Site-C Draws Conscientious Protesters
Members of the Awaken the Giant Tour planted a Heart Garden at Highway 16-97 junction Friday morning. Photos 250News
Prince George, B.C. – A group of British Columbians with serious concerns about the Site-C dam project and the BC government’s efforts to force it through has arrived in the Peace to join the protest against construction of the dam.
Over 45 people from Vancouver Island and the lower Mainland left the coast on Thursday on their “Awaken the Giant Tour, which is geared toward drawing the attention of British Columbians to Site-C in particular as well as fracking, pipelines and LNG projects.
Some, but not all, of the 45 are members of the Rolling Justice Bus community which is part of a network called Kairos, which BC-Yukon media spokesperson Susan Draper describes as “an ecumenical, that means faith-based, social justice organization with chapters all across Canada, and all the major churches are members of it. We’ve been looking at social justice and ecological justice issues for years and years, and the BC-Yukon region of Kairos has decided to make this a campaign.”
Kairos calls this a critical moment for the people who care about eh Peace watershed. It says the BC government is already clearing land in an attempt to force the project through even as First Nations challenges opposing the project wait to be heard in court. Kairos calls for construction of Site-C to be suspended and asks that no more permits be issued until the Indigenous peoples whose lands and way of life will be affected can exercise their right to free, prior and informed consent.
Kairos is also calling for an arms-length review of the project by the BC Utilities Commission. BCUC, whose purpose is to independently review the economics and need for such projects on behalf of the public interest, has twice previously ruled there was no justification for building Site-C.
In March, 2015 Harry Swain, the chair of a joint federal-provincial panel set up to review Site-C, said the Clark government would be unwise to proceed with Site-C and should send it to a full review by the BCUC. The government decided not to accept that recommendation, choosing not to put the largest publicly-funded infrastructure project in B.C. history before the body with the expertise to properly assess it.
Asked why Kairos is focussing on Site-C, Draper says “it brings together a lot of the issues that we’ve been working on in the last dozen years or so, and particularly the issues around reconciliation with First Nations peoples. The churches as you know were major players in the residential schools and have been looking for ways to reconcile some of that history and walk a different path with First Nations.”
“So when we heard about the struggle with Treaty 8 members and some of the cases that are before the courts right now we thought ok, that’s one of the issues that we care about and they are certainly struggling with it and need some support.”
“The other thing was the whole issue around climate change and the need to invest in alternative energy sources. Now we appreciate that hydro, traditionally, has been viewed as a really clean, green kind of energy source. We appreciate that and back in the ‘50s and ‘60s we would have been on the bandwagon supporting this. But times have changed and we also know that there’s a lot of political things around the building of this dam. Not that we get into that, we’re a non-partisan organization, we want to work with anyone and everyone who shares our values.”
Draper says it’s time to look at the whole idea of resource extraction in B.C. as it now stands in the year 2016. “That’s how we develop B.C., that’s what we do. We go in there, cut down the trees and we move on, or we go in there, we mine all the gold and we move on. And we leave a terrible mess behind usually, not always but usually.”
“We think it’s time for everyone to be involved in a different kind of conversation around how we view sustainable development in this province. So that’s part of the “Awakening the Giant” theme. Where we think the electorate has been kind of asleep this last ten years in terms of what’s been happening in northeastern B.C., and that it’s time for all of us to wake up and think about what we’re doing to the “Supernatural BC” that we love so much.”
Draper say she understands that it’s difficult to discuss Site-C without touching on the politicization of the issue. “The fact that it wasn’t put before the BC Utilities Commission and some of the usual ways of doing development, although those aren’t perfect they didn’t even choose to follow those, that’s the sort of things that we are lifting up as well. We’re saying we have a process, it needs to be improved, but let’s as least use it.”
“That hasn’t been done so again, we have been asleep, it’s time for British Columbians, there’s an election next year, we want this issue to be front and centre. That’s one of the things we’re encouraging people to do, wake up, let’s look at all of these things. Do we want more of the same, is this really the path we want to walk the next 4 to 8 years in BC? Of course we’re hoping people will decide they want something different.”
The “Awaken the Giant Tour” left Tsawassen on Thursday and returns there Monday night. First
Today the folks on the bus join with hundreds of other people from across BC to participate in the annual Paddle for the Peace to protest the Site-C project. It will launch at noon at the Halfway River bridge on Highway 29 between Fort St. John and Hudson’s Hope, winding up about 90 minutes downstream at Bear Flat on Highway 29.
