Victoria, BC –– The Green Party of BC is calling on British Columbians to support an increased tax shift on green house gas emissions from $10/tonne to $50/tonne.

The $10/tonne (now $15) shift by the BC Liberals is a start, but BC Greens would shift more sooner — starting with $50/tonne,” said Jane Sterk, Leader of the Green Party of BC.

“Since revenues from the tax will be used to reduce payroll and income taxes, most British Columbians who have choosen alternates to burning hydrocarbons have already increased their overall revenues. Along with the GST rebate and lowered personal taxes, some low income, northern and rural dwellers have also seen reduced expenses.”

The press release looks rushed and not researched properly.

The second paragraph states that the carbon tax is levied at $10 per tonne, but then states it is now $15 – it is not. It will be $15 as of July 1, 2009, and $20 as of July 1, 2010, and $25 as of July 1, 2011, and then the last legislated increase is $30 as of July 1, 2012. Presumably this legislation will be extended if the BC Liberals are re-elected.

The third paragraph is badly worded and is plainly incorrect. Revenues from the carbon tax cannot be used to decrease payroll taxes (CPP and EI) mainly because these are federal jurisdiction items. The provincial government cannot directly reduce these payroll taxes. Saying that the carbon tax, from an individual perspective “increases overall revenues” is also incorrect phrasing; “reducing expenses” is proper. Finally, the GST rebate (another federal jurisdiction matter) has nothing to do with the provincial carbon tax.

This isn’t the first time the provincial Green party has mixed provincial and federal jurisdiction matters; in their original platform document, they stated they would accelerate capital cost allowance rates for “green” capital expenditures; and also permanently put in place the oil drilling moratorium – both of which are federal matters.

Politically, calling for a carbon tax increase is not going to win mainstream voters for the Green party; especially since this release does not explain in a concrete fashion (i.e. dollars that are planning on being spent for various initiatives) on how the revenues from such a tax increase would be utilized – there is reference to “Initially money would be directed toward programs in rural and northern communities”, but somehow I doubt those communities will be thrilled about this. The press release also implies that the “revenue neutral” aspect of the carbon tax (i.e. every dollar collected from carbon taxation will no longer be applied to tax reductions elsewhere) will no longer be adhered to.

The impact of a $50/tonne carbon tax, assuming a 10% reduction in consumption of fossil fuels over projected 2009-2010 levels, would be a $1.42 billion dollar per year tax increase over and above the 2009-2010 budgeted amount (of $546 million). A $50/tonne carbon tax would represent a 11.7 cent tax per litre of unleaded gasoline.

Finally, keep in mind the title of the press release was “Green Tax Shifting Reduces Emissions Without Increasing Taxes”, which is completely inconsistent with what the rest of the press release stated since the tax increase would be approximately $1.42 billion, assuming fossil fuel consumption is reduced by 10%.

Posted by Sacha Peter for BC Election 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Filed under category BC Greens, Economy, Environment.

Kenn Faris at Elections BC has been of great assistance in getting a copy of some more legible numbers for the 2008 financing reports of the BC Liberal and NDP. The changes were not significant from the original post I made on the issue (including the subsequent analysis) but note that the 2008 numbers are 100% accurate:

Posted by Sacha Peter for BC Election 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Filed under category BC Greens, BC Liberals.

What’s more impressive is that they’ve taken a cue from the BC Liberals’ candidate page and are putting high-resolution photographs of their candidates online for easy access.

This may seem like a trivial step, but it enables newspapers and magazines, if they so desire, to put a picture of the candidate up in an article, at a resolution that won’t blur on the printed product.

This is something the NDP has not done yet.

The Green Party has made a dramatic turnaround in their online presence – they have cleaned up their website (which was a complete disaster half a year ago), got their leader on the front page, drastically improved the picture of Jane Sterk, got rid of those horrible Youtube videos of her from the Green site, clearly announcing candidates and putting up their contact information, etc. Somebody did a good job with their site.

Posted by Sacha Peter for BC Election 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Filed under category BC Greens.

