"Looney Right"

Check out former Fraser institute's Senior fellow Walter Block's book.

http://mises.org/books/defending.pdf

He defends child labour as a good thing among others. Nozick, Van Mises, Hayek, and Friedman are the looney theoreticians for neo-liberal/libertarian thought. Their crackpot ideas have influenced many influential people including Greenspan, Harper, Gordon Campbell, Reagan etc. This free-market thinking is responsible for much of the economic mess we are in now and the massive poverty and inequality around the world.

For a good antidote, check out Karl Polanyi's "The Great Transformation." David Harvey's book on The New Imperialists and Neoliberalism are sure to make you think twice about the benefits of unrestrained wealth, markets and trade.

great to see

It's great to see the right wing interest such as Blackies in the Tyee comment section. With any luck we will have more of his type switch to the unbiased opinion expressed in this publication. Who knows even hard line Fiberals will come around. My Family and I are thankful for Raif Mairs educated well researched articles and wouldn't think twice of ever looking at another Canwest/Liberal rag.

Blackie is wrong about NAFTA

Blackie says "And failure to renew a lease (another argument put forward by the anti-run of river crowd) does not constitute a NAFTA violation."

This is not exactly true. Abitibi Bowater is challenging Canada because of the taking away of a lease for water rights (among other things.) There hasn't been a case yet where NAFTA has been used to challenge the non-renewal of a license or lease yet, but this is because case law is developing under the relatively new NAFTA.

If you know anything about NAFTA Chapter 11, every case is 'new' and 'unique' because NAFTA is new (for case law). For Example, before the SD Myers case you could argue that Canada's Basil commitments not to export hazardous waste wouldn't be threatened by NAFTA because there has never been a case like this. You would be wrong, because SD Myers won and the Canadian Gov't has to allow us to export PCBs even though we have an intl agreement prohibiting it.

Trade lawyer and NAFTA expert Steve Shrybman argues that non-renewal of licence or lease is a valid basis for a NAFTA claim, and Shryban has been one of the most prescient observers for how NAFTA case law will develop.

Furthermore, NAFTA tribunals are private, meaning the 'judges' are not part of the civil service like criminal and tort law judges. They are largely consultants and lawyers who get their income (when they are not involved in tribunals) from the private sector and the companies who put forward NAFTA suits. Critics argue that this is why there have been so many unforeseen lawsuits under NAFTA in favor of Companies over the governments of Canada, US and Mexico.

Check out the cases:
http://www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/disp-diff/gov.aspx?lang=en

http://www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/disp-diff/usa.aspx?lang=en

http://www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/disp-diff/mexico.aspx?lang=en

Rafe is right on!

If you want to know just how effective the legal system is as a vehicle used against corporations which do environmental damage then look to the Exxon Valdes oil spill. The settlements will never equal the damage. Relying on free-enterprise principles to solve any problems ignores one fundamental fact - human nature and the inherent greed.

Consider the issue of sub prime mortgages, the Enrons, the Madofs and all the ponzi schemes from the proponents of capitalism as the be all and end all. The Blackies of this world will never learn.

Why would any government put the public in a position to function from a defensive position. Give away a resource and then if something happens ask the public to sue. That is so dumb. ROR in private hands is like that. Rafe is right on!

Missing the point

I think Raif is focussed on the wrong thing. The question that jumps out at me is, "Why is BC Hydro forced to provide power that it doesn't need and can't make money off of?" That seems wonky to me, and would likely seem wonky to Mike Walker too. His theory of privatizing rivers might have some merit, but we'll never know if it's being tested simultaneously with a wonky theory like forcing a company to buy something it doesn't need.

Oops

I meant, "Why is BC Hydro forced to BUY power it doesn't need and can't make money off of"

NAFTA

Telus empoyee says: "This is not exactly true. Abitibi Bowater is challenging Canada because of the taking away of a lease for water rights (among other things.)"

The point you miss here is that in this case, as in the other Chapter 11 cases, the challenge is over a government's decision to take away an existing license, without compensation. There are others. ExxonMobil is also taking on Newfoundland because it unilaterally changed the terms of a signed contract with a resulting increase in the company's operating costs.

When governments do this in Canada to Canadian companies, they have recourse to Canadian courts. Foreign companies do not, and that's why Chapter 11 was put in NAFTA -- to make sure that trans-nationals had some recourse if they were forced to play by different rules than the domestic companies. I've never understood why that is such an issue, since it's an attempt to impose a fairness doctrine on all companies operating in the three jurisdictions.