Several speakers are lined up to address those on hand at the launch site starting at 10:30 this morning. They include Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, President of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, Ken Forest of the Peace Valley Environment Association, West Moberley First Nations Chief Roland Wilson, Wilderness Committee’s Joe Foy, Craig Benjamin with Amnesty International, Ana Simeon with the Sierra Club and several others.
Then later this afternoon following a barbecue at Bear Flat, the Raging Grannies and others will provide entertainment and the crowd will hear from Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May, Ken and Arlene Boon who are having their ancestral land and home expropriated to make way for Site-C, agricultural economist Wendy Holm, NDP MP Sheila Malcolmson and many more.
On Sunday the travellers on the Rolling Justice Bus will tour the Charlie Lake caves then head to Prince George where they will spend the night before heading to the Tsawassen ferry terminal on Monday for the trip home.
Then its on to tackling another of the many issues of social injustice.
Comments
Wonder if 250 news would do an interview from the government or Hydro to balance all the anti site c coverage they report?
“In an exclusive interview, former BC Hydro CEO Marc Eliesen says ratepayers will face a “devastating” increase in their electricity bills if the Site C dam is built and emphasizes there is no rush to build new sources of power generation in B.C.”
www .huffingtonpost.ca/desmog-canada/marc-eliesen-site-c-dam_b_7953034.html
Some light reading for those who are not part of the pro-Site C lemming crowd.
Our country’s brightest and smartest people are calling for a halt to Site C. Yet the Conservatards continue to ignore science because they have strong beliefs and ideology on their side.
www .desmog.ca/2016/05/27/bc-hydro-publicly-criticizes-scientists-and-academics-calling-site-c-construction-halt
Brightest and smartest! No fair, now I have to clean off my keyboard.
Look at them, all 20 of them.
Try actually reading the article. It says, “Today the folks on the bus join with hundreds of other people from across BC to participate in the annual Paddle for the Peace to protest the Site-C project.” Hundreds, not twenty.
Some of the people on this site are not interested in the facts ammonra, right wing Conservative ideology gets the group hug on here.
How nice of these folks from The Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island to come up and visit! Came across the ferry on a bus, and drove up the highway that was paid for and subsidized by our resources, and particularly resources from north of Hope! Have a safe trip back to your own neighbourhood!
Party bus burning unicorn farts.
We couldn’t expect them to burn fossil fuels, could we? There’s no way they would do that, right?
Maybe these folks should walk back home….Can’t drive because it causes emission problems. Then they should disconnect themselves from the power grid and turn on the old kerosene lamp….Can’t do that because it burns fossil fuel. They should then light their wood or gas stove for cooking and heat….Can’t do that because it causes carbon emissions. Poor folks…Oh well I guess they will come up with a solution. Windmill in the back yard maybe?…Can’t do that because it might kill a bird. On second thought, SITE “C” doesn’t look that bad after all. Have a nice trip folks.
Actually they are fine with killing birds. They could cook over a dung fire like a sizeable portion of the world that is denied abundant cheap energy by the greenies.
Nobody is “fine” with killing birds. Actually, if one wants to look at the whole picture the construction of tall buildings with glass windows should have never been allowed or should be banned now! Tall sky scraper buildings in all the cities world wide kill birds, who fly into the glass and fall dead on the side walks and streets down below. In some cities volunteers go out very early in the morning to collect the carcasses and hope to find some that are only stunned, injured and still alive.
Ban tall buildings?
Additionally, estimates are that cats kill at least a billion birds, perhaps double that, every year.
Ban cats?
Wind farms can get permits to kill eagles. What happens if you kill an eagle?
So you are saying its okay for wind farms to slice and dice birds then.
Here is the sad truth about those environmentally happy wind farms
ht tp://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html
Why don’t the happy people on the party bus ship it over to China and protest there, oh wait.
PrinceGeorge – “Nobody is “fine” with killing birds.”
==============================================
Not true. Environmentalists are fine with killing uncounted numbers of birds as long as it’s done by windmills.
A woodpecker flew into our living room window today. Did not hit it hard enough to get killed right away. Tucked her head under her wing and after 10 minutes hopped off a bit. The retucked head … eventually hopped off again to where I could not see.
Our neighbours leave their cats run free. They often come into our front and back yard to get cover under the bushes.
I would say that on average we get about one bird a year flying into the glass, typically hitting it so hard that it is immediately killed. God only knows how many outdoor cats get. Our cat is not allowed outside.
