I rather like Jimmy – going out for dinner with Mary and him on his yacht, Nova Spirit, tells you a lot about the way Jimmy’s mind works, for the guests are from different genres and, as often as not, don’t speak with one another. It’s clear that Jimmy enjoys watching the way they interrelate or don’t interrelate at all. Certainly a big man in accomplishments, Jimmy carries with him, dare I mention it in this age of politically correctness, the usual symptoms of, shall we say, height challenge, which accounts for his need to be the big guy at all times, even as he is over 80, to succeed.

Stories about employees abound – the late Bill Sleeman, to whom he gave a new Rolls Royce on his retirement. Long term employees like Enzo (sorry, Enzo I’ve forgotten your surname), Bud Eberhart and Maureen Chant, to name a few, feel or felt a great loyalty to Jimmy who, when concentrating on his car company, routinely fired the month’s lowest salesman saying, “I do them no favour keeping them in a job they can’t succeed in” was his theory.

You know the saying, “When a husband sends his wife flowers for no reason, there’s a reason.” Enter Dave Cobb, retiring from BC Hydro after 17 months as CEO; I have no trouble understanding why Cobb would leave. You will remember Cobb’s leaked conference call to employees, in which he slammed independent power projects (IPPs); his predecessor Bob Elton evidently bit the dust on the same subject.

In assessing this unfolding story we must know that the BC government is bankrupting BC Hydro, and in fact have already done so. As economist Erik Andersen has explained, if  BC Hydro was in the private sector it would be in bankruptcy protection now! The reason they are not is that they can keep raising their rates.

From the outset, the government’s IPP policy has been to force Hydro to buy power it doesn’t need thus must either sell it at half to a quarter the price they paid for it or use it instead of their own power at a huge loss.

Why would a government do so silly a thing?

There are only two reasons: The Campbell/Clark government wants to bankrupt BC Hydro because of The Fraser Institute’s embedded “values” in the right wing unassailable tenet that there should only be private corporations because they are better business people; or, I suppose, they’re dumb as a sack full of hammers and don’t know what the hell they’re doing (I suppose we must admit of the possibility of both being true!).

This is the point I take leave of my senses. Jimmy Pattison has bought the services of Dave Cobb, for whom he must be paying a pretty penny – I mean this guy’s in the million a year range. What reason is there for this? (NDP leader Adrian Dix got off a good one saying that perhaps Cobb has found a Premier Clark he can work with!)

What if Pattison has an eye on BC Hydro? Yes, that’s what I asked – what if Jimmy Pattison, an acquisitor par excellence, buys out the jewel of the BC Crown!

If Jimmy were planning that, he would need someone close to home that knew where the bodies were hidden and Cobb squarely meets that criterion.

In the first place, Cobb is the only man in Hydro today who has admitted that these IPPs are going to wipe out Hydro’s assets. Knowing this and being the sort who can see the writing on the wall, saying, “Get the hell out before you’re tossed out”, he decided to do that.

Taking over Hydro is not a money-winner – at least not now – and won’t be as long as it has liabilities like $50 billion for money-losing (big time) IPPs. But what if Pattison could buy Hydro’s hardware and longstanding customers only, leaving the IPPs in the lurch with no legal rights against the government (the IPP deals were, after all, made by Hydro), nor the new BC Hydro which has no legal connection to the original one.

I’m admittedly groping in the dark here – I’ve never seen these private contracts. But what if the government said, “We’re expropriating your companies. Here’s the deal – take it or leave it, thanks a lot and good-by”?

Who better than Dave Cobb to help the lawyers and bankers to sort all this out?

Probably simply fantasy, idiotic conjecture. Certainly it’s just guesswork. But there have been worse conjectures…I think!

This for the closer – Jimmy Pattison has never winced from taking on an unusual proposition.

And what was that about the husband and the flowers?

You could have blown me over with a feather when I read in the Weekend Sun excerpts of an internal conference call in which Dave Cobb, president of Hydro, condemns the government’s IPP policy. A recording of the call – which occurred August 12, on the heels of the recent panel report on the utility’s financial situation – was leaked to the paper. Cobb pulled no punches, detailing his concerns with the government’s exaggerated “self-sufficiency” and “insurance” requirements:

“‘If it doesn’t change, it would be hundreds of millions of dollars per year that we would be spending of our ratepayers’ money with no value in return,’ said Cobb. ‘The way the self-sufficiency policy is defined now…would require us to buy far more long-term power than we need…I think they’re going to make a major change there, which will significantly reduce the amount of power we will be buying from independent power producers and anybody else,’ he said. ‘Government has to make a change.’”

I found myself asking why this headline story, so clear about the IPP financial millstone around Hydro’s neck, was not reported after the panel report and why, last week the once intrepid columnist, Vaughn Palmer, dealt with this panel report, noting Hydro’s financial grief at considerable length without even mentioning IPPs.

