Natural Gas Reversal

For years, the NDP government has been pushing the province to electrify everything and phase out natural gas. This week, that message ran headfirst into reality.

BC Hydro recently announced it is buying a gas-fired power generation facility near Campbell River on Vancouver Island: a 275-megawatt Island Generation plant, which has quietly backed up the Island's grid since 2002. The government says the purchase is about reliability as demand grows.

Here's the problem: this is the exact kind of asset the NDP has spent years treating as a relic. Now it's paying to bring it in-house.

Already raised concerns

This isn't a new concern. Earlier this year, during budget estimates, I pressed the government to keep its contract with Island Generation in place — and to renew it rather than let it lapse. I toured the facility just under a year ago, and have spoken out about the facility's importance to Vancouver Island's power supply, pointing to its ability to deliver reliable, firm power year-round when the grid needs it most.

My preference was to see the plant stay privately owned and operating under contract, not brought under direct government control. Now, instead of simply renewing that arrangement, the NDP is spending public money to buy the facility outright — the same asset it once treated as a minor backup role.

A pattern, not a one-off

This isn't the first time the government's own numbers have undercut its electrification-only messaging — it's just the most recent, and most literal, example. Conservative have been raising this exact concern for years:

• MLA John Rustad has repeatedly argued CleanBC's climate policies function as "taxing people into poverty" without meaningfully changing outcomes, and has called for rolling back the climate-friendly building codes that push new construction away from natural gas.

  
  

• This week, in response to BC Hydros purchase, Shadow Minister for Energy Larry Neufeld didn't mince words: buying back a plant the government once wrote off is proof its own plan "couldn't keep the lights on."

  
  

"As usual, the NDP let ideology drive policy, and failed to give British Columbians the most basic information about what they're being asked to purchase."

The same government that has pushed to eliminate natural gas for space heating and hot water in new buildings by 2030 under the Zero Carbon Step Code is now spending ratepayer money to secure more natural gas generation capacity — because BC Hydro itself projects peak demand needs will rise 44 per cent by 2050.

What British Columbians still don't know

On top of the contradiction in their actions, once again, the NDP government lacks basic transparency. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. No word on what it means for future BC Hydro rates. No explanation for why a mostly-electric energy strategy left the province needing to buy back gas capacity in the first place.

It's worth being clear about why this lands at the government's feet and not just BC Hydro's. BC Hydro is a Crown corporation — wholly owned by the province and responsible for generating, purchasing, distributing and selling electricity — and its board isn't independent of government. Directors and the board chair are appointed by, and accountable to, the provincial government, and the board's job is explicitly to implement the province's energy policy decisions. Each year, the Minister of Energy and Climate Solutions issues BC Hydro a mandate letter setting its direction — meaning major moves like this one don't happen in isolation from government policy, they happen because of it. When BC Hydro reverses course on a plant it treated as obsolete, that's not a Crown corporation acting independently. It's a reflection of the government's own energy planning falling short — and taxpayers, not BC Hydro executives, are the ones covering the bill for the correction.

Why it matters here at home

For families and small businesses in Salmon Arm–Shuswap already stretched by the cost of living, this isn't an abstract Vancouver Island story. It's a preview of what happens when energy policy is built on ideology instead of engineering reality — and ratepayers across the province, including here in the Shuswap, are the ones who end up covering the gap eventually.

Bottom line

The NDP just proved what Conservative MLAs have been saying for years: you cannot run a modern grid on electrification promises alone. The government owes British Columbians the cost of this deal, and an honest account of why its own energy plan needed a gas-plant bailout.

FULL CONSERVATIVE PRESS RELEASE: