Who is popular today?

Given his platform and track record, John Horgan has no right to claim green credentials. Neither does his star candidate in Oak Bay-Gordon Head, Murray Rankin. Not any more.
While a NDP MP, Rankin lambasted the federal Liberals for their ongoing subsidization of the oil and gas sector. Now that he is campaigning for the BC NDP, which is openly supportive of and subsidizing ongoing LNG development, including fracking, he has been strangely silent. Is he just kowtowing to the party line in order to get elected? Looks like opportunism to me. It wouldn’t be the first time.
In 2008, an American company, Bilcon, brought a multi-million dollar challenge against Canada, using the now eliminated, secretive Chapter 11 of NAFTA. Bilcon’s hugely damaging project planned for Digby Neck, Nova Scotia was turned down by a joint Nova Scotia-Canada environmental assessment in 2007. Both governments agreed - the project was so bad there would be no way to mitigate its impacts. It would threaten the survival of the very endangered Right Whale, as well as many other negative impacts.
In 2015, the tribunal announced that Canada had lost. To the shock of many, it turned out Murray Rankin had been Bilcon’s prize witness. He wrote a report for Bilcon and testified against Canada for four full days. When he testified he was a sitting Member of Parliament. In a recent conversation with me, he brushed this off as a “mere administrative matter.” Thanks to Rankin, Canadian taxpayers paid $7 million to Bilcon. According to the only Canadian on the tribunal, law professor Don McRae, Rankin’s opinion has done permanent damage to Canadian environmental assessment. A Nova Scotia law professor, Meinhard Doelle, agrees with McRae and states that Rankin’s contribution was more of a submission on behalf of Bilcon’s interests than an independent expert report. Doelle further suggests that Rankin was wrong in his legal analysis, perhaps because he had little if any particular expertise with the Nova Scotia Environment Act and its environmental assessment process. Was Rankin’s conclusion colored by his desire to support the company paying his fee? He did not answer my question about how much he was paid.
Perhaps other voters in Oak Bay-Gordon Head will have more luck. I think we deserve an answer.
Michael Coon, M Sc Marine Biology, retd. Director, Land and Resource Management Planning , Province of BC
548 Beach Drive,Victoria , BC,
V8S 2M5
cell phone 250 888 0510 until Oct. 23
after Oct 23, home phone 250 598 0640