Support Competitive Electricity Market: Vote Green?!?
According to their large collection of YouTube videos, the BC NDP doesn’t have much to say about the economy.
Even the one called Carole James on the Economy says something vague about putting working people first. I don’t know what this means (I presume this is code for some socialist ideal, but I’m not sure). What I am sure about is that nothing in this video (or any of the others) have anything to do with the economy. I think Gary Mason says it best in the Globe and Mail. When it comes to the economy, James is simply out of her depth. Is she hoping that this election will end up being about something else?
The NDP is on about Gordon Campbell wanting to privatize everything and the kitchen sink (the NDP believes the kitchen sink is an important public asset). This NDP anti-privatization rant wants to ensure you that hospitals are not built by private companies, and making sure that BC Hydro doesn’t get privatized by those evil BC Liberals.
If only this last point was remotely true, man would that motivate me – I’d be far more excited about the BC Liberals!
- The latest example of BC Liberal support for the BC Hydro monopoly states that they will “[develop] the proposed Site C Hydroelectric dam in Northern B.C. as a public asset, owned by BC Hydro.”
- As mentioned, the NDP is pretty clear about their love for BC Hydro – the bigger and publicker BC Hydro, the better.
- Even the tiny BC Conservative Party has a policy that states “BC Hydro will not be disposed of without the permission of the voting public via referendum.” (PDF)
- Want free market economics? Look to the long-haired hippies in the Green Party:
BC Greens will foster the building of green and clean, renewable energy facilities with an emphasis on co-operative and municipally-owned utilities, while providing the opportunity for private producers and transmission operators to participate in a mixed public / private energy system.
Private transmission operators? What the hell is this, Europe!?
Independent power producers are nimble, innovative, and generally “greener”. BC Hydro and its powerful union has done everything possible to put the brakes on these energy alternatives and innovations at every turn. Gordon Campbell has taken some baby steps to reign in the 800-pound gorilla (or, in NDP-speak, MASSIVE PRIVATIZATION), by freeing up private energy producers to operate in BC, but to a very limited degree.
More should be done! Perhaps Gordon Campbell could take a page out of the Green Party’s radical free market approach.
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