Skip to content

Fletcher column reveals party’s flip-flop

B.C. Green Party, Elizabeth May, smart meters, B.C. Hydro

Re: Green Party gets lost in static (B.C. Views, Aug. 3)

Never before have I agreed with any of Tom Fletcher’s Liberal party cheerleading. However, this article did contain a priceless nugget of information.

I did not know that the B.C. Green Party’s 2009 platform had called for installation of smart meters by 2012, followed by imposition of time-of-use electricity pricing to reduce electricity consumption.

Its recent demand to halt B.C. Hydro’s smart meter program is thus an abrupt about-face.

This policy flip-flop follows an equally breathtaking volte-face on the HST referendum.

In both its 2005 and 2009 policy platforms, the B.C. Green Party called for a harmonized sales tax. A provincial news release in 2009 called it “common sense,” while Elizabeth May said they supported the HST “in principle” while concerned with its method of imposition. So much for social justice of imposing a massive tax shift from corporations onto taxpayers.

At the provincial Green Party’s April convention – because of internal strife – members agreed that they could vote either “Yes” or “No” in the HST referendum.

This bold stance of being for and against the HST is a pattern of behaviour by a party nowhere close to being ready to govern – or apparently even engage in serious, coherent policy discussion.

Green leaders who sit on the fence of current issues will find such action almost as painful the we citizens who have to observe such erratic conduct.

Ron Faris

Victoria