We are humans. We have an impact on our environment. So do other animals. Whether any of it is good or bad is difficult to say.
Maybe we should all just roll over and die and let the earth go on “naturally”. Isn’t that the definition of “naturally” ….. a world without humans?
And back in the Lower Mainland, please Walk up the Stairs in your High Rise ,you can’t use the Elevator, you know what it runs on Hydro!
So, the “Awaken the Giant Tour” is geared toward drawing the attention of British Columbians to Site-C in particular as well as fracking, pipelines and LNG projects.
No Site C!
No fracking!
No pipelines!
No LNG projects!
No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No!
No jobs!
No tax base!
No economy!
No healthcare dollars!
No education dollars!
No social program dollars!
No infrastructure dollars!
No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No!
Does the Awaken the Giant Tour sound like our current Opposition NDP or what?
The W.A.C Bennett Dam, built in the 60’s has served British Columbian’s well, extremely well, as has the Site 1 Dam. I can just imagine what Wacky Bennett would say if he had had to deal with a group like “Awaken the Giant” back when he was building the Bennett Dam!
I rarely agree with you be because no issues are as black and white as you portray! However, these people have no alternative answer as to where the energy is supposed to come from which our modern way of life requires round the clock! Without a reliable supply of electricity everything comes to a halt! Does our modern way of life have impacts (some everlasting)on our environment? Absolutely! Ask them for a solution! I bet they have no practical one! Let them have their say…Wacky would have paid no attention either!
A very nice gesture with the “heart garden”.
But will somebody be picking these paper hearts up, or did the eco folks just litter our town ?
Galt do try and stay on topic.
Strange how easy it is for you people to confuse energy uses . Repeat after me oil is a transportation fuel . Electricity for now is not a transportation fuel in canada but that’s going to come to a crashing end within our life time . Did you know there is a push under way to micro grid all continental military bases . They are going solar , wind and batteries because the grid can’t be trusted to survive a coronal mass ejection or a nuclear magnetic pulse . Micro grids can be hardened to survive . This push will also make site C irrelevant . By the time it is built , if built , there will be no market . How long will it be before Canadian bases are off grid ? Not long I suspect .
Whatever you’re smoking, I want some.
That should read . U.S. Military bases .
Sad that those who are against Site-C are against it largely for all the wrong reasons, (many of those listed above have turned “environmental activism” into a business, and a lucrative one at that). While those that are for Site-C have been largely deluded into thinking it’s being built because of our actual ‘need’ for more power. It isn’t. We’re losing more large power using industry than we’re gaining, and are going to continue to. The power from Site-C will largely be exported, and we can only hope it’s to somewhere where we can actually get paid for it this time. For we do need those American IOUs we can never collect on, to provide an excuse for what amounts to printing more money here. That we’ll end up paying for this project over and over again will go un-noticed, as we foolishly argue about whether the new minimum wage should be $ 30 an hour, and whether even that’s enough for anyone to live on.
Power usage is going up, and yes excess power will be sold is that not a good thing. Generation is not built to match load a contingency has to be built in.
With Alberta shutting down coal plants, its base generation along with the Oregon, California BC sees a gold mine in supplying backup power for when the sun don’t shine and the wind don’t blow.
Two more falsehoods again . Power consumption has been going down in bc and the U.S. For ten years . And base load is a myth perpetrated by big fossil along with their other lies .
Look at the amount of industries we have lost. And what, with the fall-out effects from the mountain pine beetle attacks on our forests, we are going to lose in the years shortly ahead.
The remaining high energy users, the pulp and paper mills we have left, mines and their mills and concentrators, etc., are far from being pictures of financial health.
LNG could use substantial electric power, but the market for LNG is glutted internationally.
We gain in population, sure, but the efforts at conservation and continual re-development of older residential housing into units that are far more energy efficient offsets a large part of that.
And to pin our hopes on things being different in the USA and that they’re going to be a constant consumer for this power….? Sure, they’ll consume it, but at a price they’re willing to pay, not necessarily the one we’d like to get for it.
WAC Bennett had it right when he developed the Peace and Columbia. We had a largely untapped treasure trove of other resources that could then be developed and compete in world markets as long as we had low cost hydro-electric power to offset a lot of the other higher costs we had here.
Fat little Dave Barrett screwed that up when he doubled industrial hydro rates shortly after taking office as Premier.
Today, the treasure trove is no longer what it once was. And Site-C won’t offer low enough cost power to offset other higher costs involved in having the long awaited “high-tech, value-added” future that’s been expected since the late 1970’s. But never seems to materialise as the big job creator it’s supposed to be. And likely never will, until we’re reduced to Third World status, if ever.
