Power Struggle
Improving the energy dialogue in Canada (and beyond) through honest, non-partisan, and fact- based conversations.
The energy conversation is personal: it’s in our homes, in our hands, and now, it’s in our ears. Power Struggle invites you to listen in on honest, non-partisan, and fact-based conversations between host Stewart Muir and the leaders and thinkers designing modern energy.
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Power Struggle
How Energy Policies Contribute to the Housing Crisis // Bill Tieleman
Bill Tieleman is one of British Columbia’s most seasoned and influential strategists. With decades of experience in political communications, including roles in the B.C. Premier’s Office, for the NDP, and the BC Federation of Labour, Bill has shaped campaigns and conversations across the province. As the founder of West Star Communications, he’s spent 25 years helping labor, business, non-profits, and Indigenous organizations navigate complex political landscapes. From his work overturning the HST to his commentary on today’s pressing political issues, Bill brings a unique perspective on strategy, power, and the challenges shaping our communities.
Reach out to us with thoughts, questions, or ideas at info@powerstruggle.ca
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Today on Power Struggle, we're joined by Bill Thielman, one of British Columbia's most seasoned and influential strategists. With decades of experience in political communications, including roles in the BC Premier's Office for the NDP government and the BC Federation of Labour, bill has shaped campaigns and conversations across the province. As the founder of West Star Communications, he spent 25 years helping labour, business, non-profits and Indigenous organizations navigate complex political landscapes. From his work overturning the HST, the harmonized sales tax, to his commentary on today's pressing political issues, bill brings a unique perspective on strategy, power and the challenges shaping our communities. A magazine profile writer once said of Bill that he is an open book with a ream of blank pages. Bill Thielman, welcome to Power Struggle.
Bill:Thanks, stuart, I'm glad to be here We've got a lot to talk about. How many hours do we have? We could just do 10 hours. I think we only have one hour.
Stewart:So we'll have to start somewhere. As I've said, you've been a political strategist, a commentator, a campaigner for decades. How do you think about this calling? And what's a day in the life of Bill Tillman?
Bill:Well, it's like many jobs. I fell into it and you know I was working a different variety of things. I lived in Toronto for six years during the late 80s. I was working for Oxfam Canada as a fundraiser. I came back to Vancouver, where I'm a second generation Vancouverite.
Bill:So I came back to Vancouver and was working as a consultant in fundraising not in strategy and met Joy McPhail, who was then a NDP MLA, and said oh well, I'm leaving the BC Federation of Labour because she was getting elected under Mike Harcourt's government. You should come work for Ken Giorgetti I'll introduce you to Ken, who's then the president of the Federation of Labour. So I started working there and in short order became the communications director and assistant to the president. And I was there for quite a long time and I had a call from a guy named Glenn Clark and he said Mike Harcourt has stepped down or is stepping down and I need somebody to write a speech for me. But I only have some notes, can you help me? And I was known as a speech writer for Ken. So from that I ended up in the premier's office for six months and, through an incredible campaign, gordon Campbell was the BC Liberal opposition leader very much favoured to win the election, and we reversed that and had a very narrow victory, almost as narrow as the last one that we've had here at BC in 2024.
Bill:And so I worked in the Premier's office for six months and then I thought you know, this is very, very interesting. I had a great opportunity, but I had a 12-year-old daughter and my wife living in Vancouver. Very, very interesting. I had a great opportunity, but I had a 12-year-old daughter and my wife living in Vancouver go back and forth and I'm a sprinter, I'm not a marathoner, so I'm going to take my leave which was a good thing, as it turned out and went back to the Federation for a couple of years.
Bill:And then people like the head of BC Gas were calling and saying I can't get hold of the Premier's office, can you help? And the light bulb went on up here and I thought, oh people, you know, I just made a $10,000 call. So I set up my own consulting business, west Star Communications, in 1998. And my first client was Labatt's, the beer people. And so it went from there and never went back to doing anything else. And so you know, when I grow up I don't know what I'll be, but right now I'm still doing consulting, doing strategy, as you say, and government relations, communications, media relations, but I think strategy kind of covers it all off.
Stewart:Yeah, I can see, from what you've described, the pathway. I'm curious, though. You mentioned a couple of names. Not everyone will recognize Glenn Clark, ken Giorgetti, but to people of a certain vintage, from a certain place that bespeaks a kind of old school labor, people who build things with their hands. Is there something in that for you? That's a personal connection that brought you in?
Bill:Oh yeah, my father came to Canada as a logger. So he was in the Dutch resistance during the Second World War, occupied Holland by the Germans. And then he came to Canada. He was a logger, he learned his English. I mean, he had some English, but he learned most of his English in a logging camp. So you can imagine His vocabulary was limited to a lot of F words at certain times.
