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NDP’s Recklessness on IPPs Revealed

March 30, 2009

Victoria - New information shows the NDP’s plan to ban renewable, independent power production is based purely on reckless ideology and not the facts, say Energy Minister Blair Lekstrom and Environment Minister Barry Penner.

“We’ve now heard the NDP’s true agenda for IPPs: a complete ban on all projects, even those supported by communities and First Nations,” says Lekstrom. “But that position would not just be devastating for thousands of workers and billions in investment in rural communities – it also completely undermines the policy that NDP energy critic John Horgan developed during his party's time in government as 'special advisor' to the energy minister.”

Lekstrom is referring to archival information showing that in the NDP's dying days of government they made significant policy changes to, in their words, "encourage the development of environmentally sustainable, small hydro projects by independent power producers" by lowering water rental rates. In doing so, they endorsed IPPs as essential to British Columbia's energy future and environmentally responsible rural development.

“The NDP's energy critic has clearly forgotten his own record on this file," says Penner. “Carole James and the NDP have even less vision for the province now than the disastrous NDP administration of the 1990s. They have recklessly opted for ideology over jobs for working families and opportunities for First Nations. At a time when President Obama, our government and everyone else is looking for investments in new sources of renewable energy, the NDP wants to shut the door on the green economy and jobs for rural British Columbia.”

In the August 1, 2000 news release announcing the measures to cut water rentals rates, the NDP's employment and investment minister Gordon Wilson stated: "Small hydro projects successfully balance environmental sustainability with economic growth."

This policy came forward when John Horgan served as Special Advisor to the then-Minister of Energy and Mines, a position that government Orders in Council show he held between March 14 and November 7, 2000.

More than half of the IPPs in operation today were approved under the previous government.

Read the August 1, 2000 news release.   
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