Don’t ignore B.C.’s reliance on natural resources

To put the recent British Columbia election in perspective, including strident opposition to energy development in some quarters, first consider one oft-forgotten reality: British Columbia was, and still is, a resource-based province.

The city of Vancouver is an example of the historic tie between B.C.’s own resources and subsequent prosperity. The city’s original 1886 coat of arms shows a steam train, tree and a fishing boat, with the motto “By sea and land we prosper.”

A 1903 version retains the words, but with a lumberjack and a fisherman — obvious symbols of a city built by extraction from land and water.

For some, such as B.C.’s Green Party, which snagged three seats in Tuesday’s election and may hold the balance of power (that will depend on recounts now underway), natural resources are part of that past and should stay there.

Green party Leader Andrew Weaver, a Victoria academic, is also skeptical about one type of cleaner energy that could reduce carbon emissions: liquefied natural gas.

“LNG is not happening,” Weaver told his election night partisans. “I’ve been saying this for four years now. … It wasn’t going to happen then; it’s not going to happen now. LNG’s not happening, so let’s move on to the new economy.”

The Green leader has a point. British Columbia’s LNG sector has been slow to grow. It was beat to the development punch by Australia.

Of course, such slow development has something to do with don’t-build-it-here views — Weaver’s included — that reflexively oppose new mining, oil, gas and forestry extraction. When translated into on-the-ground protests and regulatory delays, that’s meant stalled investment and fewer jobs. That includes less opportunity for First Nations folk who support natural gas development.

As for the new economy, that’s a motherhood-applepie green sentiment — who could oppose that, and the cleaner the better? But the acid test for any product or company — traditional or new, oil and gas or green — is if it can survive on its own, without subsidies.

So far, much green corporate activity is heavily subsidized by taxpayers, as I found in a recent study for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation on the matter.

As for B.C., in specific, it might be premature to put away the hard hats in forestry, mining, oil and gas. Jock Finlayson, chief policy officer for the Business Council of B.C., noted just last month that B.C.’s entire cleantechnology sector — the “new economy” — has only the value of a single B.C. forestry company, Canfor.

Here’s the big British Columbia picture. It is contra the election-time claim that resources no longer matter to the province (where, for the record, I was born, raised and spent half my career): According to Statistics Canada, in the last year for which statistics are available, fishing was worth $157 million to B.C.’s economy, forestry and logging was valued at $1.6 billion, mining and oil and gas extraction generated $8.3 billion.

Looking to the future, this year, $5 billion will be pumped into B.C.’s economy by just natural gas exploration, extraction and production alone. That doesn’t include a $300-million liquefied natural gas plant in Delta under construction.

It doesn’t include the liquefied natural gas terminals and storage facilities planned for the West Coast. One project, the Pacific NorthWest LNG project, is worth $36 billion in planned investment (with $7.4 billion already spent).

Such resource wealth matters to the provincial government budgetary bottom line; natural resource revenues will contribute $2.3 billion to its revenues this year. That is $250 million more than the province will spend on universities, colleges and technical institutes.

Those are the facts. But elections are rarely fought on those. The next four years will be a test of whether such details — B.C.’s past and present resource development and its role in prosperity — will enter British Columbia’s public mind.