Issues & Community Blog - Andrew Weaver: A Climate for Hope - Page 186

Media Statement: July 9^th, 2014

Weaver calls on BC Government to broaden BC Hydro’s scope to allow for production of geothermal power

For Immediate Release

Vancouver, B.C. – Today, Andrew Weaver, MLA for Oak Bay-Gordon Head and Deputy Leader of the B.C. Green Party, joined Gwen Johansson, the Mayor of Hudson’s Hope, as she released an independent report on the impacts of and the alternatives to the Site C project. Building on the findings of this report, Weaver is calling on the Provincial government to broaden BC Hydro’s scope to allow for the development of a geothermal power capacity in the province of British Columbia.

The Joint Review Panel (JRP) for the Site C dam released their report in early May. They found that the proposed project would result in significant and irreversible community and environmental impacts, and that there has not been sufficient assessment of the effects of rising electricity rates, advancing technology and energy conservation. They further noted that the accuracy of project cost estimates could not be confirmed because they did not have the information, time or resources. The Panel concluded that more work needed to be done and recommended a thorough review by the British Columbia Utilities Commission (BCUC).

The independent report released today by Mayor Johansson builds upon the findings of the JRP and proposes a number of cost effective alternatives to the Site C dam.

“It’s easy to believe that developing alternatives is always something that’s on the horizon,” said Weaver. “But with renewable resources like geothermal, British Columbia is actually falling further and further behind the rest of the world. If you look along the West coast of North America, and indeed throughout the entire Pacific Rim, the only jurisdiction that isn’t using its geothermal resources is British Columbia.”

Geothermal is only one of a number of different options identified in this report that are likely to produce power cheaper than Site C, while meeting the clean energy demands of this Province.

The Site C dam, if built, would be situated on the Peace River. It would produce 1,100 MW of power capacity and up to 5,100 GWh of electricity each year at an estimated cost of $7.9 billion dollars.

The construction of the Site C dam will flood 6,427 acres of Class 1 & 2 agricultural land, which includes the only Class 1 agricultural land north of Quesnel. The affected Treaty 8 Tribal Association has already expressed a number of serious concerns regarding the Site C dam proposal.

The Minister of Energy and Mines has stated that the decision as to whether or not Site C receives environmental certification will come sometime around September.

“The Province should take this opportunity to pause and explore whether geothermal energy could provide the same quantity of stable, reliable power, but in a more fiscally and environmentally prudent fashion and in a way that fosters partnerships with First Nations, while providing greater and more diverse job opportunities across the Province.” said Weaver.

Media Contact
Mat Wright – Press Secretary, Andrew Weaver MLA
mat.wright@leg.bc.ca
1 250 216 3382

Media Statement: July 3rd, 2014
Andrew Weaver: Kinder Morgan Responses Unacceptable
For Immediate Release

Victoria B.C. – Today, Andrew Weaver MLA for Oak Bay-Gordon Head and Deputy Leader of the B.C. Green Party has submitted a motion to the National Energy Board, asking them to compel Trans Mountain to provide full and adequate responses to questions that he submitted as an intervenor in the Trans Mountain Hearing Process.  Many of Trans Mountain’s answers to his information requests were “incomplete” and “unacceptable”.

As a part of the National Energy Board hearing process on Kinder Morgan’s proposed Trans Mountain pipeline project, Dr. Weaver submitted nearly 500 questions to the company. Dr. Weaver’s questions focused on the risk and impact of an oil spill, the scientific underpinning of its oceanographic analysis, and on the extent to which people on southern Vancouver Island were consulted. Trans Mountain, a fully own subsidiary of Kinder Morgan Canada, recently submitted its answers to Dr. Weaver’s questions.

“Many of the answers I received are simply unacceptable,” says Andrew Weaver. “They are refusing to consider any oil spill larger than a small fraction of a tankers cargo, and basing their oil spill analysis on a response capacity that simply doesn’t exist. The lack of substantive response shows a disregard for the essential role that intervenors play in the hearing process.”

Collectively over 10,000 questions were submitted to Trans Mountain as a part of the first stage of information requests. With the National Energy Board’s ruling to exclude oral cross-examination from the hearing process, intervenors will only have one more opportunity to submit follow-up questions to the company.

Many intervenors have argued that the decision to exclude oral cross-examination has severely constrained their ability to hold Trans Mountain to account on its evidence. These concerns will ultimately be put to the test in the coming weeks when the Board makes its ruling on the adequacy of Trans Mountain’s answers. Intervenors have until July 4th to submit motions to the NEB requesting a ruling be made.

“Given the massive outpouring of opposition to the Northern gateway pipeline and the serious concerns that have been raised about heavy oil spills, it is hard to believe that Kinder Morgan wouldn’t be doing everything possible to assuage the concerns of intervenors and all British Columbians” said Weaver.

Submission to National Energy Board from Andrew Weaver – download here.

Media Contact
Mat Wright – Press Secretary, Andrew Weaver MLA
mat.wright@leg.bc.ca
1 250 216 3382

Back in March 2014,  I raised a concern about the lack of protection for Registered Disability Savings Plans (RDSPs) and Registered Education Savings Plan (RESPs). Industry Canada is now conducting a public consultation that includes these same concerns.

As a quick reminder, RDSPs are a federal, tax-deferred, long-term savings plan for people with disabilities who want to save for the future. Unfortunately, under the Court Order Enforcement Act,  RDSPs  are not listed as a registered plan in BC’s legislation and are therefore not exempt from creditor protection. Therefore, should an individual with an RDSP go into debt, their savings in the RDSP will not be protected from seizure.