Bill:And then he joined the RCMP and he had his deep-sea navigator ticket. So he ended up working on the coast out of logging and into the RCMP and then kind of he became somewhat famous for it. He was called by RCMP headquarters and said Tillman, do you still have your third mate's ticket, navigator ticket? And he says yes, sir. And they said you're going to Halifax, meet Henry Larson, the captain of the St Rock. You're going to take it, you're going to be the navigator through the Panama Canal to Vancouver, to the Vancouver Maritime Museum here. And so he was on as the last navigator of the St Rock, which I'm very proud of and he was very proud of as well.
Stewart:It's amazing, you can go down to the Maritime Museum even today at Kitsilano Beach and you can go and see your dad's boat because it's inside the museum.
Bill:They built a museum around it. Yeah, yeah, and I do that. I take visitors there Sometimes. It's quite fascinating.
Stewart:Incredible Bill in these times. Housing affordability is just one of these big issues. It seems to loom over everything, but building homes, which we should be doing more of and everyone agrees on that is getting more difficult and more expensive. I want to drill into this, not because it's a random interest I have, but you're actually doing some work in this area. Could you talk about that a little bit?
Bill:Yeah, well, I'm the director of the BC Coalition for Affordable Dependable Energy and we are a very broad-based coalition. We have the BC Building Trades Unions, the Electricians Union, plumbers Union, but we also have the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, canadian Federation of Independent Business, the BC Restaurants Association, restaurants Canada, the BC Crap Brewers Guild, the South Asian Business Association, the Asian Restaurant Owners Association just a really wide, broad coalition. But they're all concerned about what municipalities have been doing, which is taking provincial legislation that has set a 2030 deadline for it's called zero carbon energy, but to basically go all electric, impose electrification with no options. But the province is not only doing that, they also allowed municipalities to go at their own speed so they can go way faster, and that's what we've seen in Vancouver, victoria, nanaimo, burnaby, north Smithster, richmond. A number of municipalities are implementing now or are moving very quickly towards 2030 deadlines.
Bill:In the meantime, we had imported we see hydro ran out of electricity for the first time in a long time and imported half a billion dollars $500 million with electricity from the United States, from Alberta. Lots of it wasn't clean. They haven't even disclosed exactly what source it comes from and we're this year in the worst drought and the lowest river levels and snowpack levels since 1970. So the odds are BC Hydro will import as much or even more.
Stewart:Yeah, and just to emphasize one point, over 90% of the electricity consumed in British Columbia is from hydroelectricity, so it depends on water. If there's a drought, less electricity or no electricity, exactly.
Bill:So a number of organizations were concerned about this because already natural gas is more affordable than electricity and also it has some dependability. That's why it's in our name. It's affordable, it's dependable, so there's real dependability. When we had the coldest day of the year this past year, most of the power of the heat that was generated in British Columbia as a whole was from natural gas, not from electricity. So there are real questions about whether we can go 100% electric, or at what period we can, or 100% renewable. At the same time natural gas companies around the world are doing renewable natural gas from wastewater, from farm waste, naturally occurring methane, capturing that which is going into the atmosphere anyway, and using it as renewable natural gas. And that amount FortisBC is the big natural gas distributor here in British Columbia. They're increasing their supply of RNG from across North America.
Bill:So the BC government, to its credit in its clean energy strategy, recognizes renewable natural gas is renewable. Some environmentalists don't recognize it and say the opposite. But they don't really like hydropower either. They fought the Site C hydroelectric dam which is just opening tooth and nail and now they say well, we got to go all electric, but they didn't want that electricity. So it's an interesting time.
Bill:And lastly, on that one, we know that Premier David Eby here in British Columbia has said that if the federal government removes the consumer carbon tax, he will remove it. Here in BC we were the first province with it under a right-wing BC Liberal government brought it in and it still exists under the NDP. But if they remove that carbon tax it'll reduce the cost of natural gas even further, by about 25%, so it becomes even more affordable at a time we're saying let's get rid of it and that to go back to your original question, which I did remember housing means that the cost of housing could be much more expensive if you force people to only go electric and not have the option of natural gas as a heating source.
Stewart:So to unpack that, if that house is getting more expensive to build and also to live in because it costs relatively more, or just more, to heat, that's a cost for the consumer. I'm also curious, though, though, about another aspect of cost, which is that when you're building something and everyone wants that same thing at the same time, it might get more expensive. If you remove that choice and it has to be just electric heating, do you think that could affect the cost of getting the components, even getting, say, the contractors who do the work to connect you to a finite grid?
