by Joseph Roberts
Joe Foy photo
What does Site C stand for? Choose one or more of the following items:
1) Corruption
2) Cronyism
3) Corporatism
4) Christy Clark
5) Complicity
6) Con game
7) Criminality
8) Cost overruns
9) Collapse of economy
10) Corrosion
11) Committing ecocide
12) Climate change
Consequences
Damage to the environment, displacing productive farm land, destroying fish habitat, ruining heritage sites, dismissing first nations concerns and treaty rights, breaking up communities, and creating such massive debt your electrical bills will skyrocket. As well the huge debt will rob money from all other public expenditures causing the same kind of austerity measures big business has pressured governments in Greece, Italy and other countries to “pay back” – i.e. the debt created by their “friends” in government whom they donated election campaign money. The current provincial government has been in power so long that it has become corrupt and callous. This pretense has gone on too long. The con is spun by mass media owned by the very interests that profit from such large projects as pipelines, dams, fracking, supertankers, toll bridges, and LNG, all leaving the citizens to suffer the debt and deterioration of habitat.
What is going on
Join the growing movement to end the greed of political operatives serving their multinational masters. Democracy belongs to the people. Their neo-liberal ways are a disgrace, making BC an acronym for Bullshit & Corruption. They invite big money from anywhere to come here, buy elections, and do as they please. Power will not be given away by these operatives, it must be taken back by the people.
The premier of BC has spent over a million dollars on her vanity press, dragging around PR soldiers and a personal photographer. She is not alone in this ethical vacuum. George Carlin said it right. “There is too much bullshit and it is not good for anyone”… and BC’s government is full of it. People know it. They see it and are disgusted.
We finally got fed up with Harper’s belligerent ways ignoring science and climate change. He is gone and good riddance. We can no longer afford Christy Clark’s arrogance. Her Cheshire Cat smiles won’t repair MT Polley’s dam destruction even with her publicity team pretending a sow’s ear is a silk purse. And her friends’ theft of the commons is hideous.
It is even more the hideous becaue it is hidden behind a smiling PR fortress, playing to the cameras while avoiding the public rage. Woodfiber LNG with a Hiroshima-equivalent of thermo power, with each of its proposed tankers a delightful target for a deranged mental case repackaged as a terrorist. The fracking of northeastern BC has destroyed the local water tables, streams, lakes and habitat, and for what? So large foreign energy companies can rip us off! Enbridge, Kinder Morgan, Encana, and the rest of the Enron-like ilk has Christy Clark as their cheerleader.
She takes realtors over to China to sell off our lands and homes, inflating house prices so high we can’t afford to live in the places where we grew up. The bankers certainly don’t mind because they get to issue higher loans and make more interest. Wake up and smell the corruption parading as government. Time to decide. Which side are you on? The people or the corporations; protecting seven generations or burning everything for short term profits.
The current neo-liberal political cabinet have chosen the corporate grave train. We the people have choosen to not have their oil filled rail tankers explode on our towns or valleys. The party is over. We are taking our province back.
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Like the thirteenth fairy in Sleeping Beauty, The THIRTEENTH “C” on your list, Joseph, is CONTINENTAL WATER SHARING…
Site C on BC’s Peace River was planned at the same time as were the dams on the Columbia River – after the US Army Corps of Engineers was tasked with ensuring America “never runs out of water” and set about mapping Canada’s water resources.
Every engineering plan subsequently put in the table shows ONLY TWO routes to divert coastal runoff water from the north into rivers in the south: the Columbia River (to bring it west of the Rockies) and the PEACE RIVER (to bring it east of the Rockies).
The thing about 100 year plans is when worrisome things don’t happen right away, people stop paying attention.
But money, like a patient cat, never takes its eyes off the prize.
FTA and NAFTA got rid of the messy sovereignty issues. The table is set. Once BC Hydro is turned over to private sector interests, all will be in place. Site C may provide energy and water for fracking in the medium term. In the long term, that water will have a far higher value.
Whether you agree with the above analysis or not, the facts are indisputable. This smoking gun is a canon. We need to STOP THIS DAM – which would flood alluvial soils in a class one climate able to provide nutrition to more than one million people a year forever – AND ALLOW PUBLIC SCRUTINY OF IT’S ECONOMICS AND IMPLICATIONS.
Make no mistake; the Site C end game is water…
Caleb Behn, Treaty 8 member and Executive Director of Keepers of the Water: “We are the heart and soul of the oil and gas economy in this country. We have given coal. We have given oil. We have given trees. My dad went to residential school. We gave souls… And this is how you’re going to treat us in the 21st century? This is the kind of hypocrisy that makes me question the wisdom of my ancestors choosing to sign on to treaties.”
Let’s make it loud and clear that if the Trudeau government is serious about a renewed relationship with First Nations, it is unacceptable to issue construction permits while there’s an outstanding First Nations legal challenge about the Site C dam. Support Treaty 8’s legal challenge to the Site-C Dam: follow the story, and donate, at http://www.nosite-c.com
Hear the powerful voices of frontline community members from the Peace River as they cross the country in a historic Justice for the Peace caravan. https://www.facebook.com/justiceforthepeacecaravan/?fref=ts