To put this in context, Registered Retirement Savings Plans (RRSPs) and Registered Retirement Savings Plans (RRIFs) are protected. Most provinces, including British Columbia, have recognized the importance of protecting RRSPs and RRIFs from creditors in the event of personal bankruptcy.  Legislation was passed to protect these registered plans from being seized in the event of personal bankruptcy. Here in British Columbia, such seizures are governed by the 1996 Court Order Enforcement Act.

Industry Canada is currently conducting a public consultation on the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act – and in the discussion paper, a proposal has been made to exempt RDSP assets from seizure in insolvency proceedings.

Industry Canada has called for public input on the issue of creditor protection for the Registered Disability Savings Plan. Submissions will be accepted until July 15, 2014. Information about making a submission can be found here.

To read more about the concerns I raised, including my questions to the Minister of Justice, please click here.

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In an earlier post, I took a look at the math in an ad that the BC Government placed on the the front page of 24 Hours Vancouver. In the ad the government suggested that teachers were asking for an 8% increase in salary and a 6.5% increase in benefits for a total 14.5% increase. As I pointed out, you cannot add percentages and benefits that are typically closely related to salary.

What the government was not saying is that the 6.5% was not actually benefits. Rather, it was their assessment of what the costs would be to implement the BCTF proposal. The BC Public School Employers’ Association has publicly released their costing 0f the BCTF proposal. In addition, the BC government advertisement has revised their advertisement to eliminate the breakdown of the 14.5% into 8% salary and 6.5% benefits.

  Initial Advertisement                                             New Advertisement              

Let’s take a close look at the government position. First, please let me reiterate. I am dismayed at the approach that seems to be occurring with respect to negotiation via press release and media statement. That is certainly not how I would expect respectful negotiations to proceed.

The BCPSEA costed summary table is reproduced below. In it, BCPSEA present their offer to the teachers and the BCTF demands of government. Most reasonable people would read this and wonder why the government’s position is an offer and the teachers’ position is a demand. It strikes me as an unfortunate choice of words that certainly does not aid in bringing parties together.

So what’s actually in the teachers’ so-called compensation demands? Further inspection of the BCPSEA costing reveals the following:

Teachers’ Proposed Wage Increase

Today Vincent Ready announced that he had too many commitments to take on the position as mediator in the labour dispute involving teachers and the government via their negotiating arm BCPSEA. This comes on the heels of a full page ad being taken out by the BC Government in 24 Hours Vancouver on Friday, June 20.

In an amazing twist of irony, the ad is also found on the “Province of British Columbia’s official Education and Literacy page” on Facebook. 

While the ad is certainly compelling visually, there’s a rather fundamental mathematical problem with the government’s calculations.  I think most British Columbians would agree that “Teachers deserve a fair wage increase. But it needs to be affordable”.  But when the government makes such an elementary mistake in their calculation, it makes one rather suspicious of other claims that they might be making.

Let’s do a little mathematics.

Suppose that the total amount of money spent on teacher salaries in the province of British Columbia is: S

Suppose that the total amount of money spent on teacher benefits (pension, health, dental, disability etc)  is:  B

Benefits are almost always assigned as a percentage p of total salary so that:

(1)                    B = p × S

Then the present total compensation T0 to teachers including benefits is:

(2)                   T0 = S + B = S + p × S = (1 + p) × S

In the advertisement, the government says the teachers are asking for an 8% salary increase (over 5 years) and a 6.5% improvement in their benefits.

So by the end of the 5 year agreement the total compensation T5 to teachers would be:

(3)                    T5 = T0 + 0.08 × S + 0.065 × p × S = (1 + p) × S + 0.08 × S + 0.065 × p × S = (1.08 + 1.065 × p) × S

We can get a pretty good idea of the ttotal amount of money spent on teacher salaries and benefits in the Province of British Columbia from the Ministry of Education website.  Table 6 of the BC School District Expenditure and Revenue Tables notes that in 2013/14, a total of $3,125,629,458 was spent on all teacher salaries combined and a total of $792,384,192 was spent on total benefits. Benefits therefore represent 25% of the salary costs so:

(4)                    p = 0.25

Now when we plug p from Equation 4 into Equations 2  and 3 we get:

(5)                  T0 = 1.25  × S                           

and

(6)                  T5 = 1.35  × S

The ratio of T5 to T0 gives us the overall compensation increased proposed by the BCTF.

(7)                    T5 / T0 = 1.08

The proposed teacher wage increase is 8.0% increase over 5 years when the overall package is considered (including benefits).  How could this number be so different from the government’s number in the above advertisement? Well the answer is simple, the BC Government added the 8% salary increase to the 6.5% benefit increase to get their 14.5% overall increase. Their math is just plain wrong and frankly I think they owe the general public, let alone the teachers, an apology for misleading them particularly in light of the fact that funds for the advertisement probably arose from public money. In addition, it is embarrassing, to say the least, to see this advertisement proudly displayed on the official BC Education and Literacy Facebook page.

Now, more than ever, it is important for the Liberal government to find a mediator to bring rationality back into the negotiations.  I think we can all agree that teacher’s need a fair wage increase but at the same time, it’s pretty clear to me that government could use a lesson or two in math. Our children, their parents and the teachers in the classroom deserve better.