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PO tan i ee ee Te ene! By LD. MWe Ww Ff ‘a
bs ba etre ime

Ri Th we Pw el 8

ST TT

Gas, hog fuel can meet Island’s energy needs

Cheekye line: Cheap power for monopoly

By ERNIE KNOTT

B.C. Hydro and the forest
industry have a message for resi-
dents of Vancouver Island.

From B.C. Hydro, a series of
newspaper and television ads have
been warning that ‘“brownouts’’
are possible in the near future.

From MacMillan Bloedel and
Crown Zellerbach, the messages
have been more like threats. Unless
they are guaranteed long term sup-
plies of cheap public power from
Hydro, they will not proceed with
expansion plans for their mills at
Port Alberni and Campbell River.

What the blackmail is all about,
of course, is Hydro’s proposal to
build the $780 million Cheekye-
Dunsmuir transmission line across
the Sechelt Peninsula and into two
big 1,100 megawatt underwater
cables to Vancouver Island.

Residents at either end of the line
and some along the route are ser-
iously questioning the heavy social
and environmental impact of the
controversial project, or whether it
is needed at all.

Island residents are a —
why Hydro wants to spend alt
$1 ‘billion to bring an additional
2,200 megawatts of electricity to
the Island when current consump-
tion is only 1,700 megawatts. They
find it all the more curious that
Hydro is bulling ahead with the
plan in spite of its exorbitant cost

. and the wide public opposition to

it, when alternate sources of energy
on Vancouver Island are available
which could produce even more
power, and at far less expense.

To untangle the web of deceit
Hydro and its forest industry
friends have spun over Vancouver
Island’s energy needs, some history
is needed. Until 1945, the Island’s
power needs were met by thermal
plants at Nanaimo and Victoria,
the B.C. Electric Co. hydro project
at Jordan River, smaller scattered
hydro sites, and surplus power
from forest industry power plants

It was precisely at this time that
the provincial government first de-
cided to go into the public power
business. And in 1947 the first
1,000 kilowatts of power from the
new B.C. Power Commission was
delivered to the Bloedel pulp mill at
Port Alberni. The price to Bloedel?
Less than .5 cents per kilowatt
hour, while homeowners were pay-
ing 4.5 cents per kilowatt hour.

The new public system soon ab-
sorbed most of the private systems,
and as new pulp mills like Harmac
at Nanaimo and B.C. Forest Prod-
ucts at Crofton came into opera-

‘There are presently 1.3 million units of wood
wastes being exported, burned off or used for

fill . . . the wood industry
more power than it can use

could be producing
and feeding back

surplus into the regular Hydro system.”

using wood waste (a process called
“‘cogeneration’’).
The forest ind knew that

future production, especially pulp . B

and paper, would require huge
amounts of cheap electrical power.
But it did not want to lay out the
capital to build its own dams or
generating facilities, or to build the
boiler and generation systems to
produce power from the industry’s
own abundant wood wastes.

Students’

over another round of
fee increases, about am
ts from ten universities an
ges -across B.C. lobbied
universities minister Pat McGeer
education minister Brian
++ Thursday for a province-
om freeze on tuition fees and
changes in student aid. :
Ever-increasing fees are forcing
working-class students out of post-
secondary education and recent
restrictions in Canada student loan
eligibility requirements virtually
ensure that they stay out.
The lobby presented McGeer
and Smith with 5,000 cards signed

tuition

and

py students calling for a $450 in-

crease in student grants “‘to ac-

lobby demands fee

count for inflation since the last in-
crease in 1976”, changes in the
grant-loan ratio to 50-50 “to
decrease the debt load of students’?

and “‘fundamental changes in the

criteria for student aid.”’

The current system of student
aid provides students with.a loan
anda grant, of which the grant por-
tion has been steadily shrinking
since the grant loan program was
first introduced.

In addition a restrictive ‘“‘means
test” has been limiting the number
of students receiving student aid
and has directly resulted in the pro-
vincial government underspending
its student aid budget for the past

tion, they too were well supplied

with cheap, public power. Finally,
in 1961 the public system took over
-C. Electric and the new B.C.
Hydro and Power Authority took
Over as benefactor for the lumber
monopolies.

