Last Friday November 20th, a day of the week normally reserved for bad-news announcements, the BC Government quietly announced the handpicked appointees to the Green Energy Advisory Task Force. Ostensibly designed to transform BC into a green energy powerhouse, the Task Force sounds like a good idea - but is it?

Having ignored its own regulatory watchdog, the BC Utilities Commission, which ruled that purchasing expensive environmentally-destructive power was not in the public interest , the provincial government invented another process better tailored to their needs. The Task Force is designed to recommend ways to improve the BC Energy Plan, which has already overseen the slow-motion privatization of BC Hydro and the staking of over 800 rivers and water bodies by private corporations. This is not an independent initiative. Many appointees and/or their employers stand to derive financial benefit from private power projects. Companies like Cloudworks, Transalta and Pinnacle Pellet hope to become or already are big players in BC's private power industry.

We have heard that many of the Task Force recommendations are already written. If this is true it would not be surprising as the Task Forces have almost no money for public consultation and are supposed to report back to government no later than January 2010.

Time and again we’ve seen communities stand up for the places that matter to them. We’ve seen the wild places that are at stake. The Wilderness Committee will not be participating in a process that is fundamentally undemocratic and designed to prop up government direction that is environmentally damaging and unsupported by the majority of British Columbians.

Gwen Barlee | Policy Director