PEOPLE POWER is a six-chaper 50 minute DVD designed to help activists launch grassroots community-based campaigns to protect public power and the environment.
Rivers of corruption
Posted May 31st, 2010
This blog posting is a powerful expose of the corruption associated with BC's energy policy to privatize the province's electricity assets and wild rivers and destroy BC's Crown utility.
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“There are many true things that are not useful for the vulgar crowd to know; and certain things, which although they are false it is expedient for the people to believe otherwise.” Augustine, 426 A.D.
Political corruption is nothing new. When your Liberal BC government set out to transfer your natural assets and public utilities to private hands, they used tricks perfected by famous historic propagandists such as Augustine, Machiavelli, and Joseph Goebbels.
How is one to convince a community—such as the citizens of British Columbia—to allow private companies to seize their public assets, and then convince that community to pay the thieves for their trouble? The Liberals came up with “green energy” to swindle their own citizens.
After assuming the office of Premier of British Columbia in 2001, Gordon Campbell and the Liberals began a process of privatizing BC public institutions and natural endowment. First, they reduced corporate income tax and eliminated the Corporate Capital Tax, opening the doors for more foreign capital.
Then, Campbell’s government began to dismantle your public institutions – BC Ferries, BC Hydro, and your Environment Ministry—handing the pieces over to private interests close to the Liberal party. By gutting the environment ministry, outlawing regional authority with notorious Bill 30, and by hand-cuffing the BC Utilities Commission, your government obliterated citizen oversight into their schemes and environmental destruction.
In their initial efforts to dismantle BC Hydro, the Liberal government gave over 1,600 public service jobs to Accenture, the shamed former consulting subsidiary of Arthur-Anderson, who helped mastermind the Enron scandal that swindled investors and employees. Anderson Consulting became “Accenture” with a head office in Hamilton, Bermuda, blessed with tax shelters and lawsuit protection. They need it. In 2001, Andersen Consulting paid $110 million to settle a class action suit by shareholders of Sunbeam over “wildly misstated” corporate financial statements. The company paid $7 million to settle fraud allegations in Houston, Texas. During the Enron scam, Andersen received $52 million for service that helped company insiders hide liabilities and dump $1.1 billion in stock a few days before Enron proved worthless. Time magazine reported that Andersen ordered employees to shred financial information involving Enron, but U.S. prosecutors implicated Andersen in the Enron fraud. The consulting wing—fleeing in shame—changed its name to “Accenture.”
Friends in high places
In 2001, upon assuming control of the BC legislature, Campbell’s Liberals selected these renegade accountants to help privatize British Columbia. In February, 2003, the government forced BC Hydro to sign a $1.45 billion deal with Accenture, to manage customer relations, human resources, finances, and office management. Meanwhile, Accenture gave $12,000 to the BC Liberals. Since then, BC Hydro has handed out $27 billion—your money—in contracts to private power companies that have paid some $800,000 to the BC Liberal party.
Then, government employees, who licensed Accenture to take over your electric utility, began slipping from their government jobs into executive jobs with the private energy companies they had licensed. Historically, this is called, politely, a “conflict of interest.” In simple terms, this is corruption. A few corporate investors get rich, and the bureaucrats who made it possible get a taste. Mark Grant, former executive director of the BC Liberal Party, resigned in December 2008 to join Rupert Peace Power as Director of Government Relations. His new employer crowed: “his political background provides Rupert Peace with the necessary experience to navigate the regulatory issues required by federal and provincial levels of government.”
Plutonic Power Corporation and General Electric, a partner in Plutonic’s Bute Inlet project, rewarded liberal insiders with company directorships. Gordon Campbell’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Tom Syer, became Plutonic’s Director of Policy and Regulatory Affairs. Robert Poore, from the BC Revenue Ministry, and Bill Irwin, from the BC Land and Water Ministry became Plutonic directors. Liberal Minister Mike de Jong’s Assistant, David Syr, became Plutonic’s First Nations and Corporate Affairs manager. Former BC Hydro Media Relations Manager, Elisha McCallum (Moreno) became Plutonic’s Director of Corporate Communications. Meanwhile Plutonic Power Corporation, General Electric, their CEO, and other directors donated over $100,000 to the BC Liberal Party.
As the government gutted the Environment Ministry, former regulators joined the companies they were intended to regulate. Jackie Hamilton left Environment BC for a Vice President position at Cloudworks Energy; Stephen Kukucha moved from Environment BC to president of Atla Energy; and Bob Herath, former Environment BC Water Manager, joined Syntaris Power. Others from the BC Liberal party, BC Transit, ICBC, and BC Hydro, left public service for lucrative positions with these companies.
Liberal Insider Task Force
Rob Fleming, Victoria-Swan Lake opposition environment critic, documented over $250,000 given to the BC Liberals by twelve task force individuals or their companies. Matt Burrows at the Georgia Straight reported Fleming’s research, revealing that lawyer Cheryl Slusarchuk, chair of the Advisory Task Force sub-Committee on Carbon Trading, gave over $32,000 to the BC Liberals through personal donations and donations from her two law firms.
