Union Urges NDP & Greens to Allow Site C Construction to Continue
Prince George, B.C. – The BC Liberals may have sworn in their new cabinet this week but a union representing over 1,000 workers on the Site C project is already urging a possible Green backed NDP government to allow construction on the dam to continue.
The Christian Labour Association of Canada note the fact the NDP and Greens plan to send the project to a review is causing unrest.
“The economic impact of any delays or cancellation on each individual worker and their families is immense,” says Ryan Bruce, CLAC spokesperson.
“We’re on pins and needles now,” adds Leah Reid, CLAC member working on the project. “If there are any delays at Site C, we will have very hard decisions to make. It is very expensive to live here, but we love the Fort St. John community. We moved here to work and to make the city our home.”
On behalf of its union membership, CLAC has sent letters to both Horgan and Weaver requesting meetings to discuss their positions regarding the future of the dam.
“I really hope they will take the time to respond,” says Bruce. “Those workers want their voice to be heard.”
In the meantime, he says they are going to circulate a petition and encourage those who feel they’ll be negatively impacted to sign it.
Bruce says they then plan to present the petition to the legislature at the first opportunity.
“And so, I really hope they’ll take the time to reach out and meet with us and meet some of our members to hear first hand how this delay or shutting down the project would affect their lives.”
250News reached out to both the NDP and BC Greens for comment on this story but didn’t hear back prior to publication time.
Comments
Clac is not a union, it is an employer dominated association. It is not recognised by any legitimate labour organisation because of its practices of undermining employees rights and benefits.
YEP, even though it is a fabricated political party these two might be able to come to an agreement. Still a mockery party though!
Interesting the Union wants the Government to see how shutting down the project affects their lives, however they seem to have little or no concern about how building the project affects the lives of farmers, first nations, etc; etc;.
ClaC is far from being a union…anyone in recognized union knows this…look up the history behind this you will understand…
CLAC, crap all contractors bidding on work have to pay workers based on the CLAC agreement which is low ball and fits nice with Alberta contactors working for less they are a joke.
CLAC isn’t a union. They get invited into the workplace by employers to prevent real unions with the ability to protect workers rights from representing employee interests in the workplace. CLAC is a joke.
CLAC is not a union
Define UNION!
Whether CLAC is a ‘real’ union or not is immaterial to the issue being reported on in this article. Tweedledee and Tweedledum seek to cancel or obstruct the majority of industrial projects that provide well-paying jobs in the north and a steady stream of resource sector royalties to the south and Victoria.
Pretty hard to feed a family and make mortgage payments, truck payments, etc. on intractable ideological dreams. Just ask the thousands of people that will be put out of work when the Abbott and Costello ‘coalition’ takes the wheel.
Unfortunately! the supporters of this Abbott and Costello Coalition feel that the sun and wind will provide the required amount of power to supply their homes and vehicles for the next century, The sad part, the world is multiplying faster than technology. Don’t want oil but want to run my 3500 dodge and 35′ tailor, don’t want power produce by dams but need my big screen tv, stereo etc….
Just what I need my tax dollars doing for me, paying wages to you.
LMAO!! Wish you were! Will do an investigative report on this and get back to you. to save cost of power and other fuels, will sent smoke signal, or vapor signal if you prefer just in case you are a supporter of non wood burning.
So the cogen plant in Williams lake shuts down for months at a time… 11 months at one time…and why… because the power is not needed on the grid….but we need Site C..
Everything, everyone is being more energy efficient and the power draw is not increasing… but we need our rates to keep going up. Thanks Clark….,pack your bags.
You really have no idea about industrial electrical power do you Val?
Stand next to one of twin 6,000 HP electrical drive motors of a SAG mill, and its corresponding VFD, and explain to me the difference between electrical demand and electrical consumption. Bonus points if you know what a SAG mill and/or a VFD are, and why they’re fundamentally important to the northern economy.
Have you wondered why IPPs across the province are paid to turn down?