I forgot to mention your Oregon hypothesis re:coal fired back up . We might get some but it won’t come for burning fossils . I suggest you search Oregon geothermal . For that matter search US geothermal . Sadly bc and Alberta also miss that boat . Sailed right by on a sea of near free oil and fresh water . Drilling a hole in a thermal vent is as easy as wood work with the right tools . Then you get near free energy till the earths core freezes over . Kind of makes the coal mine/coal shipping / coal burning / thing look like a Rube Goldberg machine , wouldn’t you say ?
Posted by Ataloss
” And base load is a myth”
=============================================
It is??? So how do you keep the lights on when it’s -30 and the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining?
And as for all that “free energy”, do you actually believe that if it was such a good deal, private industry wouldn’t have already seized on such a gold mine opportunity?
“do you actually believe that if it was such a good deal, private industry wouldn’t have already seized on such a gold mine opportunity?”
Actually they have. Remember, there are other countries in this world. Not everything revolved around the USA/Canada marketplace.
Think of who provides the research, the prototyping and the eventual manufacture of the machinery used to harness alternative energy.
You make it seem that there is no private business involved. Kind of leaving out a lot of information on the assumption that people are all stupid.
I think if you asked the general population if they want site C built you would find out that they would sooner have the money spent on education, highways being twinned ,new bridges etc and the list goes on. This is going to be a very expensive project for the taxpayer.
The general population takes their electricity for granted. They think it will always be plentiful and cheap because it always has been in the past and environmentalists are lying to them.
But the BC Liberals lie to them, too. They want electricity to be both plentiful and EXPENSIVE, with the bucks we pay for it going to THEIR government to spend as IT sees fit. Now tell me, how is this any different whatsoever from what the socialists want? It’s “Big Brother knows best” exactly the same as we’d get from the NDP. Gordon Campbell seemed as if he regarded it as some kind of a sin that we had low cost electric power. He wanted to charge us ‘world price’ for it, figuring in his twisted mind that such a penalty would make us ‘lean and mean’ and globally competitive. But for what? Did we take back the electricity from the Columbia dams that we were obliged to sell to the Americans for 30 years when that 30 years was up? Or do we continue to export it, in the face of what we’re told are looming shortages here? WAC Bennett told us in the 1960’s that we didn’t need that electricity then, but we would in 30 years time, and we’d have it, “Free, and there’s nothing freer than free, my friend.” What happened? How did we get so far off the right path he had set us on, and onto the wrong one we’re following now?
Your constant personal attacks only point out how useless your post are . I cannot remember a single post of yours being either helpful , useful or relevants . It give me great pleasure to understand whom is the real idiot . Going along to get along is a recipe for failer . You must be an incredible failer if you find a need to personally attack and council suicide . I feel sorry for your parents . Some mothers do have them . I’ve had the best couple of weeks in the markets since March 09 thanks to the idiots in the UK . How did you do ? Don’t you just love macro economics and geopolitics .
Ataloss, nope on the first one and fossil fuel is a minor player in BC don’t ya know. If ya don’t have base load what happens when the wind don’t blow?
Maybe if you search ” base load is a myth ” you might be able to over come your ” motivated reasoning bias ” . The largest Chinese grid operater has debunked this base load myth and so have many others . The nuclear and coal burners are perpetuating the myth as a survival strategy . They are both in a death spiral and they know it . Nothing more . Don’t be taken in . Think for yourself . Stop being a parrot .
Coal and nuclear being built in China and India. Both China and India developing thorium reactors. Just where do you get your information. A simple search will confirm that. I think you may missunderstand base power, please explain.
Answer the question.
Seamutt cant see the forest for the tree’s. His income must be tied to Site C the same as all others who support this goofy project.
Socredible is the one making sense on this issue, but he failed to mention that most pulp mills generate a large percentage of their power needs with co-generation. He also overlooked the fact the LNG plants their own power, and will only purchase power from Hydro for their auxiliary needs. They would not even buy that power if it was not for Christie and her ilk putting pressure on them so that they could claim that LNG needs Site C power. It doesn’t. Furthermore, with the exception of a possible LNG Plant at Port Edward, LNG is dead in BC. Since this fiasco started the Americans have one plant on line and another coming on line next year on the West Coast. As usual we are a day late and a dollar short.
