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Vaughn Palmer: B.C. Conservatives challenge NDP to disavow Avi Lewis on LNG

Opinion: Instead, Energy Minister Adrian Dix seized the opening to tout the B.C. NDP's record

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VICTORIA — The B.C. Conservatives tried this week to embarrass the provincial New Democrats by challenging them to disavow their new national leader Avi Lewis on LNG development.

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Instead, they provided the David Eby government with an opportunity to boast about a policy gap wide enough to accommodate an LNG tanker or two.

Vaughn Palmer: B.C. Conservatives challenge NDP to disavow Avi Lewis on LNG Back to video

Conservative house leader Á’a:líya Warbus led off question period Tuesday with a quote from Lewis: “We are frankly enraged at the fact that our NDP government is going full bore on this fossil fuel Ksi Lisims LNG project (on B.C.’s northwest coast). It should not proceed. Absolutely not.”

Could anyone on the government side reconcile its position with that of the party’s new federal leader, asked Warbus.

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Replying for the government — and doing so with considerable relish — was Adrian Dix, minister of energy and climate solutions, and one of the most experienced and best-briefed members in Cabinet.

“The position of the government is clear on these matters,” said Dix. “The Ksi Lisims LNG project received its environmental assessment approval. B.C. Hydro, under my direction, has an agreement on electricity with Ksi Lisims.

“We’re supporters of the project. It will be some of the lowest-emission LNG in the world. It will build jobs and growth and resources and revenues for the people of B.C.”

Warbus again: Lewis had described LNG as “fentanyl to the climate”. How did Dix square that with the climate solutions portion of his Cabinet portfolio?

Dix then reminded the house of the LNG record of the previous government, some of whose members are associated with the current Opposition.

“The previous government was very favourable to LNG, but they produced zero projects. Zero. There were no LNG projects when John Horgan became premier (in 2017).

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“There are now six under construction or in final levels of approval. I think that demonstrates the position of the government and the success of the policy we’ve undertaken, which focuses not just on economic development but ensures climate action as well.”

B.C.’s LNG prospects got a boost last week with the news of a deal to work toward doubling the capacity of the Coastal GasLink pipeline which supplies the LNG Canada terminal in Kitimat.

The multi-billion-dollar expansion of the TC Energy-owned pipeline is expected to increase the likelihood that Shell and its partners in LNG Canada will agree to double the output of the Kitimat terminal as well.

Dix rounded on the Conservatives for voting against some of the Eby government’s economic development measures.

“The party of ‘no’ in this legislature is across the way. Members are against the North Coast transmission line, which serves the northwest,” said Dix.

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Vaughn Palmer: B.C. Conservatives challenge NDP to disavow Avi Lewis on LNG Columnists

Vaughn Palmer: B.C. Conservatives challenge NDP to disavow Avi Lewis on LNG

“Ten clean energy projects announced for electricity purchase agreements … they’re against them. They are against development in the northwest, against clean energy, against a public B.C. Hydro.”

Conservative MLA Scott McInnis managed a bit of a comeback when he referenced Dix’s reversal of support for the TMX pipeline expansion, which happened when he was leading the NDP into the 2013 election.

“I appreciate the minister’s walk again down memory lane, but it was his flip-flopping which actually cost him the premiership several years ago.”

McInnis then had another go at challenging Dix over the Lewis agenda. What about the Leap Manifesto, the hard-left environmentalist agenda produced by Lewis, his wife Naomi Klein, and others on the eve of the 2015 federal election?

“I can’t wait for these Conservative leadership debates,” scoffed Dix. “They’re talking about a 10-year-old document in federal jurisdiction? That’s what they think is important in question period? When we’re dealing with important economic and social issues, this is what they’re about? All about politics in the federal jurisdiction?

“All of the questions they can ask, and their obsession with Avi Lewis is all they’ve got. We’re succeeding because we are driving growth in our province, and we’re going to continue to do so.”

As for LNG, “Our position was the same on Friday as it is today and as it will be next Friday.”

It was the closest Dix came to addressing the significance of last weekend’s change in the leadership of the federal party — it had “zero” impact on the B.C. NDP government.

The NDP’s federal and provincial wings are part of the same party. In Alberta, where the rift is bitter, there is talk of breaking away from the federal party altogether.

Here in B.C., the more common inclination is to treat the federal wing as something between a junior partner and an Ottawa-based lobbying agency. “Our equivalent of the Senate,” as one former NDP premier once put it.

At election time, the pecking order is evident. In the 2024 provincial election — which Eby described as a “near-death experience” — the B.C. NDP nevertheless pulled almost three times as many votes as would the national NDP in B.C. during last year’s federal election.

Understandable that Opposition parties would try to make political mischief over the differences between the Lewis-led federal party and the Eby-led provincial one.

But as Dix indicated this week, Lewis’ positions on matters such as LNG are largely irrelevant to the B.C. NDP government.

vpalmer@postmedia.com

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