By John Horgan
Recently, a leaked document emerged that suggested British Columbians could be on the hook for an astounding 26 per cent increase in our hydro rates by 2016, adding a whopping $273 per year to the average residential customer’s bill.
Before the election call and on the campaign trail, the B.C. Liberals told British Columbians they had electricity rates under control. Now, we know they never did, and it is nearly impossible to believe they had no knowledge of this looming rate crunch.
In the Westside-Kelowna by-election, Premier Christy Clark maintained that position, but was contradicted by Minister of Energy and Mines Bill Bennett, who admitted rates would soon rise.
Confronted with the discrepancy, Clark told reporters, “I can’t say if they will go up … I just don’t know the answer to that.”
This B.C. Liberal 2013 pre-election hydro rate cover-up is like the HST 2009 election deception all over again.
While this day of reckoning is alarming and extremely disappointing, it is not surprising. For years, the B.C. Liberals have sidelined the independent experts at the B.C. Utilities Commission (BCUC), and insisted on political interference at BC Hydro.
They intervened to push through $1 billion in spending for smart meters that will neither make nor save energy, and they have insisted that there is no debt crisis at the corporation, despite billions stashed in deferral accounts that future generations will have to contend with. Ironically, hiding even more debt in deferral accounts is one of the options floated to deal with the rate shock crisis.
The government also made sure rate hikes, like the one we’re seeing now, were off the table until after the election.
In 2012, the B.C. Liberal government cancelled a BCUC rate hearing and arbitrarily set the rate increase at 1.4 per cent – an action that caused BC Hydro to defer yet more costs to future years.
But this government’s most disastrous interference has been tying up $50 billion in private power contracts, which continue to force the province to buy energy at high rates and sell it at a loss during peak periods.
Sadly, it took a leaked document to force the B.C. Liberal government to admit to British Columbians the true state of BC Hydro’s fiscal problems, and their cancellation of the legislature’s fall session will mean they will continue to avoid accountability for this and many other challenges facing the province.
With BC Hydro in chaos, the budget sliding towards a deficit, critical services being cut, and a jobs plan that, at its two-year mark, has netted a loss of 9,500 private-sector jobs, there is no shortage of work to be done.
We think British Columbians deserve a government that is accountable to British Columbians for its campaign promises and for its failure to manage energy in this province.
John Horgan is the BC NDP energy critic.
