It’s time we talked about the white elephant in the room. Although critics have been saying this for years, a new UBC report warns the Site C Dam has become “uneconomic.”
The project, which was approved without a proper review by the B.C. Utilities Commission, is going to cost $8.8 billion we don’t have to produce electricity we can’t use, to power LNG plants that won’t exist, at a cost too expensive to sell to foreign markets, the report suggests.
The analysis – which avoids the pressing issues of impending environmental devastation and Aboriginal title – found we’d be stuck selling electricity at annual losses of about $1 billion per year if it goes online in 2024.
Billions have already been spent or locked up in contracts, but if the project were to be suspended now, it would save between $500 million and $1.65 billion, the report concludes.
The fiscal-responsibility-loving premier is actively out campaigning on Site C saying the project is all about jobs, jobs, jobs (mostly hers).
It’s true, that $8.8 billion could create a lot of jobs at Site C – or be spent elsewhere.
We’d suggest starting with things that the province is actually in crying need of: affordable housing, child-care spaces, seismically sound schools, hospital wards, a transit system that doesn’t leave people stranded at rush hour, addictions treatment and mental health services, or a boost to welfare rates that haven’t budged since the time a one-bedroom apartment cost $375 a month.
Or, as Christy Clark is very fond of saying, the money could stay right where it is now, in ratepayers’ pockets.
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