Bill:Yeah, I mean there's no question there. And we've got other problems. You know, I'll give you a local level. In my own apartment building in Kitsilano here in Vancouver, some of the owners wanted to put in an electric vehicle charging station. So the Strata Council looked at it, hired a consultant and they said it'll cost you about $500,000, $6,000 per parking stall, after rebates, to do this. But there's another catch. So half a million dollars there in a you know 52, 54 unit building. So then they said but your electrical system in your 1995 building isn't sufficient to handle it, so you have to redo your entire electrical system for another half a million dollars. So we're looking at a million dollars to put in 80 EV parking stalls in a small building in one four-story building in Kitsilino. Now multiply that by tens of thousands of buildings and you'll see what happens. In the meantime we need a new roof and that's going to be almost $2 million. So there is zero chance we'll be putting in EV chargers, which means nobody in their right mind would buy an EV. Zero chance we'll be putting in EV chargers, which means nobody in their right mind would buy an EV. So when you do these kind of things but there was still one more step.
Bill:Hydro itself can't guarantee, because of the substations and the state of the electrical grid that we have, that they can supply all this electricity. In the meantime, the government is saying let's go to six plexes on every block in Vancouver, for example. That you want I mean not just the electricity capacity is suspect. It's not even suspect. It's not there Plumbing, sewage, lighting, parks, daycare, schools. So we've got a lot of affordability challenges and we're going to have to pay a lot to upgrade our electrical grid if we're going to go to 100% electrification for heating and for driving. We haven't even got to the EV mandate yet, which is not in the mandate of our coalition, but there's no question that that's going to cause enormous problems and can drive the price up.
Stewart:Now there is a policy called the Zero Carbon Step Code in British Columbia and it was introduced as a step towards sustainability. You mentioned BCK. You've had critics argue that BK is slowing progress on climate goals by opposing this policy that is aligned to the zero carbon step code. How do you respond to that criticism?
Bill:Well, we're not, because all we're saying is choice.
Bill:We want to give consumers the choice. We want to give builders the choice. We believe people can make wise decisions on their own without the government imposing a one sizesize-fits-all solution. That there are other alternatives there. I mean some people are using geothermal. There's all sorts of other sustainable renewable energy sources as well.
Bill:But if you build a building and don't put in any natural gas connections at the beginning, you are stuck with electrification. We don't know what is, for example, hydrogen. It's another fuel that's being developed fairly rapidly. Hydrogen could be run through traditional natural gas fittings into buildings. That might be an enormous solution. It might take up a significant amount of market share. We don't know yet. But we're going to cut it off if we say you can't have natural gas and renewable natural gas as your heating source, not to mention stoves and cooktops and your fireplace, your barbecue. But we're not saying you have to have natural gas. We're saying leave it up to the builders and the consumers and they'll decide. In the meantime, we're improving the natural gas footprint, reducing the carbon. We've got the RNG going and we have 100 years or more of natural gas supplies.
Bill:And so when you see, see, on the one hand, this hell-bent for leather rush to impose electrification without really knowing the cost, and these city councils A, they're not qualified. In my view, even the biggest cities don't have the depth of knowledge that the energy ministry here in British Columbia has, and certainly a small town does not. But they're allowed to do that and we've created already a patchwork quilt, kind of a crazy quilt of regulation. So, for example, if you're a builder, what you can do in Surrey and White Rock, you can't do in New Westminster and Burnaby and Vancouver, but you could do it somewhere else, but you couldn't do it in I-1 Victoria. So if you work across the province or even across municipalities, it's a crazy challenge.
Bill:It's a free throw for the councils. It doesn't cost them any money. They bring in a regulation You've got to go to BC zero carbon step code by 2025 instead of 2030. And it doesn't cost them anything. And they say look how green we are. Well, you're not. All you're doing is removing the choice for consumers. And if the BC government down the road says you know what? This was too ambitious, it was aspirational. We're going to make it 2040,. You've created all these buildings with only one choice as electricity gets more expensive and natural gas gets cheaper.
Stewart:Right. So removing consumer choice, walling off green options like hydrogen in the energy system, raising costs and maybe aspiring to do things that are a stretch to consider that they're possible if you can't supply electricity Sounds like a it's an overload.
Bill:It's an overload of issues. Actually, we don't have the capacity for it.
Stewart:Well, Bill, we've got a new government in British Columbia. What should they do to?
Bill:solve this? Well, it's an interesting question and our group, the BC Coalition for Affordable and Independent Energy I'm not a lobbyist for them, I don't directly deal with the province, I only deal with municipalities and recently spoke at Richmond City Council, for example. But I mean, I know, obviously know people in the government. I think they have to really look at how aspirational their targets are. And we know that in Quebec, for example, they allowed municipalities to impose electrification much faster if they wanted to than Quebec was willing to go. And earlier this year the Quebec government passed legislation to stop that because it got out of control and it was doing the crazy patchwork quilt that I've talked about.
Bill:That's going on here. That hasn't happened here yet, but to me I would say, is it good public policy? Like, on what other grounds would you say? We're going to have a non-postage stamp policy, which means it's not going to be the same everywhere. So, you know, would we say, well, drunk driving laws can vary from municipality to municipality? That would be insane. Should we say that? Well, you can, the speed limit doesn't matter, you can put an Autobahn in Surrey if you want to, but you have to do, or you can limit it to 50 kilometers the entire city. It doesn't make any sense to me, but we've done that.