The “power at cost’? formula
that the B.C. Power Commission
charged the pulp mills, became
“‘power at cost, plus 10 percent.’
That formula remains virtually un-

changed to this day with the pulp
mills paying about 1.15 cents per

' kilowatt hour, one third the aver-

age 3.34 cents per kilowatt hour
charged residential consumers.

Today, the Island’s nine major
mills use 50 percent of total electric-
ity consumption. But they want
more, and they want it cheap, like
they have always had it.

B.C. Hydro is threatening that if
the mills don’t get the power they
want, there may not be enough for
residential users either.

But before we are pressured into
accepting a billion dollar transmis-
sion line, paid for with public funds
but primarily to serve private cor-
porations, shouldn’t alternatives
be examined?

First of all, instead of an electric
power transmission line, a natural
gas pipeline would have far more
advantages. B.C. is rich in natural
gas reserves and these could be well
used on Vancouver Island ‘for in-
dustrial and residential use, reduc-
ing electrical energy demands, and
use of expensive oil and liquified
petroleum. The Bare Pt. Georgia
thermal station could convert to
natural gas and go into continuous
use to feed power into the Island
grid

gas pipeline and distribution sys-
tem at $260 million, but now they
have put it on the shelf in favor of
the more expensive transmission
line.

several years, according to B.C.
Students Federation staff member
John Doherty. ;

The increase of $1.7 million in
the student aid budget recently
brought down, is ‘“‘useless’’ until
the regulations governing eligibility
for student aid are changed, he
said.

BCSF lobbied government
members on their demand that
there be ‘‘no further tuition fee in-
creases until the provincial govern-
ment conduct a study on the effects
of fees on accessibility to higher
education.’

Citing studies from Ontario and
the United States, the students con-

tended ‘‘that an increasing number

Union wants ‘same rights as Nfld’

Continued from page 1

foundland and enact legislation im-
mediately to give fishermen full
bargaining rights and to make the
rights retroactive to cover the roe
herring strike.

Although the injunctions lapsed
with the end of the strike — for-
malized by the UFAWU and the
Native Brotherhood following the
closure of the roe herring season
Mar. 13 — the possibility of
damage suits still hangs over the
union. :

Some 300 union members, in-
cluding herring fishermen,
shoreworkers and tendermen,

marched on Victoria Mar. 13 to:

press the demand for bargaining
rights and to demand provincial
government action to curb
multinational control of the pro-
vince’s fisheries,

Lobby participants met with the

NDP resources committee in the

morning and later pursued the issue
before labor minister Jack
Heinrich and deputy James

‘Both Heinrich and Matkin in-
sisted that the fishermen could have
bargaining rights under the
‘“‘dependent contractor’’ clause in
the labor code even though union
certifications sought under a
similar clause, in the federal labor
code were struck down by a

Supreme Court decision, in 1977, _

The provincial labor code does
not address the crucial issue of
jurisdiction for fishermen —
whether it is federal or provincial
— and any certifications would
also likely be stymied by court
challenges.

Moreover, the ‘‘dependent con-
tractor” clause only -allows the

Labor Relations Board to vary ex- .

isting certifications. It cannot grant
separate certifications for

_ fishermen and would therefore

have to include them under existing
ones covering either shoreworkers
or tendermen. That approach is

considered completely unworkable
— even if the certification was
allowed in the first place.

yee

a a ee ek

And, in any-event, the province
Can provide bargaining rights simp-
ly —it only has to follow the exam-
ple of Newfoundland which “‘seiz-
ed” jurisdiction in 1971, opening
the way for bargaining that has
Now gone on successfully for nine
years,

“All we’re asking is the same
trade union rights that have been
granted to fishermen in New-
foundland,”’ Hewison told the
council,

He said that UFAWU represen-
tatives would be going to Victoria,
Tuesday and Wednesday ‘and
we’re going to keep going over until
bargaining rights are enshrined in

aw.”

