The front page of The Citizen last week featured a big splashy picture of Premier Christy Clark at the B.C. Natural Resources Forum and rightly so.
Like it or not, both the federal and provincial governments have hung their hats on a resource economic model. We are the hewers-of-wood and drawers-of-water to the world it would seem except, of course, our biggest export is energy.
Much can be said about this strategy.
It sells our intellectual capital short.
It doesn't do justice to our children. It leaves us open to the whims of markets over which we have no control and little influence.
Indeed, the whole strategy could be summed up in one statement from Clark: "One thing we know, though, is although the world will change and British Columbia's economy will continue to diversify, we will always, in British Columbia, depend on the resource sector as the basis of everything we do."
The premier is ready to tackle the softwood lumber agreement which is up for renegotiation, while the slumping oil industry is likely the last nail in the Northern Gateway coffin and the demand for North American LNG decreases as other constituencies have beaten us to the punch. It would appear all we are doing is more of the same while the world is changing.
When the premier speaks of diversifying the economy is it into developing new products and industries or simply more mines and gas wells? Economic diversification which is based on the resource sector always leaves us susceptible to the vagaries of the resource economy and commodity markets.
In the same edition of The Citizen, on page 14, was a small article noting northern B.C. had its hottest year ever.
According to Environment Canada, when compared against a 68-year historic regional average, the Southern Interior was plus 1.9 C while northern B.C. and Yukon were plus 2.9 C.
If it seemed hot to you last year, well, that is because it was. Everywhere in British Columbia experienced the warmest year on record with even the Pacific coast up 2 C. With the warm weather and rainfall we experienced last week, it would seem the trend will continue for 2016.
The same can be said globally. According to data from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 2015 was the hottest year on record with 10 monthly global temperature records either tied or broken. The world is getting hotter as 15 of the 16 hottest years on record have occurred since 2001.
Indeed, the average global temperature for 2015 showed a 0.13 C change relative to 2014 which is one of the largest year-over-year shifts ever seen.
In part, this can be attributed to El Nino, but anthropogenic carbon is also to blame. Carbon dioxide levels are now at 400 ppm - a concentration not seen in the last four million years.
How are these two stories connected?
It is the question of diversification of the economy.
We can keep doing the same old things and accept the same old results.
We can keep cutting down trees, digging up rocks, and drilling for gas and oil. Indeed, I am not arguing we should stop these activities. Clark is absolutely right when she states that these will remain the bedrock of our economy.
However, we could and should also move in the direction of not just buying technology from Europe, China, and the United States but generating it here in this great province. Why buy wind turbines from Denmark when we could make them in Abbotsford?
Why buy solar panels from the U.S. when we can make them in Prince George? Why not provide incentives for research and development in the battery industry right here at home?
The answer commonly given, of course, is that it is cheaper to buy technology than build it. But that isn't always the case and if the loonie keeps dropping it will definitely not be the case going forward!
More to the point, if all we ever do is ship raw materials overseas to be manufactured into the goods we import back it will always be a losing proposition.
The cost of materials for the construction of consumer products is always a small portion of the retail price. It always costs us more to buy back those materials as finished products.
The climate is changing.
We can either lead by developing the industries which will address these changes or we can follow by buying the technology from other countries.
Buying technology is always easier than developing it.
However, if we want to have an economic future, we need to be more than just the suppliers of raw materials. We need to offer our children the opportunity to be world leaders and not just hewers-of-wood and drawers-of-water.