Have you wondered why we can’t burn NG to generate power, yet we will spend massive amounts of money and energy to liquify it and send it to a user who will burn it anyways?
Have you wondered why we couldn’t upgrade existing hydro electric facilities vs building a contentious and costly new facility?
Have you wondered why we can’t access our power from the Columbia River system?
Have you factored transportation, construction, concrete production, and upkeep into your carbon footprint on this mega project?
This is a make work project, and a costly one at that.
Maybe we could get a few LNG plants to create some future demand. Oh and by the way, we’ve offered them a deep discount on our pricey power.
I work in industry, I know all about VFD, power turbines, steam turbines, step down turbines, reformers..etc etc..
I have also done numerous electrical surveys of our plant.. I know exactly what I am talking about.
But still, we have more power being generated than demand..that is why the shut down the cogen..
We don’t need site C
“I really hope they will take the time to respond,” says Bruce. “Those workers want their voice to be heard. ???? I hope they don’t respond . Anyone that divides workers along religious grounds in canada deserve nothing more than contempt . There is no place for this in canada . Shame on your Union . I spent my whole working life as a devote atheist and never once had this kind of superstition foisted upon me . You can put your religion where the sun don’t shine .
I was told 8 out of 10 licence plates at the dam are from Alberta.
The Fort St. John Alaska Highway News is reporting today that both the Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC) and the Construction Maintenance and Allied Workers Canada (CMAW) have both sent letters to Horgan!
Obviously these Unions don’t meet with the approval of our local OP250 unionists! Could that be because these Unions or whatever you wish to call them actually have the balls to stand up to the NDP!
Hmmm, fight for a job or kiss the NDP’s butt? I’m amazed that unions and the labour supporting NDP aren’t up on their soap boxes fighting for the jobs of working folk!
Guess the only “working folk” that matter are the “working folk” that belong to what our local unionists feel is in their opinion, a valid labour organization! Go figure!
“I’m amazed that unions and the labour supporting NDP aren’t up on their soap boxes fighting for the jobs of working folk!” That’s because the NDGreen are about to be in the same quandary they were in years ago when they supported environmental causes but forgot or ignored that unions formed a large portion of their voting bloc. The core NDP support group, as this election showed, is in the lower mainland & the island where traditional union resource extraction jobs are almost extinct. Now it is the BCGEU, BCTF, HEU & more service oriented unions that form the heart of the NDP union support. The NDP’s seeming attitude? Resource extraction?? Pffftt, Next!!! We have schools & hospitals to build, on the taxpayers dime, who cares about resource extraction. Oh, where is the material to build these projects coming from?
I assume the main reason people are against cancelling the site C comes down to jobs. Sure they may argue power needs, etc… but really I think it is about jobs… if so, come on… we could create jobs anywhere if the gov were to fund billions of dollars. How about we create jobs by tearing down the city of Vancouver… that would cost billions and create many jobs… how about we decide to be the world biggest producer of free range chickens, pump billions of tax payers dollars into this… sure to be a success. The options are endless.. It really doesn’t matter where the funds are directed if job creation is the only goal…
But we all know there is so much more to continued life on this earth than job creation.
“But we all know there is so much more to continued life on this earth than job creation.”
——————————————————————–
That’s something we ‘should’ all know. But it’s highly doubtful “…we all”, or even most people, really do. It’s certainly not something any of our politicians ever want us to think about.
Personally, as well as the job creation thing, I think the principal attraction of Site C is it’s a way of putting new credit into the economy. Without which existing credit would be difficult, if not impossible, to ever repay. What’s really happening is that the otherwise unrepayable (in their totality) floating loans of the private sector are being transmuted into the unrepayable fixed loans of the public one.
Of course we MAY, in future years, actually need the power. By then we’ll be so addicted to exporting it (and receiving whatever the market will pay us for it), we’ll have to build a Site D!
Site C is expected to produce power for years, and years, and years and then a whole bunch more years! How great is that! The oldest commercial windfarm in Canada is being scrapped, after only 23 years!
