Christy Clark’s choice of advisors tells us a lot about what we might look forward to as she and her cabinet begin to govern.
Premiers seek advice from a chosen few people during their terms in office, to help them with their decision-making, and they are prone to recognize those who supported their campaigns.
In Clark’s case, she gave the nod to Gwyn Morgan, the former head of Encana, probably the world’s largest natural gas producer and surely the largest in northeastern B.C., who donated $10,000 to her leadership campaign.
Morgan is a multi-millionaire who lives close to Victoria in North Saanich. He and his wife occupy a $7-million home that he retired to in 2006 from Encana. He is chairman of SNC Lavalin, a global engineering firm that is now building a prison in Libya for Muammar Gaddafi – SNC Lavalin is the firm that produced the emissions dispersion model for Grand Forks.
The Liberals are familiar with Morgan because of the sweet deal he brokered with Gordon Campbell that gave Encana access to millions of hectares of land in northeastern B.C. to allow the company to extract billions of cubic metres of natural gas with a process called hydraulic fracturing.
“Hydraulic fracturing,” or fracking, is a process that pumps water, sand and unknown chemicals deep into dense formations of shale and rock to break open the gas bearing pores. The holes that are drilled are 15 centimetres in diameter and the average depth of drilling is 1.6 kilometres.
Fracking was recently banned for a couple years in Quebec while studies are done.
What should be of interest to British Columbians is Morgan’s background and his political views. He’s a member of what is called the country’s petroleum elite, a Canadian version of former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney. Morgan helped make natural gas the economic driver in B.C. rather than forestry.
Morgan has been called a right-wing ideologue, who bashes environmentalists, unions, federal Liberals and immigrants. He has made statements to the effect that the health care system needs to be “overhauled” and that privately run companies should be allowed to break the “monopoly” of “government-run hospitals and clinics”.
Morgan was highly critical of the Canadian Cancer Society for supporting a ban on carcinogenic pesticides and weed killers, saying the society was supporting “junk science.” He has spoken out strongly against the Kyoto Accord.
Premier Clark is hoping to revive the Taseko Mines Prosperity Mine proposal that was rejected by federal authorities.
She says it is needed to stimulate the economy and provide jobs for people in the depressed forest industry. We can only guess what role Morgan might play for her in Ottawa, in getting it back on the agenda.
Imagine the phone and e-mail exchanges between Morgan and Clark might be like?
Clark: “Gwyn, how can we get the federal government to give the Taseko Mine gold and copper mine at Fish Lake in the Cariboo approval? The federal refusal last year was stupid.”
Morgan: “Give me a couple months and I will convince them that there are lots of lakes in B.C., and the loss of one doesn’t really matter.”
Clark: “On another matter, what do you think we should do with BC Hydro?”
Morgan: “Sell it like you did BC Rail. The government shouldn’t be in the business of producing power anyway.”
Morgan said he lives by the lessons he got from his parents. “Keep your word. Stay honest. Do your best. If the world deals you a tough blow, buck up and move on.”
With Morgan operating behind the scenes British Columbian’s are in for some interesting times.
– Roy Ronaghan is a columnist for the Grand Forks Gazette