Yes, the panels are separate from the court system -- but they are charged with ensuring that the three countries comply with their own laws. That's why Canada has done exceedingly well before NAFTA tribunals on such issues as softwood lumber. (I know, Ottawa always botches that one, but that's another story). The track record for companies taking governments to NAFTA on Ch. 11 is inconsistent with wins and losses both ways.

Shrybman may believe that lease renewal (or more correctly failure to renew) can be a NAFTA claim, but there's lots of contrary opinions. When the lease stipulates (as is the case with run of river) what the term is, what the government's renewal obligations are (lack of them in this case), and what happens to all improvements when the lease reverts back to the crown -- it's very hard to see how any court or panel would decide that a violation had occurred. If you don't like the terms of a contract, don't sign it.

Finally, the Fraser institute= the looney tune lobby group

You're right on this one Rafe. This is one of the reason's Campbell is so hard to nail down-he actually believes that privatizing everything will contribute to the public good. I remember an interview published in BC Business a few years ago in which Mr. Campbell stated (I paraphrase) that businesses seem to be strongly in favour of competition except when competition is against them. The comment in BC business was that Mr. Campbell seemed genuinely confused by this. Over the last number of years I have met many people, managers in the public sector and politicians who had spent very little time in the private sector and vet were absolutely convinced, to the point of being religious about it, that the panacea of privatization would solve society's problems because business would look after whatever they owned. Unfortunately these people have no idea of the profit motive (which is a good thing in a properly regulated environment and have no idea of economic history and how we got to be where we are today.

Thank you, the Fraser Institute is a lobby group, not a research organization as they are portrayed in the media as they start off with an radical right wing answer and then look for a question that the answer will appear for.

language, language

Rafe,

You're a master of riling up the screaming reactionaries, but I'm going to take you to task on some of your wording.

"Private companies are encouraged by Campbell to desecrate our rivers to produce power, which BC Hydro is forced to buy."

Under the current call for tenders, BC Hydro originally was seeking 5,000 GWh of power. They, all by themselves (maybe Campbell has forced them?) have reduced that amount to 3,000 GWh, much to the consternation of the IPP sector. BC Hydro has received over 17,000 GWh of offered power from proposed projects. BC Hydro isn't being forced to buy anything they don't want. In fact, they are fighting tooth and nail to source as little as possible from the private sector and instead, try to meet their deficits through conservation, which I applaud, despite the fact that this will be unsuccessful.

Regarding the desecration of rivers: you and your citizens for public power colleagues have, on a number of occasions, suggested that the best alternative to sourcing power from the private sector is to develop Site C, a project which, to use your word, would desecrate a valley and a river. Actually, desecrate is too light of a term. It would destroy that river and valley. It would disrupt wildlife and an entire ecosystem. A run of river project, would no doubt have an impact on the same, but it's a tiny cut compared to a machete gash that is a large scale legacy dam.

If it's an environmental issue, let's strengthen the environmental standards. If it's an ideological one, let's dust off our Communist Manifestos, because you've got a great battle ahead. All natural resources in our province are privatised but managed by the Crown. Does a crown corporation develop mining sites? Does a crown corporation harvest and sell timber? Does a crown corporation grow and export agricultural products? Nope, they're all private. From Barnston Island herbs, to the Richmond blueberry farmers to Timberwest, these are the evil corporate entities that you are painting with the same brush.

I'm not saying that this works, or it's the best system we've got, but if we're going to talk ideology, let's get some context.

Blackie, I hope you are not a gov't Lawyer

Blackie says,

"Shrybman may believe that lease renewal (or more correctly failure to renew) can be a NAFTA claim, but there's lots of contrary opinions."

Look blackie buddy, when the leases and licenses expire, and if the gov't refuses to renew them, the companies will not be looking for the lawyers who argue the that there is not a case for a Chapter 11 suit. The will hire ones who think that they can make a case, and if you dangle money in front of a lot of your so called 'contrary opinions', they will agree with Shrybman and say there is a case here.

Some legal opinions are contrary to Shrybman because they have interests that want them to argue the leases are not permanent. By your argument, no case under NAFTA would ever be go to tribunal because there is no precedent. In the real world every NAFTA case has broken new ground, and the lease non-renewal will be just another ground breaking case when it comes (and it will if we still have awful deals like NAFTA in place).

As for if the fact that a Canadian company cannot file against it sown gov't, there are way around that. Open up a Us subsidiary and transfer the assets to them and bingo you have grounds for a NAFTA Chapter 11 claim.

In addition, by the time these leases expire, there will be consolidation in the IPP sector and there will be a few big transnational players. This is already happening and has happened in every industry in the past and will in the IPP sector (in fact it already is happening).