Lekstrom selected Duncan McCallum, with the Royal Bank’s RBC Capital Markets, as task force advisor on regulatory reform. The Royal Bank and its subsidiaries gave the BC Liberal Party over $93,000 between 2005 and 2009. Fleming reported that ten other task force members made private or corporate donations to the BC Liberal Party.
For “environmentalists” on the task force, Lekstrom picked Liberal supporters, who agreed to support the privatization scheme. They certainly did not include the thousands of serious ecologists and citizens protecting BC watersheds. Responding to the corruption, Wilderness Committee campaign director Joe Foy told Burrows, “People should be outraged. ... The Auditor General needs to take a look at the whole thing.”
Corporate citizen
Plutonic Power’s partner, General Electric, is one of the most destructive corporations on the planet. The University of Massachusetts Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), named General Electric the world’s most toxic company, due to its scale of pollution and the number of people exposed to GE toxic waste. US Riverkeepers founder, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., won judgments against GE for dumping 1.3 million pounds of PCBs into the Hudson River, although GE stalled remediation in court. To these corporate giants, British Columbia is nothing more than a resource colony.
*******
“There are many true things that are not useful for the vulgar crowd to know; and certain things, which although they are false it is expedient for the people to believe otherwise.”
Political corruption is nothing new. When your Liberal BC government set out to transfer your natural assets and public utilities to private hands, they used tricks perfected by famous historic propagandists such as Augustine, Machiavelli, and Joseph Goebbels.
How is one to convince a community—such as the citizens of British Columbia—to allow private companies to seize their public assets, and then convince that community to pay the thieves for their trouble? The Liberals came up with “green energy” to swindle their own citizens.
After assuming the office of Premier of British Columbia in 2001, Gordon Campbell and the Liberals began a process of privatizing BC public institutions and natural endowment. First, they reduced corporate income tax and eliminated the Corporate Capital Tax, opening the doors for more foreign capital.
Then, Campbell’s government began to dismantle your public institutions – BC Ferries, BC Hydro, and your Environment Ministry—handing the pieces over to private interests close to the Liberal party. By gutting the environment ministry, outlawing regional authority with notorious Bill 30, and by hand-cuffing the BC Utilities Commission, your government obliterated citizen oversight into their schemes and environmental destruction.
In their initial efforts to dismantle BC Hydro, the Liberal government gave over 1,600 public service jobs to Accenture, the shamed former consulting subsidiary of Arthur-Anderson, who helped mastermind the Enron scandal that swindled investors and employees. Anderson Consulting became “Accenture” with a head office in Hamilton, Bermuda, blessed with tax shelters and lawsuit protection. They need it.
In 2001, upon assuming control of the BC legislature, Campbell’s Liberals selected these renegade accountants to help privatize British Columbia. In February, 2003, the government forced BC Hydro to sign a $1.45 billion deal with Accenture, to manage customer relations, human resources, finances, and office management. Meanwhile, Accenture gave $12,000 to the BC Liberals. Since then, BC Hydro has handed out $27 billion—your money—in contracts to private power companies that have paid some $800,000 to the BC Liberal party.
Then, government employees, who licensed Accenture to take over your electric utility, began slipping from their government jobs into executive jobs with the private energy companies they had licensed. Historically, this is called, politely, a “conflict of interest.” In simple terms, this is corruption. A few corporate investors get rich, and the bureaucrats who made it possible get a taste.
Plutonic Power Corporation and General Electric, a partner in Plutonic’s Bute Inlet project, rewarded liberal insiders with company directorships. Gordon Campbell’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Tom Syer, became Plutonic’s Director of Policy and Regulatory Affairs. Robert Poore, from the BC Revenue Ministry, and Bill Irwin, from the BC Land and Water Ministry became Plutonic directors. Liberal Minister Mike de Jong’s Assistant, David Syr, became Plutonic’s First Nations and Corporate Affairs manager. Former BC Hydro Media Relations Manager, Elisha McCallum (Moreno) became Plutonic’s Director of Corporate Communications. Meanwhile Plutonic Power Corporation, General Electric, their CEO, and other directors donated over $100,000 to the BC Liberal Party.
As the government gutted the Environment Ministry, former regulators joined the companies they were intended to regulate. Jackie Hamilton left Environment BC for a Vice President position at Cloudworks Energy; Stephen Kukucha moved from Environment BC to president of Atla Energy; and Bob Herath, former Environment BC Water Manager, joined Syntaris Power. Others from the BC Liberal party, BC Transit, ICBC, and BC Hydro, left public service for lucrative positions with these companies.
Plutonic Power’s partner, General Electric, is one of the most destructive corporations on the planet. The University of Massachusetts Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), named General Electric the world’s most toxic company, due to its scale of pollution and the number of people exposed to GE toxic waste. US Riverkeepers founder, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., won judgments against GE for dumping 1.3 million pounds of PCBs into the Hudson River, although GE stalled remediation in court. To these corporate giants, British Columbia is nothing more than a resource colony.
History shows us that power corrupts. The BC river and electricity sector privatization schemes will enrich the wealthy and dispossess the people of this province. The BC Energy Plan transfers BC's natural wealth and resources to private hands, forces citizen ratepayers to pay the thieves, and dismantles the public institutions designed protect our environment and our economic future.
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Rex Weyler
May 30, 2010