“Perceptions,” by Gerry Warner

Op-Ed Commentary

We’ve all heard the old cliché “politics makes strange bedfellows,” but surely what’s happening in B.C. now is about as strange as it gets.

Think back a bit to that charming, pixie of a B.C. Premier Christy Clark and her Pied Piper crusade to make B.C. the Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) capital of the world. In the 2013 election, Clark was promising LNG plants by the dozen for the Left Coast. I think the total got as high as 18 at one point. So many that the gazillions in tax revenue the carbon-spewing plants would produce would be enough to pay off the deficit and even slay the provincial debt.

Clark was talking a veritable political eureka. No deficit. No debt. A “Prosperity Fund” that would produce 100,000 jobs. It would be as if every B.C. taxpayer had won the lottery and could go to the Riviera Maya for the winter.

And then, poof! Oil prices tumbled and Clark’s LNG fantasy popped like a soap bubble.

LNG plants were being built all around the world and the timing was wrong for B.C. to join the party. Clark’s credibility sank like a stone even though her Liberals won the most seats in the squeaker election of 2017.

Then the NDP and the Greens did an end run around the Liberals and formed what amounted to a coalition government. Exit left, Christy Clark. Or should that be exit right? No matter!

Those LNG-loving Liberals were no longer in the saddle and a new government with a distinct green tinge to it was in power and environmentalists around the province were singing glory hallelujah.

With the big, bad LNG wolf gone the air would remain safe to breathe and there would be no nasty pipelines pumping LNG across the province nor LNG supertankers cruising down the coast ripe for hanging up on a reef and spewing their toxic cargo into the pristine waters of the Pacific.

Well, that dream evaporated like so much pixie dust this week as NDP Premier John Horgan announced the go-ahead for a $40-billion LNG plant to be built near Kitimat on the northwestern B.C. coast. Yes, that’s the same Premier Horgan who resolutely opposes building the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project to deliver Alberta crude across the province to Asia. Has B.C. politics reached a new level of political cynicism when it comes to the environment? Listen to Horgan.

“This is a spectacular day for all British Columbians . . . I can’t tell you how proud and pleased I am to have the opportunity to lead the government to work with all levels of government to make life better for British Columbians. I can’t stop smiling.”

And standing right beside Horgan at the Vancouver news conference was none other than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, battered and bruised from the SNV Lavalin affair, but positively beaming at the prospect of a B.C. LNG project finally going ahead. “Today (Tuesday) is a good day,” he said.

Haisla Nation Chief Councillor Crystal Smith was also beaming. “On behalf of our entire nation, we extend our gratitude . . .”

And what about the NDP Climate Plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030 as Horgan has promised? Will that be possible as the new mammoth LNG plant fires into production and loads the supertankers for their dangerous journey down the B.C. coast?

Green Party leader Andrew Weaver doesn’t think so, calling the LNG announcement a “profound disappointment” and saying his party won’t support the project. But no problem for Horgan’s shaky coalition because guess who’s coming to his rescue – the BC Liberals!

“This is a great day for British Columbians in every corner of the province,” said Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson.

With the Liberals on side for what Trudeau called “the single largest private sector investment in Canadian history,” most of the First Nations on side and the Greens isolated can there be any doubt about who’s going to win the next B.C. election? Or am I being cynical?

– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist, who tries not to confuse cynicism with pragmatism.

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