Editor, The Times:
A couple weeks ago an item flitted across the printed page of B.C.’s corporate and disappeared fairly soon.
However, this bit of information stayed around long enough to inform the general public that one, just one, of Gordon Campbell’s great schemes, the ‘run of the river’ private power project, had stiffed the B.C. taxpayers for around $16 billion.
This ‘run of the river’ thing had its critics right from the start. Using some facts and figures, these entities pointed out that the whole thing made no sense economically. The price of power from these private power projects was simply too high and the environmental cost was too great.
But why confuse one’s self with facts when there’s the chance to awards one’s friends with taxpayers’ money?
Campbell was very good at that one. Protected by B.C.’s fawning corporate media, Campbell forged ahead. He farmed out BC Hydro’s accounting to the rather dubious foreign entity Accenture. Sold off Glen Clark’s “Fast Ferries” for a song then bought three unseaworthy German built monstrosities. Jobs for German workers, money and interest for German banks, including most probably that notorious Deutsche bank.
In Campbell’s 10 year tenure, protected by B.C.’s Chamber of Commerce Board of Trade gang, not to mention B.C.’s corporate media, Campbell forged ahead with his schemes to simply sell off B.C. to whoever wanted it.
But the “truth will out” eventually and Campbell was finally stopped dead in his tracks on the Coquihalla. What friends did he have in mind for its proposed privatization?
Then with a nine per cent approval rating and his HST scheme falling flat (note here the HST in itself wasn’t a bad idea, but trust Campbell to twist it around to award his friends and acquaintances), Campbell departed right across the country where he is now advisor to Ugly Doug and his neo-con thugs. You can’t keep a bad penny down.
It wasn’t much under cute little Christie’s reign—virtually all of the private-public projects came in millions over budget. However, if Site C pans out and this in itself is questionable then maybe Christie’s legacy won’t be so bad.
Certainly not the rack and ruin that Campbell left behind here in B.C. (BC Hydro was fine as was ICBC, until the Campbell-Clark government got their hands on it).
Smoke that in your pipe Jim Lamberton.
Dennis Peacock,
Clearwater, B.C.
