Parties rated on eco-platforms

Judith Lavoie, Times Colonist
Published: Monday, May 11, 2009

Two environmental groups have teamed up to review the climate, energy and environmental platforms of the three major parties.

West Coast Environmental Law and the Pembina Institute have given the parties between one and five stars in 14 different categories, and provided an explanation of each party's campaign promises.

"There has been too much heat and not enough light on the issues in this campaign," said Jessica Clogg, senior counsel for West Coast Environmental Law. "British Columbians are concerned about their rivers, their lands and their communities and need information about what each party would do when they vote on May 12."

The review does not suggest where people should direct their votes, said Karen Campbell, Pembina Institute staff counsel. "We just evaluated the policies of the major parties. It's not our place to tell people who they should be voting for."

Earlier in the campaign, the Pembina Institute was one of the environmental groups that slammed the NDP for its opposition to the Liberal government's carbon tax.

For that, the NDP gets just one star in the category of putting a price on global warming pollution, while the Liberals get four stars and the Greens five.

Overall, top place goes to the Greens with a total of 55 stars, second to the NDP with 43.5 stars and third to the Liberals with 33 stars.

One of the Liberals' lowest marks came in reducing impacts from oil and gas development.

"The Liberal commitment to drilling for oil offshore, expanding pipeline networks, opening up new gas basins and establishing an energy corridor runs the risk of compromising B.C.'s climate leadership," says the Pembina review.

Among the NDP's weak points, in addition to opposing the carbon tax, according to the anaylsis, is not addressing the role of forest conservation in addressing climate change.

The Greens, with consistently high marks, dropped slightly in the fish-farms category with its plan to give open-net cage farms a 10-year phase-out.

Campbell said there are good ideas from all the parties.

"In an ideal world, we would be using all these ideas in a race to the top," she said. "We hope that by having a quick reference chart, [whoever wins the election] will be able to look at what the other parties are proposing and that will inspire them to raise the bar."

The analyses can be found at www.wcel.org and bc.pembina.org.

jlavoie@tc.canwest.com