Once again this government is hiding the facts about a serious issue.

Could it be that the coal barons fear having a little light shone on the bullshit science being used to flog the dirtiest fuel there is?

Sounds like another farmed fish fiasco if you ask me.

Don't think conspiracy think a more darker thought - incompetence.

No, it's pretty clearly a conspiracy, albiet a small and transparent one. The decision is "controversial" only at the insistence of the corporations that will benefit from the plants -- there is no controversy for anyone else, because we can see that two coal-fired plants are a giant step backwards. Surely reason and policy both demand that a less 19th century solution is needed.

Gordo and Co. want to dig and sell coal so that's what will happen unless the voters catch on and boot the bums out. FOI stuff can be held up basically when the government wants it that wau. Even if it shows up expcer more blacked out areas that the stuff that can be read,

I have found that 6 months to a year is pretty much standard now for FOI act requests. If the SLDF can get a response in 5 months then they are ahead of the game and I am jealous!

Hopefully these FOI’s will tell us who was the idiot at BC Hydro that approved these projects in the first place. Whoever it was, should be fired.

I hadn't noticed this till now. History was made here on February 2nd when Kevin Larsen implicitly criticized an economic policy decision of the BC Liberal Govt.

A public forum on the subject of IPPs was held last week in Maple Ridge sponsored by BC Citizens for Public Power. Present were MLAs Randy Hawes, BC Liberal from Maple Ridge-Mission and Mike Sather, NDP from Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows, as well as John Calvert an SFU instructor with Citizens for Public Power and Steve David with the IPP Assn.

Calvert presented figures showing that the cost of producing electricity in the exisiting hydo dams, which provide 78% of BC's electricity, is $5.81 per megawatt. Contrast this to the price of $66.00 per megawatt that will be paid to the IPPs. NDP MLA Mike Sather interpreted this to mean that the prices "negotiated" are simply designed to make private power more competitive against the exiting system. Hawes' interpretation was more ideological, saying "We don't think profit's a bad word."