Just remember the architects of NAFTA (Dymond for example) expected Chapter 11 to protect investors from the Mexican Gov't. They were surprised when so many cases agianst Canada and US appeared. My point is that when these agreements such as NAFTA are made, they never turn out as expected. When there is a buck to be made by a lawyer, they will argue anything, not just what the framers of NAFTA had in mind.

The most that can be said about these leases and licenses for rivers is that they last a minimum of 40 years (or whatever the specific number) not a maximum of 40.

Shabbaranks

Shabbaranks says:

"BC Hydro isn't being forced to buy anything they don't want."

You are naively assuming the gov't has no power in BC Hydro decisions and they act independently. When Hydro reduced the power call to 3000MWh the gov't freaked and Hydro had to backpedal. The only reason they might not take the full 5000Mwh today is because demand is down due to the Great Recession.

Terrific Column Rafe

You should accept suggestions from your editor more often.

Michael Walker and the Fraser Institute are clearly the 'intellectual' basis of Campbell's ideology; the interesting thing about BC is how far behind, in terms of public understanding of such things, we are in this province.

Glad you also made the point that Hydro doesn't actually 'need' the energy and can, according to its own estimates, easily meet the province's energy needs with little more than some conservation and decent planning...

And for those in the commentariat who focus on the debate about the difference between a 'lease' and a sale, please, don't insult the reading public's intelligence...these leases are as much a sale as the 900+ year lease that Campbell gave CN over BC Rail. And the habitat and the ecology - once ruined - will be gone forever.

The province is and has been for sale - with four more years of Campbell and the Fraser Institute pulling the strings there will be little enough left in 2013 to squabble about.

Very telling anecdote about Walker’s pathetic ‘need’ for you to agree with him - that too ‘really’ was interesting.

Raif

You are rehashing the same story over the last few years. Can't you write something on a different subject for once and all?

We ARE getting there

Thanks Rafe.
Sounded a bit discouraged a while ago but it's down to keep a good man hard.
Keep up the fight.
PLEASE

Well people made their

Well people made their choice last May. It also does not help Big BC Media would never bring this or anything that would make Herr Campbell look bad.

Who is the Fraser Institute?

Corporations hide behind the front groups that they finance. A friend of a friend once asked Michael Walker where his funding came from and of course he would not answer. Unlike Raif, I find it very difficult to like Michael Walker, or anyone else, who parrots corporate sponsored myths that result in so much poverty and outright theft of natural resources, while polluting our land, water and food supplies. These people are "part of the problem" and should be exposed as corporate lackeys on a continual basis. They hide behind the corporate media and are allowed to present their specious arguments, while little or no alternative opinions are allowed to be presented. Milton Friedman was the economic genius behind Pinochets Chile and yet the Campbells brothers are ga-ga over the fiend.

This is what NAFTA says about reducing energy exports

http://www.worldtradelaw.net/nafta/chap-06.pdf

NAFTA says:

Article 605: Other Export Measures
Subject to Annex 605, a Party may adopt or maintain a restriction otherwise justified under
Article XI:2(a) or XX(g), (i) or (j) of the GATT with respect to the export of an energy or basic
petrochemical good to the territory of another Party, only if:
(a) the restriction does not reduce the proportion of the total export shipments of the
specific energy or basic petrochemical good made available to that other Party
relative to the total supply of that good of the Party maintaining the restriction as
compared to the proportion prevailing in the most recent 36-month period for which
data are available prior to the imposition of the measure, or in such other
representative period on which the Parties may agree;
(b) the Party does not impose a higher price for exports of an energy or basic
petrochemical good to that other Party than the price charged for such good when
consumed domestically, by means of any measure such as licenses, fees, taxation
and minimum price requirements.

"an energy" would apply to

"an energy" would apply to Hydro -

To my layman's eyes it looks like Hydro is covered by the proportionality clause - so if we start selling this private power down south we are LOCKED IN to selling a percentage of our power to the U.S.

If not renewing a lease to a private power developments reduced power flowing to the states we could be nailed by the proportionality clause

This being the opinion and

This being the opinion and speculation of a layperson of course. Worth thinking about though. The whole proportionality clause is a pretty raw deal all on its own.

Selective memory

Blackie and friends have conveniently forgotten one of the first NAFTA rulings, when a US chemicals company picked $50 million out of Canadian taxpayer's pockets for "loss of trade" when the Federal gov't outlawed the use of Lead Tetra-ethyl (anti-knock compound) in gasoline for public health reasons.