Bill:So I would say make energy policy for the province, not the municipalities. Allow them to decide, particularly because they don't have the skin in the game. It's not going to cost them, it's going to cost their voters and they'll eventually pay a price for that. So that's the number one. Number two we have to have a serious look examination at our electricity grid, what our power sources are, what our costs are and how we can meet some of the aspirational goals that are set. We don't disagree that we're going to move to renewable energy, sustainable energy. The coalition doesn't disagree with that. The question is how much time will it take and how many? Can you do it without threatening jobs and damaging your economy significantly by doing it too fast? And so the rub in there is not it's either this or that, it's how do we get to here and how long will we take, and what's the road we're going to take?
Stewart:So it's a complex issue, but let's take it back to where we started housing affordability. It's an epidemic all across the country and especially in cities where we're hemmed in the ocean, the mountains, the US border we have to deal with expensive land, so even before you have a shovel in the ground, you've got an expensive home. What's the solution here to get back to the affordability outcomes that everyone wants?
Bill:Well, I think we have to look at there's housing, and then there's affordable housing, and there's lots of housing in BC and there's lots of housing in Vancouver, for example, where we are, but it's not all affordable housing. In fact it's very unaffordable for most people. So we have to look at all the basics and say what are the components? Land is a component. Heating, electricity, sewer water, labor costs, maintenance, repair all these things go into the housing costs. But many people who are buying houses or renting houses don't know all the factors going in. For example, if you were to buy a new apartment today and you didn't know the difference between electric heat and natural gas heat, you could buy it and discover later that it's much more expensive. One is much cheaper than the other natural gas and it will get cheaper, and the other will get more expensive. But when you're buying a house you might not know that.
Bill:So the government has kind of a responsibility to say we've looked at all these issues, here's the timeline we think works, and then put that forward and presumably get a mandate at some point on that. But you know we're attacking this piecemeal. You know we're going to do a little bit here, a little bit there. We hope this works. We hope that works. We can put a sixplex on the block, but we don't know about the sewer and electricity. So it's not a cohesive, holistic approach, and I think that's what we're lacking overall, not just here in Vancouver, not just in BC, but probably throughout much of the world.
Stewart:Some places, I think, have got it together more probably in Europe. Yeah well, these are issues we'll probably see elsewhere in the world, so maybe if we have some good outcomes here, they'll be useful for others to follow.
Bill:Yeah, I hope we get, there.
Stewart:Yeah, over the past decade, bill, and notably during COVID, when the economy in a lot of places took this huge nosedive, in British Columbia we had a secret weapon four major projects that brought in billions of dollars of investment, of government revenues and tens of thousands of very well-paying jobs to the province. These four projects are all finished now, or almost all finished. What's going to happen to those workers?
Bill:Well, there's a lot of demand. I work with construction trades unions several of them and there's still a lot of demand. So we're not out of it yet. But you know, liquefied natural gas the LNG plant in Kitimat is almost there. Site C is now. The reservoir is being filled and you know I worked with the unions on getting Site C approved and we may talk about that later. But we need to have. I mean, we have subway extension to Surrey Langley. It's another big project that's just starting and so there's some work there.
Bill:In my long career I don't remember a time where any of my construction clients said hey, bill, we can't find any work for our guys. And I know one of my union clients at one point said we've got six guys unemployed and they're not worth employing. So that was the kind of demand I think. We've got a lot of schools and hospitals. We've got the new hospital for St Paul's being built here, which is a huge project, multibillion-dollar project. So I'm not sure. But the real question is we have a power call for a lot of megawatts that's just gone out. Nothing could possibly be built and operational until probably 2029. There will be work there. There may be enough work to keep a lot of people on, but we've got challenges for sure and we have a power shortage, so it would make sense to put the two together.
Stewart:Yes, if we can bridge that gap. We've been talking about electrification at the homeowner level or the businesses, urban places. What about the ambitious goals for electrification at the mega scale, like some of these industrial projects? Lng, I think, is a great example, because the province is saying if you want to build that project which will take a huge amount of electricity or power from some source to fire, it's got to be from electricity from the grid.
Bill:I mean, it's a good thing and a bad thing, I guess, because you know, obviously, the more we can reduce GHG gas, greenhouse gas emissions, the better it is for the environment and for our province and country. At the same time, when you're producing electrified natural gas, which is a fossil fuel, there's no way around that and say, well, we're going to electrify all this but we're going to burn it somewhere else later. I'm not sure that that kind of thinking is the way most people in the public would think about it. They would say, well, that doesn't kind of make sense. But I think we're seeing an industry now and we're seeing, as I mentioned, with natural gas, renewable natural gas and there's things that you can do.
