Part of Premier Christy Clark’s throne speech on Tuesday reads like the kind of daily affirmations the self-realization gurus urge you to pronounce.
Why is 80 per cent of the public service covered by contracts that include an economic stability mandate, you ask?
“Because 250,000 hardworking men and women said yes, and gave themselves a stake in the growing economy.”
What must you have to grow and diversify our economy?
“We must have the courage to say yes.
“Yes to recognizing that economic development and environmental protection go hand in hand.
“Yes to planning for future growth and creating a climate where job-creating businesses can thrive.”
In short, say yes to growth in the context of resource development, or risk losing funding for infrastructure, schools, hospitals and all the rest.
It’s a corollary of a message she tried out last month, rapping the “the forces of no” who are objecting to the siting of one of the liquefied natural gas plants.
“There are people who just say no to everything, and heaven knows there are plenty of those in British Columbia,” she said two weeks ago. “It’s about fear of change. It’s about fear of the future.”
In short form, she’s pitching the B.C. Liberals as an optimistic, positive energy — getting things done in the face of constant criticism from the forces of no. And the NDP Opposition is most certainly included in those dark forces, in her mind.
On paper, it looks like a winning message. Positivity is more appealing than negativity. But there’s a considerable bloc of people who cheerfully count themselves in the no camp when it comes to pipelines, gas projects and some other resource projects.
The political trick is figuring out where saying yes to everything turns into a negative, rather than a positive.
So there’s a qualifier later on. “Getting to yes on economic development does not mean cutting corners, or bowing to external pressure.”
The overall “courage to say yes” message has been test-driven for a while and you get the impression the feedback has been favourable enough that she’s formalizing it as one of the B.C. Liberal themes with 15 months to go before it gets tested for real.
Meanwhile, there was also a formal acknowledgment that one of the big yeses the B.C. Liberals committed to is turning into a big maybe. After five years of hard work on closing an LNG deal, the speech said: “There is no question that unforeseen global conditions are posing new challenges. Low global prices will have an impact on your government’s initial timelines.”
In a scrum later, she referred to Shell’s announcement it is delaying its final investment decision — originally scheduled for the first quarter of 2016 — until late in the year.
“We are counting on LNG still going ahead, we’re still focused, but it’s gotten a lot harder. With oil at about $30 [a barrel] it’s gotten hard, but that does not mean we’re going to run the white flag up the pole, we are going to keep working at it. It will take a little bit longer, though, as long as oil stays at about 30 bucks.”
The hope is that the 20 firms in the running will treat the oil price plunge as a short-term phenomenon and consider B.C. LNG plants as a bet on the future 20 or 30 years out.
This weekend is the third anniversary of the announcement of B.C.’s Prosperity Fund, the multibillion-dollar nest egg that was to be used to eliminate debt. As a show of faith, she re-promised it again, although no deposits have been made yet.
There was a round of congratulations at how distinctive B.C. is, particularly in achieving the Great Bear Rainforest deal, where the forest industry, First Nations, environmentalists and the government — you guessed it — got to yes. Also noted was the upcoming fourth balanced budget and comparatively good job numbers.
But it’s all at risk, said the speech, because of global fragility and the oil plunge. Alberta was held up as a dismal example.
“Over the decades Alberta lost its focus. They expected their resource boom to never end.”
So staying “vigilant” is the key, and resisting “the temptation to spend our way into trouble.”
In other words, saying “no” once in a while.