Site C is a national disgrace, and those who support it are in it for he jobs, contracts, and money, and in my humble opinion these are not good enough excuses for expropriating peoples land and flooding it, for no other reason than to win an election.
Time to wake up and smell the flowers. The BC Liberals need to go. The NDP need to go. BC needs a new clean (smelling) Government to kill of the stench of the last 20 years.
PS: Should read LNG plants generate their own power. Christie likes to overlook that fact because then she would have to admit that in order to produce electricity in China from LNG you need a plant at the exporting terminal, and plant at the importing terminal, and of course the natural gas plant itself that generates the electricity. Once you factor in all these plants, plus all the attendant pollution LNG will not reduce GHG emission by very much, if any.
This is all about getting re-elected. Much like the Rocky Mountain Trench, the Mono Rail to Alaska. In other words the Wenner Gren fiasco that was perpetrated on voters in years gone by so that the socreds could get elected,. Christie just took a page out of the book.
I still much prefer WAC Bennett to the present bunch of scallywags.
Lets not forget that Bennett brought the BC Rail to Prince George and points North, and Christie sold it to CN Rail thus creating a rail monopoly in North West BC.
The Liberals are responsible for the loss of over 20,000 jobs in BC since they came into power, and they have the audacity to suggest that Site C and LNG will create jobs. Creating jobs is not what this present Government is famous for.
Wake up and smell the flowers.
Wake up and smell the flowers, BC leads the country in job growth
ht tps://www.biv.com/article/2016/5/bc-leads-country-job-growth-and-has-lowest-unemplo/
Really, the only thing that can create lasting jobs is having an actual consumer demand for the output of those jobs, providing that consumer demand has a way of always being made fully EFFECTIVE. This is where ALL our currently active political Parties are completely missing the boat. They do not look and see whether or not there are enough ‘incomes’ being distributed in total through employment to fully liquidate all the ‘costs’ those incomes have to be able to liquidate through prices at the point of final retail. If there aren’t, and there aren’t, then creating money to fund mega-projects or any other kind of capital spending just to try to fill the gap is NEVER going to work. These projects all have ‘costs’ of their own, which will have to be carried forward into future prices, while the incomes they did distribute will have long ago been spent when the bills become due. This cannot help but lead to ever increasing inflation. Something that has always eventually destroyed every civilisation it’s taken root in. Correcting this financial anomaly wouldn’t be hard to do in itself. If we could ever get over the idea that those who control our money have to be asked for permission they’ll never give.
It is your humble option for sure.
So are you saying peace canyon, GMS, MICA, revelstoke can all be removed.
Oh the pulp mills are not self generating, notice the 60 kv, lines going to them. Yes they generate power but not independent of Hydro. The pulp mill you see driving into Quesnel is on of hydro’s largest customers.
Pulp mills burn waste material (hog fuel) to create heat for their processes. They also burn dark oil (pulping process by-product) for heat. But that isn’t enough, they still burn natural gas. They don’t generate electricity, that comes from BC Hydro.
There are some co-gen plants that burn sawmill waste to generate electricity, one in PG and one in Williams Lake, but they are stand-alone systems, not part of pulp mills.
Actually PG Pulp does generate electricity with some sort of partnership with Hydro. I have seen the unit.
That’s the co-gen system I mentioned.
Alberta leads all provinces in employment growth in 2016.
There was lots of jobs created here, too, when the NDP first formed government way back in 1972. Most of them were new government jobs.
Which might not have been so bad if those hired hadn’t been sent out to harass everyone running a private sector business in every inane way imaginable.
The NDP always was at cross-purposes with itself.
It hired people to do useless jobs that didn’t need doing and were designed to hinder the ability of those who actually did produce to earn enough profit to pay the taxes they needed to collect to keep those the government had hired employed.
They’d have been far better off to have just paid these people to do nothing. Most of them couldn’t do anything anyways. But that doesn’t jive with socialist philosophy. Can’t have a Worker’s Paradise unless you have workers, so called anyways. Complete confusion over what are two different things ~ ‘jobs’, and ‘incomes’ BC Librals are no better, they still can’t discern the difference between ‘inflation’ and ‘prosperity’.
I thought it was PEI and NFLD.
Kairos is a radical, left wing activist organization masquerading as a church based charity. Their activities are mostly political, and because of that the Conservative government cut funding to them. If it hasn’t already, I’m certain that the Liberals will restore funding. They do like to support radical lefty causes.
The protesters are the very ones from the lower mainland who use the majority of the power in BC. Lets give them half and see how that works out.
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