Bill:It's again coming back. It's that timeline of how do we get to where we want to be and what's the road we get there in the time. We get there without damaging the economy and losing jobs. And there's no absolute right answer, there's no easy solution. But what doesn't work is imposing aspirational goals and thinking that those are practical. That's the real. I think that's where the rubber hits the road, not just in British Columbia or in one city, but across the world. And you know we see enormous strides by China, for example, towards electric vehicles and other things, but they still have an economy which is an awful. Lot of it is electrified by coal power, the worst kind of coal power, so thermal coal. So you know we've got a long ways to go.
Stewart:Well, we're hearing more critics saying if you have China building the components of the green energy future, but they're using coal to build it, Isn't there a bit of a contradiction in there? Yeah, yeah.
Bill:I mean there is. There's no question about it, and you know, just the same as we're importing power from unclear but certainly not all clean energy sources here in BC. But we're going to say we're all you know, we're going green, as can be, but don't look over there, we're getting power from Idaho and a coal-fired power plant.
Stewart:Right, yeah, and that's been pointed out. I think that it is not accounted for. So we have this information. The public's getting that. Hey, don't worry, it's all green. By the way, we're not counting those molecules from there.
Bill:We're also hearing from the chair of the BC Utilities Commission yeah, BC Hydro imports some years and exports other years, but we know we're in a drought and we know California's been in a drought for 30 years. We don't know how long it will last. It rains a lot here in BC. There's no question about that, but does it rain enough? Does it snow enough? Because it didn't in 2023, and it didn't in the beginning of 2024 either.
Stewart:You mentioned LNG, that's liquefied natural gas. It's a worldwide industry. Over the last 10 years it's developed very quickly and a lot of that development has been in the United States, in Qatar and Australia. And Canada is about to ship its first ship, probably sometime in 2025. And there's other projects there. The LNG Canada project is the one that's finished. They're just buttoning it up. They want to build a second phase and it has to be with green electricity to power it. We were talking about this a moment ago. Do you think that it's possible that phase two, which will create a great benefit for Canadians it will pay for many schools and hospitals, it will bring revenues to governments for all kinds of reasons create jobs if we can't get phase two up and running? Do you think that's an issue? Will anyone care?
Bill:Well, I think they will, and you know my construction union clients would certainly care because they would love to have that go ahead, and they'd love to have other projects go ahead.
Bill:There's a couple other ones here. I think one of the things that really says to me that LNG does have a good future is what we see happening in Europe. We have the Russian occupation of parts of the Ukraine. We see some significant problems for European countries in the NATO alliance and elsewhere getting enough power because Russia has cut off some of their supplies, and liquefied natural gas not only has the benefits that you've outlined, but it is something that could substitute for an authoritarian country that has invaded a neighbor a peaceful neighbor and is wreaking havoc on them. And LNG could become increasingly important in the world economy. So I think the future it's not clear yet, but I think there's a very good chance that we'll see an expansion of LNG Canada and we'll see some of the other LNG plants proceed. We were a little slow off the mark, but we're there now and I think that there's going to be increased demand.
Stewart:I was just reading that in France they're importing LNG from Russia and I suppose if they could get Canadian LNG they probably would be preferring that over Russian. But they don't, so it's a little bit ironic.
Bill:Yeah, there's a lot of different factors in this, but I think the main point is we have LNG, we can export it and we could increasingly export it and we don't invade our neighbors.
Stewart:Well, except for 1812. Fair enough, we won that one, bill. John Horgan, the former Premier of British Columbiaia, recently passed away at a too young age. For those who knew him, it has been a profound loss. There's been such a upswelling of of sentiment and stories told in in recent days because it is that fresh. He was a leader who brought humanity and pragmatism to his politics and his legacy has been, I think, shaping the province in so many ways, even though he's been out of office. We talked about these major projects. He had a lot to do with those.
Stewart:One of the most gripping episodes of John's time in power was the decision on whether to proceed with the Site C hydroelectric dam. You mentioned it in an earlier context and that was after the NDP took office. So an earlier government initiated that, but then the NDP came into power. The NDP had a lot of supporters who didn't want to see that project go ahead and many who did. What unfolded was the TSN turning point for John Horgan as Premier, and Bill, you had a behind-the-scenes seat for this. I don't know if the whole story has ever been told of this decision, whether this what is now a $16 billion project would or wouldn't be finished. What's the story?
Bill:Well, it was quite the story and you know, I knew John Horgan for 33 years. I worked with him in government when I was in the Premier's office and he was a 33 years. I worked with him in government when I was in the premier's office and he was a senior official. I worked with him under government relations when he was opposition leader when he became the premier. So it was a sad loss and a sad day and, as you say, at 65, he was taken by cancer, coming back a third time, and I think we all know someone who has had cancer, beat it and then has come back sadly.