The Green Party did some significant belt-tightening (observe the decrease in salaries within the party), but also has managed to increase their donor base. The party will be a continuing factor in future elections, as they will have enough money to support some physical infrastructure and some part time staff. Their numbers in 2008 look considerably better than in 2007, and it makes one wonder how much influence Jane Sterk had on these decisions – if she did, a 39% year-over-year increase in contributions coupled with finding 17% in expenses to cut is surprisingly “conservative” in nature!

The Greens have $28,000 in the bank at the end of 2008 which will not be enough to run a mass advertising campaign, but they will be able to pick a few spots to concentrate. In addition, what they will make up for in cash will be made up for in ’sweat equity’.

The Conservatives and Refed BC’s financial returns are fairly routine – the numbers are still small enough that one or two individual contributors would skew the numbers, but in the Conservatives’ case, they have a 29% increase in political contributions.

Please note the following numbers are approximate due to the transcription errors that occur during reading the filings.  The numbers for the most part are accurate but there will be balancing errors.

Posted by Sacha Peter for BC Election 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Filed under category Analysis, BC Greens, Other Parties.

1. I noticed the Green Party has revised their platform somewhat – I have put the new version online, and left the old version on the site as well for viewing. The changes are as follows:

- Cleaned up the reference to “Bill C-30″ to a proper reference.
- They have softened their line on power production – for example, on page 13, apparently now river-based power generation projects will be halted “pending stricter environmental assessment”.
- They removed the reference to “(no more large-scale hydro)”.
- A new policy of “Cancel all Gateway projects, including new bridge construction, highway widening in the lower mainland and the pipeline project in the north and the energy corridor through central BC”.

As this seems to be a living document, it will be interesting to see how it evolves.

2. The provincial government sent out 30 press releases so far today, most of them dealing with infrastructure funding announcements in conjunction with the federal budget stimulus package.

3. Listening to CKNW, it seems like every other ad is a third-party election ad. The pro-BC Liberal ad is two women chatting about how terrible Carole James is, while the pro-NDP ad is about how terrible Gordon Campbell is. Does this swing voters, or just push the voter turnout lower? It is tough to measure the effect of these ads so early in the game, if there is an effect at all other than keeping Corus Entertainment afloat.

Posted by Sacha Peter for BC Election 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Filed under category BC Greens, News.

Going through the document, it contains the policies (dealing with the environment and sustainability) that one may expect from the Green Party. Coming up with a platform document is not an easy process and being first out of the gate shows some organizational skill.

I had a few thoughts when glancing through the platform:

1. There were a few instances of confusion between provincial and federal policy. For example, there are multiple instances calling for repealing Bill C-30 – which is an ambiguous reference, but presumably relates to the 39th Parliament (first Harper government) act to amend the Canada Environment Protection Act, Energy Efficiency Act and the Motor Vehicle Fuel Consumption Standards Act. The only problem is that Bill C-30 never reached royal assent (or even passing second reading) – it is not law.

Another confusion between provincial and federal matters is the proposal to implement accelerated capital cost allowances for energy-saving purchases. Capital cost allowance rate setting is purely a federal government power (via regulation). Yet another one is dealing with offshore oil and gas drilling – oceans are a federal government jurisdiction.

Such errors show that the party does not have a good understanding of how government works – it would have taken a basic check to determine that C-30 never passed, and that the provincial government does not set capital cost allowance rates. One would wonder what would happen if the Greens actually formed government.

2. The year 2100 vision of getting rid of large-scale hydro out of British Columbia is laughable – large scale hydro is the most greenest ways of producing (and more importantly storing) large quantities of energy. Even if you took every wind-capable site in the province you would still have to figure out how to wire them up to the grid and still not come close to achieving what large-scale hydro provides to the province. In terms of scale, there is nothing that can compete with hydro if you exclude fossil fuels, except nuclear energy – but both the existing government and the Greens refuse to talk about nuclear energy.

