DON CAYO, Vancouver Sun, September 15, 2010
Provincial promises have not panned out
The current industrial economy brought great prosperity to much of the province, but B.C.'s first nations were, with a few exceptions, largely shut out.
So when Premier Gordon Campbell launched his government's drive to create a new green economy, he pledged that this sorry history would not be allowed to repeat itself.
It isn't working out that way, says Dave Porter, the CEO of B.C.'s First Nations Energy and Mining Council (http://fnbc.info/fnemc).
"To realize that objective, we need capacity," Porter told me during a break at the second annual National Aboriginal Business Opportunities Conference organized by the go-getting Osoyoos Indian Band. "We need access to capital. We need revenue-sharing agreements with the province. And we need agreements with industry that contain profit-sharing."
Porter sat on the province's Green Energy Task Force, which tried to address the full range of these issues with 16 recommendations.
"Only one of those recommendations made it into the Clean Energy Act -- the creation of a $5-million fund to facilitate first nations involvement," he said. "That has to address all of these issues, and it's not enough to fund a single project."
So, while Ontario has gone ahead with a $250-million investment fund and will guarantee loans for first nations to become sole owners or partners in green energy projects, a similar B.C. task force recommendation is gathering dust. Alberta has come to a revenue-sharing agreement for transmission lines that cross first nations land. And B.C., which once prided itself as a leader in talking the talk about aboriginal inclusion in the economy, finds itself lagging when it comes to walking the walk.
Judith Sayers, the former chief of the Hupacasath band in Port Alberni and a co-panelist with Porter in a session that focused on opportunities and challenges in the green economy, is one of the few B.C. native leaders who has actual experience in getting a project off the ground. Her band is a partner in the China Creek run-of-river generation project, one of the first in the province to go online.
Sayers is now a strategic adviser to other first nations on projects like this, as well as the entrepreneur in residence at University of Victoria. She is seeing her own frustrations in getting the China Creek project off the ground repeated time and again.
"The $5-million fund in B.C. simply isn't enough to allow first nations to get involved. There are already 90 applications, even though there hasn't been policy set on that fund.
"So first nations want to be involved."
But it takes a lot of money to cover the soft costs of jumping through regulatory and other official hoops just to get started, she said.
"The long-term financing is going to be available as long as you've got a project.
"But you've got to get to the project first. And it's tough."
Her own band spent $4 million -- scrounged from a series of small grants -- to get to the stage where it had a deal that allowed it to borrow for construction and start building.
"It's hard work. You have to do a lot of lobbying -- go see the ministers, go see the bureaucrats, the people in between.
"It's not easy when you're a poor first nation. And all of us are poor."
Porter says the Northwest Transmission line is a timely opportunity for the government to draw in the six first nations whose land will be impacted by the line.
Not only is there a $500-million line to be built, but it will open up the possibility of many more run-of-river projects.
"A big impediment right now," Sayers notes, "is that BC Hydro cannot enter into a business arrangement with first nations. So when something like Site C goes ahead, or a new transmission line goes ahead, first nations can't get involved with five-per-cent, or 10-per-cent or 20-per-cent equity. That's just government policy."
"So when BC Hydro comes to a community now, they have nothing to offer them. They can't offer equity. They can't offer revenue-sharing."
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