reduction; 50% of excess revenues to debt reduction.Crown corporations: A third of new BC Prosperity Fund revenues to pay down
BC Ferries debt; accelerate paydown of BC Hydro and Port Mann Bridge debt.
The province currently gets some revenue from LNG. However, over the last eight
years, natural gas revenues have been overestimated five of the last eight years,
with an average error of $584 million. The most recent budget originally
overestimated natural gas revenues by $65 million before Finance Minister Mike de Jong corrected them.
With these kinds of errors in estimating natural gas revenues, the BC Liberals
are gambling on BC’s economic future. Not only that, they’re doing it with a
fossil fuel, in the same month that carbon dioxide levels have passed 400ppm.
We need to reduce the amount of fossil fuels we dig up and burn, not increase.
The BC Liberals are proposing burning and polluting our way to prosperity, which
in this day and age is the last thing we should be doing.
This isn’t the only reason I’m not going to vote for the BC Liberals, but it’s a
fairly major reason.