Talked to @daveunger3 today, former BC Hydro Construction Manager for Peace Region. WAC Bennett dam's reservoir is full after heavy rain. It'll need to spill water: a problem for #SiteC. "#BCNDP & #BCHydro are like a deer in the headlights not knowing where to go or what to do.."
@daveunger3 .."#BCNDP & #BCHydro think they can't stop #SiteC for economic reasons. I suspect they'll choose to do nothing & hope the slow spillway option works for them. They've been playing Russian Roulette with the project from the beginning; why stop now?" - @daveunger3#bcpoli
@daveunger3 To clarify: WAC Bennett & Peace Canyon dams are just above #SiteC. Their reservoirs had been kept low so that even with spring rain/snowmelt they could hold back enough water to keep Peace R. levels low at #SiteC & aid in diverting river thru tunnels in order to build the dam...
@daveunger3 But now, with these unusually heavy rains and late snowmelt, the Peace R. dam reservoirs quickly went from very low to nearly full. BC Hydro plans to divert the river through concrete tunnels in the fall & needs low river levels to do that. And it gets worse:
@daveunger3 ICYMI, @BenParfittCCPA's exposé "Frack Up" revealed that fracking cracked Peace Canyon dam (between WAC Bennett dam & #SiteC) on top of preexisting foundation problems. A high reservoir level behind it may not be safe, esp with ongoing fracking. #bcpolipolicynote.ca/frack-up/
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Chasing the far-right by making cowardly concessions and U-turns is generally a losing strategy. Nice race to the far-right corner of the bottom of the barrel, Dave.
If you were in any doubt as to who Dave Eby really is, I hope today made things clear #bcpoli #carbontax
BC Greens should be explicitly campaigning up the left side of the NDP now and yanking this ever-rightward-shifting Overton window back. To do that they're going to have to abandon this kind of talk immediately.
#bcpoli insider on NDP nixing carbon tax: "people get more in personal carbon rebate cheques than they pay in fuel tax costs. I don't get why they did this; it's political insanity. They're literally scrapping a version of UBI, plus it'll put trade/ climate agreements in jeopardy
Quite a bizarre performance by BC Conservatives leader John Rustad on CBC Radio today. For a populist demagogue he's very wooden - he just kept repeating “we have to get rid of the BC NDP with their radical agenda/policies” over & over, like a broken droid. 1/x #bcpoli
Frustratingly CBC's @BellePuri never asked Rustad which BC NDP policies he thinks are "radical." The BC NDP are so captured by the corporations at the trough - arguably more than the BC Liberals before them - that I'd be astonished to find anything really "radical" there...
@BellePuri The only difference is that the BC NDP are doing right-wing corporate capture with a veneer of rainbow crosswalks, while the Cons are corporate capture with social conservatism & toxic masculinity. Which flavour do you want your trickle-up of wealth to come in?
Important WSJ article on Canada's rivers drying up while we keep building dams anyway, including #SiteC. It's paywalled so I'll include the whole article in this 🧵
Diversify into renewables now! BC can't until it ditches the deceptively named Clean Energy Act.#bcpoli #cdnpoli
Had Bing Thom not died prematurely, he would have gone after @AIBCconnected for its gentleman's agreement rule that architects can't criticize other projects. Reportedly a certain major arch'l firm in Vancouver reported Bing to AIBC for his letter opposing #105Keefer. #vanpoli
@AIBCconnected Bing Thom intended to go after AIBC's muzzling rule & publicly ask them:
"What is the point of architecture if there's no discourse? What is the role of the architect in society? Do we have a public responsibility or are we just hired guns?"
@AIBCconnected Bing's death was a terrible loss for public discourse in Vancouver. BTW he also helped us with a fight I co-founded against the proposed downtown casino expansion (we beat the expansion partly thx to him). You could count on him to do the right thing. AIBC tries to block this.
My elderly family member, whom I kept free of Covid for 3+ years but who finally caught in in an unmasked BC hospital last week, is very sick on Day 9. Rapid test still shows a bright red line. For health issues she can't take Paxlovid. She's in a rage at you, @adriandix. #bcpoli
@adriandix "I'm furious at the hospital and at all the unmasked healthcare workers, but I'm more outraged by @adriandix and Bonnie Henry. The govt is ultimately to blame."
@adriandix She asks: "Why aren't they following science?"
"They kept taking my mask off for tests and procedures - and they weren't even wearing masks when they did it."
I’m a rural BC hospital taking an elderly relative to ER. No masks on staff & visitors but aggressive efforts to make everyone sanitize their hands, despite the fact that the diseases helping to crash the health system are airborne. We are truly living in an age of disinformation
*I’m IN a rural BC hospital. I am not a hospital. But you got that
Look at the handwashing fixation of @IPACCanada & the blindness to airborne transmission & masking stretching back many years. Every year they suggest infection control is largely a handwashing issue. It's as if all the airborne diseases do not exist. Why?