9 A Backwards Province

9  BC's choice to proceed with outdated development plans reflects a backwards province.

The plans which included building Site C Dam to generate more hydroelectricity are generations old. Nineteenth and 20th century technologies continue to be pushed because they are familiar, because it worked before for W.A.C. Bennett, and because people are desperate for work. Consequences, who or what will die in the flooding, are of lesser importance.

BC is a backwards province in a backwards nation. Most of us who have moved here from elsewhere have been forewarned. "They do things differently out there." or "It's 3 or 4 years behind Winnipeg, but once you've been here a while, you don't notice." As a backwards province, rich in resources waiting to be harvested or extracted and exported, we have not focussed on keeping up with the times. Pollution is "paid for" with a kind of "indulgence tax" rather than tackled at source. Coal is transported across the province and across the ocean for other people to burn. The local ignorance about potentials of solar and wind energy are mind boggling. How often have you heard: "But the sun doesn't shine, the wind doesn't blow all the time"?

Because we have failed to adjust, to update our knowledge, outdated attitudes prevail. We all know the cliches. British Columbians have "drunk the economic cool-aid." Have accepted the old lies that dams are necessary, that development destroys to create, that hydroelectricity is "clean" or "green" and the least expensive option. How can it be green to clearcut a forest? To block fish-spawning rivers? We have swallowed the bait - hook, line, and sinker. That "civilization" moves ever onward (north). We believe the myth of progress, that today is better than yesterday and tomorrow will be even better. What does it matter if we drown more of the valley?

People who have never even seen the valley believe they have a right to decide its future. People who have never even seen any of the food they consume while it was still alive. While it was growing. Being produced and harvested. Our southern needs are more important than the needs and wants of the few people who live "up there," First Nations, old settler families, farmers, forestry workers. We have failed to keep up. We have failed to learn from past mistakes. We continue to fail to listen to others with valid alternative opinions.

But some of them want the dam, you say. Yes, I understand, people need jobs. A few local businesses are in line, those who will benefit financially, to whom nothing but money matters. And a large unemployed population, many affected by the downturn of oil prices, is anxious, needing money, willing to grasp at anything. But these facts simply make the pressure to agree to the death of the valley a kind of extortion.

Jobs, Yes. Damming a river, drowning a valley, No.