Stephen Rees's blog

We are supposed to have a carbon neutral government in BC. The BC Liberals introduced legislation to ensure that all the various organizations reporting to it – including schools and hospitals and so on – both took steps to reduce their emissions and where that was not feasible to purchase carbon offsets.

The BC Auditor General has been trying to ensure that his report on this program reached the public before he leaves for Australia and before we head to the polls. Not only was his report issued but he also got a presentation made and put it up on youtube. You can both read the report in full or spend a quarter of an hour listening to a nice lady read a summary. The video is just basic powerpoint type presentation. The main points appear as text on the screen as the voice reads the summary. Auditors are not noted for their exciting presentation skills – but this stuff is indeed dynamite.

The government has been boasting about how well it has done. How safe we are in its hands since the Liberals are so much better at running a businesslike government. Not rash tax and spenders like the NDP – or pie in the sky flakes like the Green Party. This report shows clearly the gap between government spin and reality.

I too have been caught out by false promises of carbon off setters. I wrote about that here. I expected much better of the Climate Change Secretariat, though I am hardly surprised by the results of the audit.

One of the projects was run by a company called Encana. They were flaring gas but now managed to capture it. But it turns out that they would have been doing that anyway, without the PCT financial contribution. And it also just so happens that Encana made $647,670.00 in contributions since 2005 to the BC Liberals. Thanks to Laila Yuile for that info

UPDATE 1 But there is another side to this story as Charlie Smith explores in the Straight. I do not know if the date has any significance.

UPDATE 2 However my conclusion is very much the same as that reached by Bob Simpson MLA – his open letter to the Minister of Finance is well worth reading