Today from the Calgary Herald:
“Oldest commercial wind farm in Canada headed for scrapyard after 23 years
By: DAN HEALING, CALGARY HERALD”
Hmmm, only 23 years?
I’ve read on more than one occasion, that these wind mills will never last long enough to generate the amount of energy that was consumed during their construction.
ht tps://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/06/13/wind-power-fails-in-canada-a-23-year-life-span-not-likely-to-be-replaced/
Rain falls from the sky and tries to make its way to the ocean by gravity. At a few spots along the way the rain water gets stored in reservoirs – when I say ‘a few’ I mean 3, as in Site A, Site B and Site C.
The water is released through turbines in proportion to the demand from the grid. Enormous amounts of instantaneous, clean frequency power are generated and transmitted across thousands of square kilometres of rural, urban and industrial lands.
Some of that water evaporates along its way to the ocean – some of makes it all the way to sea level. Regardless, it all evaporates, rises higher and higher into the atmosphere and eventually falls back to earth again as new rain.
A hydroelectric station of the magnitude of Site C can capture the energy of this incredible heat engine (the hydrological cycle) for 120 years, or more. No fossil fuel inputs and no GHG outputs.
Yet the braintrusts of the Green and NDP parties (who have collectively never spent 10 minutes in a thermodynamics lecture) know best. Don’t forget to plug in your electric cars Mssrs. Horgan and Weaver!
As I stated only a week or so, we have the benefit of massive batteries of stored energy, batteries that we affectionately refer to as Williston Lake and Dinosaur Lake.
I’d like to see Elon Musk built a battery as large as those lakes!
I could not agree more with mgomez and Hart Guy! Some farmland is going to be flooded. The farmers will be compensated! There is plenty more farmland in other areas of B.C.!
The province of B.C. is about three and a half times (!) the area of a whole country like France, Germany or Poland. All of Germany has a population of about 20 times that of B.C. so these countries manage without having the advantages that B.C. has, namely a vast area combined with a low population density, plus rivers that can be used to produce the cleanest, greenest and reliable energy on the planet!
It is unbelievable that parties like the Green (!) Party and the NDP would ever oppose such a great project! Hopefully it is just politics and the burning desire to get into power because opposition is totally unrealistic!
PrinceGeorge, regarding your comment that the farmers will be compensated, haven’t the farmers already been compensated?
Many of these farmers sold their properties to BC Hydro years and years ago, and have continued to farm the land under agreements that allowed them to do so.
I’m not sure if the Boon family has sold their land to BC Hydro yet, but it would be interesting to know how many farmers in the valley have not sold to BC Hydro.
It would be even more interesting to find out how many of the farmers that have already sold their lands are now protesting the construction of the dam!
Thank you Hartguy for the additional information! How many farmers have already sold their land to B.C. Hydro? Interesting!
In any case, people are compensated for the construction of highways, transit systems, bridges and so forth. It is for the common good, often for safety reasons and economic progress from which all of society will benefit. In this case it is for clean power, in fact the cleanest. A project of this kind is usually many years in the making and stringent requirements must be met before a shovel is put in the ground. The power will be needed and appreciated!
All of this has been done. The present manipulations are nothing but attempts at political hay making. Waste of time, money and effort!
Personally I like hydro power, micro or mega, don’t matter. As far as I am concerned there is NO other source of power that is as safe and reliable and clean as hydro. And I don’t care what anyone says about how safe nuclear is now, I don’t want any kind of nuclear plant anywhere near me. BUT, how pro site C would the people on the yes side be IF it was their homes that they had spent years and years on, maybe even generational, just to have the gov’t come along and give the a few bucks and tell them you have to move. Would they all feel they are doing it “for the good of the majority”, I kinda doubt it.
Btw.. Ataloss.. watched a very interesting documentary on Germany and how fantastic they are doing with renewable resources, garbage, etc.. then have even designed a super efficient house..
They love wind power :-)
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