Conversations Live with Stuart McNish

Join us for a series of wide-ranging conversations with BC’s provincial political leaders the week of September 16.

Kicking off our third season, the Leaders Series will be three conversations over the week – all unscripted, unrestricted, and focused on the topics on British Columbians’ minds as we come into the October election. As always, we will take questions from our webcast audience over Slido.

The series will start with a conversation with Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau 7 p.m. Monday, September 16, followed by BC Conservative Party leader John Rustad 7 p.m. the next day – Tuesday, September 17. BC NDP leader Premier David Eby will join us Thursday, September 19 at 4:15 p.m.

There’s a lot to discuss. The political landscape has shifted with BC United exiting the campaign. The economy, toxic drugs, health care, crime, housing, infrastructure investment, the climate, food & agriculture, our resource economy and tech sectors, education all feature in the upcoming election, less than two months away.

We hope you can join us for these conversations – as always, webcast by our media partner, the Vancouver Sun, and on our own website.

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Canada has designed 31 minerals as critical – essential to our green digital economy, but whose supply is threatened. From copper to cesium they are in batteries; every electronic device, computer, and EV; permanent magnets; optical instruments; wiring; bearings; run-of river dams, wind farms, and solar arrays; aerospace alloys; catalytic converters & carbon dioxide scrubbers; and medical equipment. Our modern world simply does not exist without them.

As the world strives to electrify demand for critical minerals is skyrocketing. Electric vehicles don’t burn fossil fuels, but they require an average of 200 kilograms of critical minerals each – six times that required to build an internal combustion vehicle. It’s a theme repeated across numerous fields.

As a result, from 2017 – 2022 demand for lithium tripled, demand for cobalt rose 70 per cent, for nickel 40 per cent. The International Energy Agency predicts overall demand for critical minerals will more than triple by 2030 if the world continues to pursue the goal of net zero emissions by 2050.

This is leading to a shortage of many minerals as miners struggle to keep up with demand for responsibly-secured supplies – and to get through regulatory processes that can drag on for years.

Join us 7 p.m. May 22 for a conversation about critical minerals with an outstanding panel of experts working in this field every day.

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Preparing for disasters has long been a consideration in municipal, household, and business budgeting. Earthquake prep perhaps attracted the most public focus in recent decades, before the 2020’s, while funding for some other streams fell off.

In late 2021 disaster preparedness became an urgent public priority virtually overnight when a series of storms dumped an unprecedented amount of rain on BC at the same time as unseasonably warm weather caused a rapid winter snow melt. Both the Fraser River in BC and the Nooksack in Washington State flooded, the water overwhelming dikes and plunging thousands of farms, businesses, and homes in the Sumas Prairie under deep water. Crops and farm animals alike perished on BC’s most productive agricultural land. All three highways connecting Metro Vancouver to the rest of Canada were severed, disrupting supply chains for shipments of food and other critical goods.

Since then, BC has weathered a series of intense wildfire seasons that have burned vast stretches of forest and many structures, droughts, heat domes, and cold snaps. The need for disaster preparedness has never been more top-of-mind – whether at a household, government, or business level.

We have brought together a panel of experts from business, First Nations, and government for a conversation about this critical matter – 7 p.m. April 30. The panel:

• Christine Trefanenko, Director and Co-Founder, CCEM Strategies
• Tony Geheran, TELUS Chief Operations Officer and Executive Vice-President
• Ross Siemens, Mayor of Abbotsford
• Leon Gaber, KPMG National Lead, Emergency Management
• Bowinn Ma, BC Minister of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness
• Tim Swanson, FortisBC Director of Corporate Security and Business Continuity

We hope you can join us for the conversation.

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On April 23 we will sit down for a 90-minute conversation with Premier David Eby – live and unscripted.

When we sat down with Mr. Eby a year ago he had been premier for just over 100 days. More than a year later the honeymoon is over.

Just this week S&P downgraded the province’s credit rating, expressing concern about BC’s financial health and rising operating deficit. BC’s most recent budget forecasts a record deficit of almost $8 billion for 2024-05.

For the first time in a decade more people left BC for other provinces in 2023.

Drug decriminalization is also in the news this week as it’s come to light nurses are dealing with rampant drug use and dealing in hospitals, while workers at some Victoria supportive housing sites are being provided respirators to avoid toxic drug smoke exposure.

The economy, housing, cost of living, transportation, tent encampments, drug decriminalization and deaths, healthcare, crime, gang warfare, bail reform, policing and the Surrey police transition, school overcrowding, extreme weather due to climate change, carbon taxes, rising antisemitism and islamophobia.

A challenging time to be BC’s premier, and an election is looming.

Join us for this special edition, 3:30 p.m. April 23 by webcast. We will take your questions for the premier on Slido.

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In December the BC Utilities Commission (BCUC) quashed FortisBC’s plans to build a natural gas pipeline in the Okanagan – a $327 million project that would have seen a 30-kilometer line and two related power stations built to meet growing demand for gas in BC’s southern interior.

FortisBC is warning that without additional natural gas transport capacity the region could start experience natural gas shortages in the winter of 2026/27, less than three years from now.

The reason? The BCUC found the plan did not account for a downturn in demand for natural gas as the province moves away from generating energy from fossil fuels and adopting more clean energy. The regulator found the forecast demand “is highly unlikely to occur.”

BCUC’s chair & CEO and the President & CEO of Fortis BC are part of our panel for a conversation about Energy & The Environment April 2. The panel:

• Mark Jaccard, Chair and CEO of the BC Utilities Commission
• Roger Dall’Antonia, President & CEO, FortisBC
• Karen Tam Wu, Climate action advocate & policy advisor
• Barry Penner, Chair of the Energy Futures Initiative
• Andras Vlaszak, Director, Energy Transition Project Development & Finance, Global Infrastructure Advisory, KPMG

There’s no question the climate is changing and urgent action is needed. But is increasing electricity use the answer for BC?

Shortly after the BCUC decision BC Hydro revealed it imported about 20 per cent of the electricity British Columbians consumed last year – due both to constrained generation as drought reduced the water available at hydro dams and increasing demand as our population grows and we drive more electric vehicles and install more heat pumps in our homes.

Most of that imported power came from Washington State, California, and Alberta. According to the California Energy Commission and the US Energy Information Administration California and Washington State produce environmentally sound power from sources including hydro, solar, nuclear, and geothermal – but also from burning natural gas, biomass, and even coal. As for Alberta, according to the Canada Energy Regulator that province generates 89 per cent of its power from burning coal and natural gas.

The Site C Dam is set to come online this year and will help increase our available supply of hydro power, but the amount BC Hydro imported in 2023 is twice that facility’s predicted annual production.

Water levels are low due to drought again this year, and a recent report is warning the combination of increasing demand and generation constraints will only get worse in coming years, even with Site C.

What’s the answer to this very complex challenge?

We hope you can join us for the conversation – on webcast 7 p.m. April 2.

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