Where is Kim Sigurdson?

I’m wondering, as I read the headline in our own Daily News today (when on vacation I become just another reader), what Kim Sigurdson is thinking. He doesn’t seem like an arrogant man, yet his refusal to engage the Kamloops public smacks of it.

As frustrated as I get with all the hysterical fear-mongering, exaggeration and politicking from opponents of Sigurdson’s cogeneration project, I’m getting equally frustrated by his refusal to come forward.

I wonder if he’s getting bad advice. I wonder if someone is telling him that the best, the safest thing to do, is to sit tight, go by the rules. Maybe the distance between Winnipeg and Kamloops is insulating him from the situation. Maybe the Winnipeg winter is frosting his instincts.

I can’t recall another example when someone who so strongly believes in what he is doing — as Sigurdson clearly does — has been so unwilling to fight for it in the theatre of public opinion, or even to talk much about it.

Today’s headline, MLAs Turn On Railway Tie Plant, isn’t really what’s happening, at least the way Terry Lake explained it to me when he called yesterday. He’s simply frustrated by Sigurdson’s refusal to talk to the public, and is putting on some pressure via the provincial Innovative Clean Energy Fund. 

Not once did Lake say he opposes the project per se. He just wants Sigurdson to open up. Meanwhile, Sigurdson continues to insist he’s followed all the rules, though thankfully hasn’t yet absolutely ruled out some sort of public meeting.

This isn’t just about a gasification plant on Mission Flats. At stake is the entire issue of millions of creosote-treated railway ties and the need to get rid of them. If he and his Aboriginal Cogeneration Corp. have the answer to that, shouldn’t he want to share it, to tell it on the mountain, to spread the good news?