Horgan says land use key to Vancouver Island

For John Horgan, the two-term NDP incumbent for Juan de Fuca, on the south shoreline of Vancouver Island, the biggest challenge in his riding is dealing with burgeoning urban centres while maintaining the island way of life.

"If you're in downtown Vancouver representing 55,000 people, you kind of get lost in that sea of a 10-block square," he said.

"In Juan de Fuca, there are four distinct municipalities and also a massive electoral area with tiny communities."

Langford, the riding's largest city, has a population of nearly 30,000 and grew by 30 per cent between 2006 and 2011.

Transportation, Mr. Horgan said, is becoming a serious concern.

"The commutes, while not the same as the challenges in the Lower Mainland, are still significant. And on an island, you can't just keep expanding," he said.

One issue that continues to resonate with people, he said, is land use, specifically resulting from the the Liberal government's decision in 2007 to allow a forestry company to remove much of its privately owned land – 28,000 hectares – from its provincial tree-farm license.

For years, B.C. governments gave forestry companies access to Crown land if they also logged company land. Mr. Horgan said the 2007 decision allowed Western Forest Products to continue harvesting on public land while removing its own land to be used for real estate development.

"That was just a bad decision, and there was no contrition, there was no apology," he said. "That was an issue in [the election of] 2009, and it's still there because it's having an effect on land-use decisions, how communities develop, [and] what areas are going to be potentially reserved."

Mr. Horgan may soon be dealing with issues that affect the entire province. He says NDP Leader Adrian Dix has approached him about the possibility of becoming minister of energy, mines and natural gas if the NDP forms a government.

"I think pipeline politics will unfold in a whole host of ways: The federal government obviously has an interest. Alberta sees this as a right. British Columbia sees this a bit different, in terms of access to the coast," he said.

"I'm more concerned about B.C. Hydro. … Our publicly owned utility is hemorrhaging debt. We have more power and electricity than we can use and we're selling the surplus for a loss and that is kind of counterintuitive."

Mr. Horgan said the Crown corporation is in this situation because it is locked into the Clean Energy Act, which forces it to buy power from the private sector "regardless of the price."

"As electricity prices have flat-lined, and in fact declined in the last decade, B.C. Hydro has been directed by the Liberals to embark on a purchasing plan where power is four, five, six times the market rate. And so now we have more energy than we can consume, and now we have to sell it on the market for a loss, and it's in the hundreds of millions of dollars in consequences," he said.

Mr. Horgan said that as a minister, he would do a comprehensive review of B.C. Hydro's operations and is ready to embrace the tasks at hand.

"I look forward to the challenge if he [Adrian Dix] does actually tap me for the job following the election," he said.

"There are a lot of large-scale issues … relevant to the province and our economic future."