The labor council unanimously
endorsed a resolution submitted by
the UFA WU demanding that labor
minister Heinrich enact legislation
immediately ‘granting all working
B.C. fishermen the right to full col-
lective bargaining by clarifying
their legal status relative to fish
buyers, processors and/or vessel
Owners.”’

freeze

of studies have been done showing
that fees are a barrier to post-
secondary education for potential
low-income students.”

Particularly hard hit will be
those at the University of B.C.
where the Board of Governors, ina
precedent setting move earlier this
year, voted to index tuition fees.

UBC students will now have to
pay a fixed percentage, set at 10
percent, of UBC’s operating costs.
So as the costs rise, tuition fees
will automatically rise too. Tuition
fees at UBC currently account for
8.5 percent of operating funds,
averaging $570 per year per stu-
dent.

“Tt will soon cost about $1,000
a year for tuition fees alone at
UBC”’ Doherty remarked.

In a fact sheet prepared for the
lobby, BCSF noted that the under-
funding of post-secondary institu-
tions by the provincial government
has directly resulted in those in-

stitutions making up the shortfall

by increasing tuition fees and cut-
ting back on student services.
They charged that the provincial
government has diverted $379
million away from post-secondary
education over the past three years
by failing to match the federal
government’s contribution, the
standard practice for educatio
finance. — ve >
mmenting on. the budget
brought down last week, Doherty
said that ‘‘once again, the money
allocated to universities and col-

__ leges won’t make up for past shor-

tages and will certainly mean tui-
tion fee hikes by this September.”

On the lobby, however, there
was little indication from the two
ministers that the government was

prepared to increase its financial -

commitment.

Doherty said that students ‘‘are
going to have to fight the tuition fee
increases that are coming.”

Hydro earlier costed a natural _

ERNIE KNO

. .. Communist
Party organizer and spokesman
on Vancouver Island claims that
the Island can meet its energy
needs-without a new transmis-
sion line.

The natural gas pipeline will cre- -
ate 600 construction jobs for two
years and 125 permanent jobs. And
it wouldn’t have the serious en-
vironmental consequences associa-
- with the Cheekye Dunsmuir

e
Secondly, it is about time that
the forest industry was told to stop
wasting our valuable wood re-
sources. There are presently 1.3
million units of wood wastes, not
including cedar, from Island forest
operations being exported to the
U.S., burned off or used for fill.
Pacific Logging (Saltair Mill Divi-
sion), for example, is dumping its
entire 1977 production of 77,000
units of hog fuel for land fill.

UBC professors Helliwell and
Cox estimated in January that
Vancouver Island mills could pro-
duce another .180 megawatts. of
power. from. hog, fuel. Another
study by the Canadian Forest Ser-
vice suggested that waste from log-
ging operations could produce 480
megawatts at a price cheaper than
Hydro could bring power from the
mainland. At this rate, the wood
industry would be producing more
than it could use and would be
feeding back surplus power into the
regular Hydro system.

At one time the H. R. MacMil-
lan mill at Port Alberni and the
B.C. Forest Products mill at Vic-
toria did just that. But that was be-
fore the public power system made
it cheaper to dump hog fuel to rot.

Hog fuel can also substitute for
oil. A new boiler system being in-
Stalled at Elk Falls will save over
200,000 barrels per year, and a sim-
ilar system at Port Alberni could
eliminate the use of oil altogether.

There are enormous stakes in ~
meeting Vancouver Island’s power
needs in an effective way. A natural
gas pipeline would bring far more
economic benefits than a transmis-
sion line, and it would bring needed
jobs. It is the cheapest and most ef-
fective fuel for home heating pur-
poses.

From the perspective of social
and environmental impact and the
loss of land, wild life and recrea-
tional values, natural gas and wood
wastes are clearly superior energy
sources.

The fundamental question is:
who will pay the cost of meeting the
power needs of the forest com-
panies? The public, through sub-
sidized bulk rates and through ex-
pensive power projects? Or should
the rates be revised upwards to
force the companies to make full
use of the public resource put at
their disposal to contribute to a ra-
tional energy plan for Vancouver
Island? aes :

This is the message that we
should send back to B.C. Hydro
and the forest companies.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 21,:1980—Page 3