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Wednesday, May 9, 2012 Eagle Valley News
OPINION Byelection offers glimpse at future for BC Liberals
B
arring major unforeseen events, the NDP will likely win the next election. That was made clear in last Thursday’s two byelections. The NDP won Port Moody-Coquitlam by a sizeable margin. They had a popular candidate in recently retired Port Moody Mayor Joe Trasolini, and results were much as expected. The real surprise and key result was in Chilliwack-Hope, where the NDP won a seat they have never held. Gwen O’Mahony took the seat in a three-way fight, with the BC Liberal vote melting away, and the resurgent BC Conservatives coming third with 25 per cent of the vote. Liberal candidate Laurie Throness got 4,399 votes and 31 per cent of the vote. This compares with Barry Penner in the 2009 general election, who got 8,985 votes. So the Liberals, in the course of three years, lost more than half their support, with a large proportion of that going to the BC Conservatives, whose candidate John Martin got 3,548 votes. There is another factor – the voter turnout. In the 2009 election, 16,865 votes were cast in Chilliwack-Hope. Last Thursday, despite the scrutiny this race has been under, and numerous visits by the premier and other party leaders, 14,013 people voted. That means more than 2,800 stayed home — likely because they wouldn’t vote for the Liberals, and did not want to vote for anyone else. If the Liberals can convince most of those people to come back to them in the next election, the Liberals will win these kinds of seats. However, the vote splits in other ridings put the NDP in position to form the next government. The Liberals won a number of seats in 2009 by narrow margins, with little or no Conservative opposition. If the Liberals can convince enough disaffected voters to come back to them, they will keep some traditional strongholds. But unless their political fortunes improve drastically, in three-way election fights they will lose many of their seats. -Black Press
EAGLE VALLEY
NEWS
Tanker traffic already flowing along B.C. coast By Tom Fletcher News columnist
VICTORIA – The B.C. NDP has ramped up its opposition to the proposed Northern Gateway oil pipeline. First the party formalized objections already expressed by NDP MLAs who have spoken at hearings held by the federal review panel along the B.C. coast. Leader Adrian Dix sent an 11-page letter to the panel, then launched an attack on the B.C. Liberal government in the legislature that emphasized the letter’s top objection. Why doesn’t Premier Christy Clark stand up to Ottawa and protest the abandonment of the long-standing “moratorium and exclusion zone” on oil tankers off B.C.’s north coast, Dix and NDP energy critic Rob Fleming demanded. Clark’s answer was the same one given for many years by federal and provincial governments. The 1972 federal “moratorium” was directed at offshore oil drilling, not tankers bound for B.C. A separate CanadaU.S. agreement in 1998 calls for U.S. tankers to avoid B.C.’s Inside Passage as they transport Alaska crude
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oil to refineries in Washington state and further south. I asked Fleming for documentation that shows tankers are banned from B.C.’s north coast. He said it is “fragmented,” which means he doesn’t have any. Nor does the NDP’s heavily footnoted letter to the federal panel offer any source for this assertion. This argument flared up in 2006 after Methanex Corp. shut down its Kitimat methanol plant. Instead of shipping methanol out, a practice that was never questioned, it started bringing tankers into the Kitimat port loaded with a liquid natural gas by-product called condensate. From there it is sent by rail to Alberta to dilute oil sands crude. This process led to Enbridge’s proposed double pipeline that would send condensate east and diluted crude west. As I’ve mentioned before, there are legitimate arguments against the Northern Gateway proposal. This hippy-fantasy tanker moratorium isn’t one of them. Then there is the hypocrisy and pro-U.S. bias that is so clearly evident in the manipulated B.C. debate. The Northern Gateway pipeline would generate as many as
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350 tanker trips each year to and from Kitimat. More than twice that many tankers already sail each year through the Strait of Juan de Fuca, past the Gulf and San Juan Islands. Many are heading to refinery complexes at March Point and Cherry Point in Washington. These supertankers can be seen sailing past Victoria most days. Strangely, this U.S. crude traffic excites no protests. Some of the smaller tankers come in to fill up from the Trans-Mountain pipeline in Burnaby, whose operator is preparing a bid for expansion. This attracts protests organized by people paid to oppose Alberta “tar sands” oil. Where do urban protesters think we get the gasoline and diesel fuel sold at B.C. filling stations? Do they think it’s all made at the little Chevron refinery in Burnaby, the last remnant of refining capacity in southern B.C.? We could use a serious debate about how B.C. handles petroleum. Instead, we see factually inaccurate claims promoted by U.S. interests to attack Canadian crude only. Our opposition politicians and media mostly just go along for the ride.
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