Getting rid of large-scale hydro is unrealistic to the point of being absurd, especially if using fossil-fuel based generation is out of the question.

The existing government isn’t helping matters any as well – promoting run-of-river projects across the province is causing scale issues regarding transmission (e.g. if BC Hydro’s Site C was built, you would be able to generate 900MW of power and you would need one set of transmission lines to connect to the power grid, but most run-of-river projects in BC are significantly less than this – most are targeted to 49MW to avoid the environmental assessment that a 50MW project requires).

While the obvious negative of large-scale hydro is that you have to flood land in order to create a properly sized reservoir, run-of-river projects have a relatively unadvertised negative of requiring transmission lines from generating source to the existing electric grid, on a per-project basis. To make this explicitly clear, if you had 1 large-scale hydro project, you have to clearcut one route to the grid, while for run-of-river, if you had 30 equivalent projects, you would need to clearcut 30 transmission lines to the nearest point on the grid. There is a lot of land usage concerns with transmission lines which will become imminently clear as more run-of-river projects get approved.

Of course, the Green platform is to get rid of both methods (large-scale hydro and run-of-river) of generation (page 13 on their document, PDF page 9) – they won’t be demolishing the existing projects, but they won’t allow new ones to be built. I guess the plan is to continue importing electricity elsewhere because wind and solar is not going to come close to meeting demand.

The Green party needs to solve these “credibility” problems before enough of the public will trust them to the point of electing members to the legislature.

3. Politically, it does not appear that this platform will attract those that are outside the “typical” fold of the Green party to begin with – mainly left-of-centre political participants with an environmental bend.

4. A most pleasant surprise was that they have taken the effort to putting in a comprehensive 3-page index at the end of the document, something that they should be commended for since I don’t recall seeing any other political platforms doing the same. Whoever thought of the index should be commended.

I am writing this, bracing for a flood of comments about point 2. The ability to generate energy through large-scale hydro largely depends on snowpacks melting and it is not reasonable to make assumptions that global warming will increase or decrease the viability of hydro. Historically, the last 50 years would suggest that it has made no difference, although of course year-to-year there have been good (wet, snowy) years and bad (dry, no snow) years, depending where you are in the province.

Posted by Sacha Peter for BC Election 2009. | Permalink | 20 comments | Filed under category BC Greens.

Vancouver Fairview – Vanessa Violini
Vancouver False Creek – Damian Kettlewell
Vancouver Fraserview – Jody Emery
Vancouver Hastings – Ryan Conroy
Vancouver Kensington – Doug Warkentin
Vancouver Kingsway – Revel Warkentin
Vancouver Mount Pleasant – Jamie Lee Hamilton
Vancouver Quilchena – Laura-Leah Shaw
Vancouver West End – Drina Read

A few observations:

1. Jody Emery is Marc Emery’s (leader of the Marijuana Party) wife.

2. Nice to have brothers husband and wife running – two Warkentins this election, they can campaign for each other. (thanks DG for the fact update! On another note – does this mean Marc Emery and Jodie Emery will be campaigning against each other?)

3. Notably missing is Vancouver-Point Grey, which is Premier Gordon Campbell’s riding. Do the Greens have somebody in store here? Or are they going to sit out in this riding in the hopes that NDP Mel Lehan will be able to take him out without splitting the vote? Also notable is that Damian Kettlewell, who previously ran in Vancouver-Point Grey in 2005, is running in Vancouver-False Creek.

If the Greens do choose to field a candidate, a logical name would be Dan Grice, who ran in Vancouver Quadra for the by-election and general election. My guess is that Gordon Campbell would breath a heavy sigh of relief if the Greens did nominate a candidate.

(Subsequent update: Dan Grice is not running in the upcoming provincial election).

Posted by Sacha Peter for BC Election 2009. | Permalink | 6 comments | Filed under category BC Greens.

Doing some web design myself, I know what a pain it is when your software breaks on you for no specific reason, so the best of luck to their technical efforts in the future.

Posted by Sacha Peter for BC Election 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Filed under category BC Greens.