Bill:On Site C, it was environmentalists and farmers in the Peace River area where the Site C Dam is located, were opposed and not want their land flooded, understandably, and there was a lot of opposition and of course an opposition party, which the New Democratic Party was, tends to look for people who are unhappy with the government. So they had made some common cause there. But I was working with the BC Allied Hydro Council, which was unions that are involved in building hydro dams, and so we set about to encourage the government and the premier to proceed with the project. Now, a lot of sunk costs were in that project, like billions were sunk into it and it was going to cost billions more to turn it back to green, to basically turn it to the way it was, and that made no sense and I thought that would be fatal for John Horgan and the NDP. But my opinion is one and our union's opinion is one. But we went out and did a lot of polling and we presented the results to the government privately and the polling was pretty clear. British Columbians not overwhelmingly but very strongly thought it would be crazy to not proceed with that project and so that polling was made available and obviously the government, the premier and his staff, shared that with their caucus and cabinet colleagues and there was quite a debate but in the end building site C went ahead and it was the right decision and I think I have no difficulty defending it at any point.
Bill:And if it had been the previous BC Liberal government, right-wing government, I would have said the same thing. It was too far to go back and we need power and you know we could use a site D, E and F right now, stuart, we really could, as we look at electric vehicles and the increasing amount of electricity we use in our homes and artificial intelligence just getting going the amount of power that uses. So we're, you know. Thank goodness we got Site C done and I'm happy, but I can tell you that you know people were picketing outside of David Eby's office before he was the premier, but when he was attorney general, they were very mad that the government proceeded. I was heckled and jeered going to an event that John Horgan was speaking at because I had worked publicly and privately in favor of Site C. And those folks are still mad and you know it's a strong difference of opinion. It's based on policy and politics. It's not, you know, it wasn't a whim. It was a very serious issue and I think we'll see the results of how important that power is as it starts coming on stream, because we are still short of a lot of power. And so good for John Horgan and his colleagues for taking that.
Bill:People talked about when he passed how popular he was, and I know from my friends who are right-wing, conservative, liberal, whatever they would say well, I don't like the NDP, I don't bill your party, but, boy, I like John Horgan. I'd vote for John Horgan or I did vote for John Horgan in 2020. And John still made difficult decisions. So he alienated a chunk of the NDP constituency voters members by doing the Site C and doing LNG as well liquefied natural gas as well. A lot of people opposed that as well on the green side of the NDP, but he was still very popular because he was honest about it, he was open about it, he explained the reasons and you could take it or leave it and you know, that was it and he still remained popular enough to get reelected with a massive majority in 2020.
Stewart:Well, back then, when it was being opposed, there were a lot of people saying no, no, we'll never need that much power. We just don't need it. We're using less power. Seven, eight years later, there's a tech company that's reopening Three Mile Island. Yeah, yeah.
Bill:And you've seen Aaron Brockovich, the nuclear power plant. Yeah, yeah, I know no.
Stewart:You know, I hope there's a future for safe nuclear. I was recently able to talk to someone who is developing these.
Bill:Western.
Stewart:House. There's a lot of companies doing it, but Western House has this micro reactor which will bring to wherever it's needed abundant, safe form of power, and we definitely need that.
Bill:Yeah, that's beyond my purview as the coalition, but I would say personally I've never been keen on nuclear. Three Mile Island in Fukushima did not encourage me to think differently. But we have to talk about these things. We have to look at them and make rational decisions, not emotional decisions.
Stewart:We do. Donald Trump is returning to the White House for a second term as US President, speaking of emotional versus rational, yeah, you know he was able to connect it is said by the pundits with working class.
Bill:voters Are there some lessons here for Canadian politicians? Oh gosh, yeah, absolutely no. I think we see. Well, first of all, I think we see Conservative leader Pierre Pauly of already doing a lot of those things. He is making inroads and really trying to appeal to particularly blue collar, unionized and non-unionized workers. Donald Trump is kind of like a force of nature that we haven't seen before. The only comparison I can think of is Teddy Roosevelt in the United States years ago, but different. He is connecting with regular working people of all, including black, Latino voters, white, lower educated, better educated in some cases, and he's talking, you know, very plainly, and sometimes too plainly for people's young ears, but he's without question. He's saying things that people are thinking, and so it's kind of refreshing in a way. I mean. That said, I thought Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, ran an almost textbook campaign and I don't think she was the reason why the Democrats lost by a relatively narrow money. It wasn't a landslide for Trump, it was a win, a good win.
Stewart:And as the votes come in, it seems to be getting to be a narrower story now.
Bill:And it was narrow Biden versus Trump. The other way as well. I think it's causing a re-examination of democracy, of what it means to be a Democratic Party, a Republican Party, because it is a party of Trump. It is very kind of Juan Peron authoritarian, there's only one leader and if you're Mitt Romney, if you're Liz Cheney, get out of my party, which is not the way the Republican Party or the Democratic Party have been in the past. So I think there's a lot.
