I am writing in praise of the B.C. Liberals' surprisingly neighbourly jobs-creation strategy.
When many provincial governments are looking to boost their own economies, sometimes at the expense of their neighbours, the B.C. Liberals have created a massive, publicly-funded make-work project to help Albertans.
Now I am the first to acknowledge that with the collapse of oil prices, Albertans need a hand.
And it would be un-Canadian to turn our backs on our neighbours and friends to the east. Nevertheless, it is not traditional for Canadian provincial governments to ask their citizens to shell out nearly $10 billion to provide jobs for other provinces.
What is this exceptionally generous program? The Site C dam, of course. Funded by B.C. tax revenues and electricity bills (which will ratchet up inexorably over the coming decades to pay for our government's largesse), many (most?) of the workers are Albertans.
To ensure that their generosity was not impeded by pesky considerations like whether anyone needs the electricity, or whether there is a more cost-effective way to produce it, the government completely bypassed the B.C. Utilities Commission - jobs for Albertans are more important than such trivial considerations.
This kind-heartedness does not stop at the province next door.
The B.C. Liberals have ensured that the construction projects are so large as to be unmanageable by local companies, so the profits will go to international contractors, syphoning B.C. dollars even further from our shores. Why only help Albertans, when we can help Koreans and Spaniards too?
So three cheers for Christy & Co., leading the way to a better world in which we all look out for one another. And why stop there? There must be more ways we could help others at B.C.'s expense. Why not ship raw lumber overseas? Or unrefined bitumen?
The sky's the limit when it comes to giving away B.C.'s publicly-owned resources to enrich a few CEOs.
Stephen Rader,
Prince George
