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I hate to sound ungracious towards our friends and neighbours by asking that question but it’s occurred to me quite often and I, for one, would like an answer.

With fish farms, what the hell is in it for us?

Jobs?

A few caretakers and that’s it.

We take all the risks, we take the certain environmental losses and they get all the money!

Whoops, I forgot that there is a BC beneficiary – the Liberal Party of BC and Gordon (Pinocchio) Campbell.

With pipelines shipping oil from the Tar Sands to Kitimat for passage through our waters – what the hell is in it for us?

The oil comes from Alberta so that only the Alberta and Federal governments get any royalties and other taxes - except maybe for the peppercorn rent for the pipeline right-of-way. We run many real risks in taking this filthy stuff over our province, through our delicate habitat, then shipping it down the most treacherous part of our coast and get nothing for it!

We have to do the policing for sabotage, terrorist attacks, or plain misadventure since Enbridge sure isn’t going to. And based on their track record, who would want them to be our watchdogs?

When the damage is done – and it will happen - we’ll have to bear the cost since Enbridge sure isn’t BP and a big loss could bankrupt them.

These questions apply to the oil presently being piped down to tankers in Burrard Inlet putting not only Vancouver Harbour at risk but all the BC coastline they sail past.

Moreover, as with fish farms, these companies are from out of province and don't give a damn for our environment.

What’s in that for us?

Some rent for the right-of-way?

Jobs?

Sure there will be employment to build the line but that’s short term and most of those jobs will be from out of province.

We take all the risks and they get the dough!

Whoops! I forgot Pinocchio and his trained seals. (See “whoops” above for details.)

Independent Power Producers (IPPs) are building their dams (they prefer we call them weirs) on rivers all over the province to make electricity.

What the hell’s in it for us?

These are all large offshore companies that take the profits while we inherit buggered up rivers. But it’s worse - not only do we lose our rivers, we pay for these dams because our provincial company, BC Hydro, owned by me and thee, is forced to pay these IPPs double what their power can be sold for. Since IPPs don’t make much electricity unless their river is flowing quickly, as in the Spring run-off when BC Hydro doesn’t need it, Hydro must export it at a huge loss! Our loss as citizen/shareholders!

We don’t need their power - indeed can’t even use it - but we finance their plants by making Hydro give them sweetheart deals, we get a fast bankrupting BC Hydro, and the money goes mostly to non-BC shareholders like Warren Buffett and General Electric!

What's in it for us?

Whoops again! (See above re Pinocchio and his lickspittles).

We’re chumps! Marks! Rubes playing Three Card Monte at the fair! We’re being robbed blind then we beg for more!

Think on this, gentle readers – we’re taking a three-way financial hit and a huge three-pronged attack on our environment, be it our salmon, our rivers, our harbours, our coastline, and our wild habitat and, through our government, we’re begging for more!

But I predict a change, an awakening of the people. When the Premier and the Attorney-General instructed Crown Counsel to ask for a life sentence for Betty Krawczyk for disobeying a court order to cease demonstrating, using two violent pedophile cases to back it up, it touched a lot of nerves. A life sentence for an 82 year-old for protesting an environmental desecration? Likening it to sexual violation of kids? What has this government come to?

There will be civil disobedience in BC and it won’t be pretty. We’ve been lied to enough. Our heritage is bring ripped apart not with government consent but at its request.