Bill:This will be the most tumultuous four years since the last time he was in power and, you know, the most tumultuous four years since the last time he was in power and significantly risky for Canada because of his promise of tariffs and ripping up trade deals and everything else. So I think we're in for a wild ride. But I think for politicians, I think plain talk and being honest with people, even if it's somewhat unseemly at times, has clearly shown itself to be a winner. Now, I don't think too many people, if any people in Canada, any politician, could get away with some of the things that Trump has done and maybe we'll find out, but it's not. I mean almost all the conservatives I know can't stand Trump. They wouldn't have voted for Trump. They would have voted for Harris, and certainly on the progressive side of the slate. There's no question about it.
Bill:Now, no matter what one might think about wokeism, anti-wokeism, now no matter what one might think about wokeism, anti-wokeism, if there's a sense among working class voters that they're being left out of the elite circles, or you know, are there some schisms here that we need to watch for? Well, I mean, I think I, on a personal example, I spoke at an event talking about the elite manifesto which was proposed by Abby Lewis and Naomi Klein and others very left-wing, and my friend Don Davies, the NDPMP, hosted a big meeting. It was 300 people and Libby Davies denounced me. The former NDPMP friend of mine denounced me from the floor for supporting Site C and opposing the Leap Manifesto, supporting Site C and opposing the LEAP manifesto. And I said in response I am never going to be embarrassed by supporting longshoremen and forest workers and miners and loggers and everybody who works and extracts resources for a living. Those are my clients, but that's my jam too. I mean, I'm happy to come from a family where my father was a logger and my brother has been mining and fishing. Both my brothers have been fishermen.
Bill:So you know, I think the NDP in particular, but public generally, has to think about you know, where do we get all these resources? Who powers up our cell phones? Who gets the rare minerals that we put into our computers and into our Intel chips and our Apple chips. I mean, it's not like some magic thing. And we also don't want to be dependent on China or Russia, military dictatorships. They're not democracies, and you know so we have to get those resources as much as we can in Canada and other democratic countries, same as LNG, same as oil. We shouldn't be dependent on authoritarian regimes for our self-sufficiency. We need to be self-sufficient, otherwise we pay a big price when we have a problem, like we have right now with Ukraine and Russia.
Stewart:Bill, just thinking back to where we came from, through the world of daily newspapers in this city, here in Vancouver, in those days foreign correspondents filing a story from Vancouver would usually open it up with something like Vancouver wants a sleepy port city. Remember that I don't see that so much anymore, but I'm not sure it was ever a sleepy port city. I think it was always a lively place. But you were a news reporter for the Vancouver Sun, which had a dominant influence in this city for almost 100 years. I mean, it's still around. We know lots of folks there, I think, but it's different than it was, isn't it?
Bill:Oh, totally different. Yeah, I mean, I even delivered newspapers, I was a.
Bill:Vancouver Sun newspaper carrier in Abbotsford when I lived there and then I went to work as a very young guy at university I got a job at the Vancouver Sun when it was three editions an afternoon paper and three editions a day and a newsroom that was hustling and bustling and some of the biggest names in journalism were there and it was, you know, a legendary time. The whole business of media has so dramatically changed and the only newspapers that are, you know, doing reasonably well are New York Times, which has international audiences, washington Post, where you get a multi-billionaire buying the paper and can afford to invest in it, and even there there's cuts and you know we're seeing this around the world. So no one has completely successfully monetized what a newspaper does or what a news organization does, outside of a few examples like the New York Times. So I think we're in.
Bill:You know I find it sad. I mean I was in the Vancouver Sun Newsroom, which is a stone's throw from here, no printing presses and you could shoot a cannon through there and not hit anybody, and it's now there's almost nothing. There's not even hardly an office left. So it's sad. When we started, when I started the Vancouver Sun in 1977, I think that's how old I am. They had just transferred over from Hot Lead and typographers and they were members of the topographical union, gardening and doing things in the old Pacific Press building at 6th and Gravel which has also long gone into housing. I've gone in my tender age, I've gone from Hot Lead into complete computerization and newspapers disappearing and the whole thing all in, you know, 67 years.
Stewart:What were the sights and sounds of your first day on the job at the Sun Newsroom Not where they are downtown, but back at 2250 Granville Street, for anyone following those details On the third floor, the newsroom you walked in that first day in 1977. What was the sight you beheld?
Bill:Oh, it was wild, because you had columnists like the great Denny Boyd who were being forced to learn how to type on a computer and it wasn't like today's user-friendly computer stuff, it was dot matrix printers and the whole thing. But Jack Brooks was the city editor. You may have remembered him and I can remember. You know, chop, chop mate. Where's that bloody story? I want it now, now, now, and it was a very loud place.
