The Wilderness Committee and Sierra Club BC warned that the BC government’s 2010 Throne Speech could lead to lower environmental standards, a renewed gold-rush on contentious run-of-river developments, big dam construction and new coal mine development – all detrimental to BC’s environmental wellbeing. "The Throne Speech applies the old adage ’time is money' to environmental project reviews. It should also have pointed out that "haste makes waste.  We do not oppose a cost effective or efficient review process, but along with most British Columbians we believe that the most important criteria must always be thoroughness of the review. Environmental damage has critically serious and long lasting impacts, from both economic and ecological perspectives,” said George Heyman, Sierra Club BC Executive Director. 

Heyman was reacting to the fact that the BC government has signaled in the Throne Speech that it intends to keep lobbying the federal government to streamline federal and provincial environmental assessment processes. Many environmentalists welcome federal involvement because the provincial government dramatically lowered environmental standards in 2002 and continues to lower standards in order to harmonize with other jurisdictions in trade deals.

The Throne Speech also emphasized increased private power production, electricity exports and the spectre that the contentious Site C dam proposal would proceed to firm and shape intermittent private power, eliminating prime agricultural land at a time when we foresee the need for more local food production.

“Allowing corporations like General Electric to put our rivers into pipes to export power to California may be good for their bottom lines but it’s bad for our rivers and the people of BC. Low environmental standards, lack of planning, and restricted community input have made these projects very contentious. Now we are being told that the new criteria for the environmental assessment regime is speed and money for the benefit of the private power corporations. This is a recipe for public outrage not public support,” said Gwen Barlee, policy director with the Wilderness Committee.

The electrification of Highway 37, which could see new mines come on line, including open-pit coal mines, was also mentioned in the Throne Speech. The proposal is contentious because it involves using subsidized electricity rates to make proposed mines financially viable.

"The government is using green rhetoric to hide the fact they are subsidizing dirty mines along Highway 37 like the Mt. Klappan coal mine. That one mine alone could add 10.5 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, equal to nearly 1/6th of our total emissions in BC. In fact, there are other, less harmful options to provide clean power to First Nations and other communities in the north,” said Barlee.

The Wilderness Committee and Sierra Club BC charge that green spin is getting in the way of real change.

“We agree there is both need and opportunity associated with clean energy production to combat global warming, but the BC government has signaled that it will continue to rush the approval of many projects whose negative impact on fish and other endangered species is a real risk. The spectre of an environmental assessment regime whose governing criteria are speed and money is cause for deep concern, particularly when the economic case for these developments is increasingly being challenged,” said Heyman.

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For more information please call:
Gwen Barlee, Policy Director, Wilderness Committee, 604-202-0322 (cell) or 1-800-661-9453
George Heyman, Executive Director, Sierra Club BC, 604-312-6595 (cell)