That made sense, eh?

Maybe the greatest value

of this article is that it elicited this dicussion. Out of this blah-blah one can with certainty derive one solid fact: 'we' do not know where the rules will be taking us, yet we throw all we have away for money now, and damn the consequences. it's not us, just our children and they're insignificant. If that is not what we're thinking, it's what we're acting.

How about we just hit the brakes and sit on it for a while? what's the bloody rush? lemming-time? We might even clean house and deal with some of the rats gnawing on our floorboards.

Please tell me why the next generation should NOT be taking a quick look around and join a gang. For all they can see, we have.

Bbbbthat, Bbbbbbthats all folks!

And all waht heights will hit!

On with the show, this is it!

Crawling out from under my rock

Rafe - PLEASE keep up the good work. There are many of us out here who are truly concerned about the environmental impacts and the social costs of Run of the River Projects.

Not only are we expecting private enterprise to be our rivers environmental stewards, a truly scary thought, but we are locking ourselves into selling a specific portion of our electricity at domestic rates.

If the demand for electricity skyrockets- think all those electric cars - the purchaser can re-sell our cheap power to their customers at exorbitant rates. The only way for BC Hydro to benefit in any way will be to raise domestic prices.

What an environmental and economic legacy!

Moonbug

The energy provisions you have cited were implemented BEFORE The original FTA and then NAFTA were signed, and were simply embraced as part of the trade agreement. Personally, I think they were a bad idea and if I were re-negotiating NAFTA (as the Americans seem to want) that's the first thing I'd ditch.

But they don't apply to spot market sales. BC Hydro has been making spot market sales to California and other US jurisdictions for decades based on surpluses. No surpluses; no sales. And Hydro has been buying private power for decades too. Nothing is going to change with run of river power.

NAFTA is a colossal red herring in this debate. Someone tried to float the idea a while ago that somehow these IPP's would be able to export the water from their projects if they didn't feel like generating power. Conspiracy theorists abound.

ME2 -- I didn't forget that one, I said their have been wins and losses. You're forgetting that both Methanex and Lowes Funeral Homes lost similar claims against the US government, and UPS lost a claim against Canada.

Here's what I don't understand about this debate: Hydro has been told that it must achieve at least 50% of its future incremental demand forecast through conservation. That is a near-impossible goal in my opinion. At the same time, we see the City of Vancouver moving towards providing plugs for electric vehicles -- another noble venture. Has anyone given any though to where that power is going to come from if we embrace electric cars? Or what it will cost?

If you drive out private power (which still won't come close to providing what the public power facilities generate), where do you think it will come from? And while everyone gets hysterical about the unit cost of IPP power (which is about the same as Hydro's most recent ROR adventure), do they really think that power from a Site C will be any cheaper?

Regardless of the source of

Regardless of the source of the power, the price of power should be at least doubled for residential users in this province who do not qualify for a low income rate.

People get all dizzied with the thought of paying more for power; but the proportional cost of power in our house hold expenditures is low relative to most areas of the world. We've squandered our privilege of having low cost power available for our use with poorly built, over sized and over serviced homes.

It would be interesting to see a statistic to determine how many BC homes allocate a larger % of their annual household expenditures to coffee and beer than to power costs.

If the issue is the environment- we should be looking at responsibly transitioning our economy to having a tax base which has a higher % of revenue from the harvesting and exportation of high grade renewable energy, to allow for a retreat from our reliance on the harvesting and exporting our increasingly depleted wood, mineral and wild food resources.

If the issue is private harvesting of public resources- how does this differ from fishing, mining, or forestry? it is the model which our entire economy is based and it is a reason why we are afforded relative affluence compared to much of the world.

Much of this development will occur in areas where the native and non native populations can, where equal and fair partnerships can be established, use the jobs and revenue to transition from more destructive and lower value resource exploitation economies to longer term renewable energy harvesting which can provide an economic base to foster higher grade local resource based industries such as sport fishing, specialty wood milling and manufacturing, and nature based tourism.

undaunted freebear

That last post was the most intelligent one from you yet. You could not even get that quote correct. But it made me smile.

To the Carpenter - Gordon Campbell - apologies to Lewis Carroll

"A loaf of bread," the Walrus said,
"Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed--
Now if you're ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed."

"But not on us!" the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue.
"After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!"
"The night is fine," the Walrus said.
"Do you admire the view?

"It was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"Cut us another slice:
I wish you were not quite so deaf--
I've had to ask you twice!"

"It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
"To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"The butter's spread too thick!"

"I weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.

"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.

And we all know who the 'oysters' are