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Minister’s letter amounts to lobbying for private IPP company

Things must be slow in Victoria is my opinion regarding your pointed criticism of a small town news reporter Aaron Orlando of the Revelstoke Time Review. The humorous irony is a Minister of the Crown berating a small community newspaper for expressing a strongly held community perspective and then calling for a “balanced view.” I have no doubt your written rebuke will have its intended chilling affect sir.

Editor,

Re: Minister Thomson objects to story, supports IPP projects, Letters, Mar. 30

An open letter to: Honorable Steve Thomson, Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources Operations

Dear Honorable Minister;

Things must be slow in Victoria is my opinion regarding your pointed criticism of a small town news reporter Aaron Orlando of the Revelstoke Time Review. The humorous irony is a Minister of the Crown berating a small community newspaper for expressing a strongly held community perspective and then calling for a “balanced view.” I have no doubt your written rebuke will have its intended chilling affect sir. To stifle commentary and opinion which does not fit your government’s or the IPP industry’s views.

News flash sir, up here in the village we do not buy your opinions regarding “clean energy” simply because your careful choice of words reveals that this is not “green energy” – a very important distinction. In the Columbia drainage we have experienced all the negative impacts of “clean energy.” Forgive us for our reluctance to accept still more impacts. What the Crown and your government has compensated us with in the Columbia drainage amounts in absolute total value to probably less than a single years operating revenue for BC Hydro’s Columbia River operations. Thanks for the generosity. Up here we have lost towns, farms, people’s livelihoods, and lets not forget sir – it’s not green after all – the permanent environmental losses in our river valleys.

Your letter also reveals the true nature of your commitment to “green energy” sir. The greenest energy is energy not used, that is energy conserved. In one breath you state your government is pursuing an “aggressive energy conservation” policy and in the same letter your government accepts without question or apparent concern the assertion that energy use will increase 35-45 per cent in just 20 years. I do not know if you see the hypocrisy sir, but it is transparent to most of us in small town B.C. That kind of consumption increase in two short decades hardly reflects an “aggressive energy conservation” policy. That is a marketing policy not a conservation policy.

Worst of all sir, as a representative of the Crown and the people of this province you cross a very important line with your letter in my opinion. You not only beat up the little guy expressing the opinions of the impacted, you appear to become an “aggressive” and vocal advocate of an industry, the IPP industry. You demand “a balanced perspective…on the proposed Selkirk Power clean energy project.” You may see it as your role to lobby for an individual corporation’s interests, but you fail to grasp your role as representative of the people, those impacted. In this case the people who ultimately will pay the price so others, the IPPs industry can profit.

Francis L. Maltby,

Revelstoke