Bill:I can write almost anywhere when I'm writing stuff, whether it's a speech writing or a news release or whatever because I learned how to write in the most hostile environment, which was three deadlines, coffee and donut trucks going by and you stuffed yourself full of sugar and caffeine to get your stories done and all of a sudden, boom, it was over and so it was very high tension and you were following stories and other media. It was very high tension and you were following stories and other media. It was very competitive. You know we would have a police scanner going on and all in some way would be dispatched to a murder or a car accident and you had people monitoring the radio stations for any stories that they got first it had the teletype machines always clattered away oh yeah.
Bill:And then, you know, I was lucky enough to go to a social credit convention as a young reporter I think I was 21. And there was free booze in the press room, smoking everywhere, and I remember, you know, the famous Marjorie Nichols, patrick Nagel, and I'm trying to remember the third one, and they were all whiskey in one hand, cigarette in the other, and I thought I don't think this is where I want to be in 20, 30, 40 years. And so I ended up getting out of newspapers. But I still love newspapers and still subscribe.
Stewart:It was great times and it changed. I remember covering a ski race. The World Cup came to Canada and they had a press room. It was sponsored by a cigarette company, which I don't think is done anymore, and in the press room they had all the tables lined up with the phones so you could phone your editor, and beside every phone there were two packages of cigarettes that were opened and the inside piece was pulled out, and then a couple of cigarettes were helpfully pulled out so if you were on your deadline you could have a smoke. You were a news reporter, you were in the newsroom, but you also were sent out to things and I know you covered a lot of different things trials, tragedies, triumphs, political events. Is there one thing that you just can't shake? Something you personally witnessed were part of that just stays with you.
Bill:Yeah, well, I was assigned to go and talk. Once again there was issues around salmon treaties and I was assigned to cover then-Premier Bill Bennett, who was a right-wing social credit party and no longer exists really. And they said he's speaking downtown. Go to this hotel and ask him a couple of questions about treaty negotiations. So he's speaking and then when he finishes he dashes out the door like literally almost runs. So I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to lose my job. So I'm running after and he looks back.
Bill:He's going down a long flight of a couple of stairs and I'm running after him. I'm a younger guy and I'm yelling Premier Bennett, premier Bennett. And he's thinking I'm going to get killed. Some assassin is following me down the street. So he speeds up and then I speed up, finally on the street I said Vancouver Sun reporter, vancouver Sun reporter. And then he stopped and then he was more nervous than me. I thought I'm interviewing the Premier for the first time in my life and he was more nervous than me. Not simply I wasn't carrying a weapon or something, and I got my questions and got my notebook out and then off he went and I thought, oh boy, that was close. So it was just like crazy, crazy.
Bill:But the other story very quickly, I was in a taxi on the way back to Vancouver's headquarters and I told them and the guy said well, you know what my story in the Vancouver's, my favorite story, was and I'm thinking Watergate, you know Joe Clark's resignation, whatever Big story? He said, yeah, there was a mother goose and she had all these goslings and they stopped traffic on the Stanley Park free causeway and it was just so cute and I thought I'm going to kill myself. I'm just going to kill myself. This is where journalism has gone. And now what do we have in journalism? You know, cat videos and animal stuff.
Stewart:Well, we used to call that kind of story the talker. Yes, you want to have one in the mix, usually down page on the front, occasionally a zipper up the top. Yeah. But final thought here, bill, if you could describe an ideal energy system? We've been talking a lot about the different wrinkles in that. Say, in 10 years from now, what would that be and how would we get there?
Bill:oh boy, now you asked the largest longest answer question at the end there.
Bill:You know, I don't present myself as an electrical engineer or an energy consultant. I'm an ordinary person. I like cooking on my gas stove, I like cooking on my gas barbecue, and so that's partly how I got into this thing. I think that what we need is a really good mix of things that we can do that are affordable, sustainable in the long term, that we work carefully to balance off the different things that are going on. We could go 100% renewable, sustainable, everything we do right in BC, and it wouldn't affect the world climate hardly at all. It would be like an infinitesimal fraction of it. So I think we have to be smart about that. We have to do the right things, we have to move in the right direction, but we have to do it in a way which we can afford and which we can depend on and which will work in the longer term. And I think we can get there. I'm quite sure we can get there.
Bill:And you know people say, oh, you know how can you be working for this coalition? You know what about our children and our grandchildren? And I think, well, they need jobs, they need an economy. They're not going to live in mud huts and have a little fire, which would be a bad idea, wood fire. We have to move in the right direction. We have to move at a time. We can do that. So it's going to take a variety of energy sources, a variety of approaches, and I'm quite convinced we'll get there.
Stewart:Sounds like a worthwhile vision and let's see what happens. Yeah, yeah, Bill Tillman, thanks for joining us today. I'm Stuart Muir and this is Power Struggle.
