04) LNG TAX BREAKS MUST BE REJECTED
Statement
by the Communist Party of BC, March 26, 2018
Less than a year after the BC
Liberals were defeated in part because of their close ties to the big energy
monopolies, the new government of British Columbia is already beginning to move
in a similar direction. Despite their campaign promises to shift away from
Christy Clark’s economic strategy based
on extraction and export of energy and other raw materials, two early key
decisions by Premier John Horgan have been the Site C
Dam approval, and now the offer of massive tax breaks for liquefied natural gas
(LNG) projects. The Communist Party of British Columbia condemns the LNG tax
breaks and the earlier Site C approval as disasters for the environment, for indigenous
peoples, and for working class taxpayers.
In both cases, these policies were
not based on any serious economic, social or environmental analysis, but rather
on accepting the assumption that ‘what’s good for the corporations is good for
British Columbians.”
Clearly, despite taking some
positive steps to reverse the damage inflicted by 16 years of Liberal
governments, the NDP has chosen not to break with the historic private
capitalist drive for maximum exploitation of the lands and resources on unceded traditional territories of the indigenous peoples.
Both Site C and the LNG tax giveaways will bring overwhelming negative
consequences for people and the environment. At a time when Canada and British
Columbia face huge challenges in reaching targets to reduce carbon emissions,
the proposed tax breaks for the LNG Canada project in Kitimat
ignore the true carbon footprint of this industry. The provincial government’s
figures on LNG fail to provide a complete and accurate picture. Unbiased
scientific research shows that “fugitive” methane emissions emitted during fracking for LNG are at least 2.5 times higher than claimed
by industry and governments. By 2050, the annual carbon dioxide emissions from
the LNG Canada project alone could top 9.6 megatonnes,
or 80 per cent of B.C.’s total annual emissions target of 12 megatonnes.
This is not the direction the Horgan government promised last summer in its confidence
and supply agreement with the Green Party, which stated that the carbon tax
would be applied to methane emissions from the oil and gas industry. The
Communist Party of BC joins with environmental groups, indigenous peoples,
“green jobs” advocates and others in demanding an end to special favours to
boost the profits of big energy monopolies.
Our economic future should not be
based on handing out taxpayers’ dollars in the scramble for a bigger share of
shrinking global demand for fossil fuels. Working people need policies based on
public ownership and democratic control of all energy and natural resource
extraction, production and distribution; a reduction of energy exports; an end
to fracking; and a shift towards job-creating
renewable energy projects which reduce B.C.’s carbon emission footprint.
(The above article is from the April
1-15, 2018, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper.
Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in
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