Last Friday Gwen Barlee of the Wilderness Committee and I, on behalf of The Common Sense Canadian, addressed a group of young - at least they look young to me! - teachers at an ESL college. We were invited because they were hearing more and more about the BC government's Energy Policy and they didn't like what they were hearing and wanted more information.

On my way home I started to wonder where my mind was going because I felt a curious feeling - deep rage combined with every bit as strong a feeling of sadness. Had I become overwhelmed by the enormity of the ongoing blatant lie which is the Gordon Campbell dictatorship? Was I getting like that person we all know, obsessed with something - perhaps a marriage breakup, maybe a lawsuit - to the point you avoided them? Crossed the street looking the other way in order to avoid this tiresome "victim"?

Tonight we're having dinner with two old friends who are strong Liberal supporters - how do I avoid becoming a pain in the ass about what this, clearly the worst government in BC history, was up to. He is a former Socred minister, so as we meet, fairly regularly, politics is a natural discussion - but how can I be part of that discussion when my rage is white hot and tears only a millimeter away?

I examined my emotions as I looked again at Dr John Calvert's piece on the ridiculously named Clean Energy Bill (elsewhere on this website) a paper where every sentence makes one angry. Two paragraphs especially stood out. Here they are:

"To take advantage of the Government's politically driven targets for new electricity supply, private power developers will dam up dozens of additional rivers all across the province, imposing enormous - and entirely unnecessary - damage to some of BC's most precious wilderness areas. And Hydro will have to build thousands of kilometers of new transmission lines to service the new power projects, which will do even more harm to BC's environment.

The Act is also designed to promote private sector exports of electricity, exposing the misleading nature of the Government's earlier assurances that its Energy Plans were designed only to meet BC's domestic energy requirements. The export agenda will require BC Hydro - and its ratepayers - to accept the enormous price risks associated with paying a premium for the developers' new private power in the hope that they can recoup this expenditure when selling into the US market. Contrary to the claims of Minister Lekstrom, this is a recipe that guarantees private profit by making the public bear the risk."

There it is - just what I along with my partner Damien Gillis, along with our colleagues like Tom Rankin, Joe Foy and Gwen Barlee have been saying for years now. We are now headlong into a province of private power with rates set not by what it costs BC Hydro to generate power but what California, indeed what the market says the price is. And I feel white-hot rage and bountiful sorrow. For here is the end of W.A.C. Bennett's legacy, his dream for BC.

I'm not going to eulogize Bennett for what he did environmentally in the Kootenays and Peace River. It was horrendous and along with much of young BC I raged against it.

But what did he leave?

We had power, not clean and green as it was made but clean and green now because the environment insult was in the past so that now we can provide clean power at a fraction of the cost on the market.

Why did Bennett do this?

He perceived power as a public trust which must be tailored to the needs of British Columbia. He knew that the private ferry company, Black Ball, would never take on runs that weren't profitable and he also knew that coastal communities would suffer. Realizing that coastal communities help finance roads and bridges in the Lower Mainland that they would never use thus the province had an obligation to see that they had their kind of transportation so he bought Black Ball which became BC Ferries.

Bennett knew that a private railway would also never build lines unless they were profitable, so he took over the old PGE, which became BC Rail.

Bennett knew that we could have one of the lowest energy costs in the world and that British Columbians, whether homeowners or industry, ought to benefit from this. Power became a matter of policy of the government British Columbians elected and could un-elect.

The Campbell government has all but destroyed that legacy.

BC Hydro's transmission lines have been taken away; BC Hydro is being forced to buy power from private companies at double or more the export market value and this on a "take or pay" basis. The annual dividend our public coffers receive from BC Hydro will be gone, gone south into the pockets of people like Warren Buffet, leaving us with heavy operating deficit that drains our public coffers. This all in spite of the fact that because private companies can't produce power in the winter when the water levels are low, BC Hydro (that's us, folks) must buy power it can't use and sell it at a huge loss. If you need proof of this, ask yourself this question: if private power will provide power for BC use why do we need Site "C"?

This Energy Policy has been one long falsehood starting with the ongoing lie that BC is a net importer of power with Campbell telling us that we must be energy self-sufficient, which is where private power comes in - somehow private power we can't use will make us self sufficient!

We all expect governments to gild the lily. We all do that in our private lives but we don't expect them to issue one bald-faced lie after another and build an energy policy on those lies.

I've been in government and while we and the opposition vigorously fought over policy we both knew that the fight was over ideology or for political reasons. We might massage the consequences a bit and the opposition accordingly tell us that we were selling out the province but neither of us accused the other of lying and keeping the public in the dark.  

In those days, we had a media which examined every jot and tittle of policy and legislation. Every day we were battered by some of the best journalists in the country. If our government had proposed to have and expand fish farms, the outcry of the media would have easily drowned the rage of the opposition. If we had decided to take local government's zoning rights away in order to pay off our dear contributors we would have been the headline story in the news, both broadcast and print. That's the way it was and we in government hated it - but it made us better governors.

I think my rage and sorrow have been greatly enhanced because I was a cabinet minister when our feet were held to the fire on a minute by minute basis by an alert media whose outlets permitted them to say what they wanted.

Now we have the so-called "Clean Energy Bill". (By way of aside, if you hear government and industry, and the lickspittles like Citizens for Green Power call themselves "green" and/or "clean" you can be sure that the very opposite is the case).

Among many things this Bill will castrate the BC Utilities Commission - the public's supposed arm's length regulator - which had the temerity to render a report that said that the government's private power policy was "not in the public interest". Under this government, God help an independent commission that calls it like it is.

Our abandonment of public power in favour of private companies that produce power when we don't need it, thus sell it at a huge loss, will be complete once this bill is passed. We, the long-suffering public, have a government that piles one lie upon another, a media which is little more than government shills, and an opposition quite unworthy of the name.

This means we must do it ourselves. We must educate ourselves and write the premier and his MLAs; We must do as Bill Vander Zalm and Chris Delaney are doing with the HST; and, forgive the vanity support organizations like The Common Sense Canadian.

How can this be done?

The famous American lawyer, Clarence Darrow was asked "how can I ever thank you" and he replied, "Madam, ever since the Phoenicians invented money there's been only one answer to that question."

We can make the bastards behave if we write, chant, march and support all who are fighting full time.

This must be done if we're going to leave our province intact for the young and those to come.