In the Weekend Sun report, much coverage and a picture of Paul Kariya dealt with the responses of his Clean Energy Association of BC and their appallingly shallow concerns. Whatever these industry apologists may say their concerns are, you can be sure that the interests of British Columbia are not amongst them. The Clean Energy Association is the private industry in drag, and refuses to tell us where they get their funding. NB the name – with the clear influence of George Orwell’s 1984 the association calls itself precisely what it is not.

It’s hard to believe that Minister Coleman had any advance warning of this conversation – it was, after all, a leaked conversation and at any rate, deliberately leaking a policy change of this unbelievable proportion is not Coleman’s style.

What’s the government going to do now? It can hardly fire Mr. Cobb and deny the truth of what he said for no one would believe that for a moment. Clearly, Mr. Cobb didn’t make this all up but was concerned that his staff would be caught by surprise and wanted to give them a heads up. If Mr. Coleman doesn’t fire Mr. Cobb, he might just as well have made the statements himself.

That this is the government’s unannounced (yet) policy makes political sense, insofar as one can make sense out of the appalling Campbell/Clark energy policy because the policy will kill them in the next election and they know it. It also explains why (I have this on the best authority) the industry big wigs were lower than a snake’s belly when they got the panel report last week and why it was when I met Mr. Kariya coming out of the CBC last Monday morning, he was so defensive and uneasy.

One thing’s for sure – the cat’s out of the bag, and to mix metaphors, the contents of Pandora’s box can never be put back.

The question for the Premier is obvious and simple: What now, madam?

The issue is in the public domain and will be a big time political issue.

Here’s where Premier can separate herself from the disgraced Gordon Campbell and put her own brand on her government while stealing a march on the NDP.

It will take guts to do what is right and Ms. Clark must bite the bullet and announce the end of IPPs and clearly state that it’s for two reasons: the environment and the Energy Plan itself.

She does this in several ways:

1. She revives the Ministry of Environment, giving true power back to it – naming someone tougher than Barry Penner, who was indeed the longest serving Environment Minister and, sad to say, the worst. The issuance of permits to desecrate the environment must be returned to the Environment Ministry to be dealt with by a minister who has the courage to care about the environment before considering those who want the permit.
2. She must announce that henceforth the Precautionary Principle, when dealing with those who need permits to encroach upon the environment, will be paramount. This principle states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking the action. No longer must the onus be on the public or environmental organizations or their spokespeople.
3. She must squarely face the fact that Hydro is in deep trouble and can only be saved by abandoning private power.

This is hardly the full picture because of the Ministry of Transportation running roughshod with highways over wildlife preserves and agricultural lands, and the proposed pipelines and tanker traffic.

The premier’s eminent grise, Patrick Kinsella, will be appalled but Ms. Clark, who has active political antennae, knows that Families and Children will not be the big election issue but that BC Hydro and the environment will be.

Ms. Clark, in order to extract the government from the devastating policy of Campbell must understand and face the hell, fire, brimstone from her corporate backers and lose election funds if she does what I suggest.

The decision will mark clearly whether the premier is just another pretty face or a leader the people of BC and generations to come will mention her name in gratitude… or if she remains a Campbell clone and one can fairly call her administration the CampbellClark government.

Mark down August 12, 2011 as the day BC Hydro all but concluded its suicide mission, with the Campbell/Clark government and the Review Panel playing the role of Dr. Jack Kervorkian.

When you sort through the announcement by Rich Coleman and the verbose report itself, you learn that BC Hydro will cut its future costs by 50%, which in practical terms means this: Hydro will be unable to upgrade its facilities and build generators on flood control dams which means they will buy more and more power from more and more private power producers – which is surplus to their needs – buggering up more and more rivers and streams, thus fulfilling the Campbell/Clark government’s ambition to privatize power in BC.

BC Hydro, in taking all this unneeded power from Independent Power Producers (IPPs), must either export it or use it instead of its own vastly cheaper power. This means that BC Hydro will use power at at least double what it can make it for or export it at half to a quarter what they were forced to pay for it. Last year Hydro wasted $600 million buying IPP power it didn’t need – that money was our money, folks.

This comment on the report by former BC Hydro board chair and SFU political scientist Marjorie Griffin-Cohen. She said that the review – which also called for the utility to cut its proposed 50% rate hikes by half – distracts from the utility’s real problem: that  the real burden of cost is the government’s policy on private power. “Basically, what they have required to happen in BC is for new power generation to be in the private sector, BC Hydro to buy that and their hope was that this could spur exports of electricity to the United States,” she said.

“It was a very serious miscalculation of what was going on. So what we have now is a lot of private power that is extremely costly.”

Griffin-Cohen said private power projects produce 16 per cent of domestic power, but account for 49 per cent of energy costs. (emphasis added)

The much esteemed SFU professor and energy economist Marvin Shaffer had this to say:

“The real story in the review panel report, although gingerly and cautiously stated, is that it is government itself which bears major responsibility for driving up BC Hydro costs and rates. It was the government that directed BC Hydro to acquire all new sources of energy from Independent Power Producers (IPPs) except in the refurbishment of existing projects or developments like Site C on existing BC Hydro-controlled river systems. (emphasis added)

It was the government that legislated self-sufficiency requirements that have forced BC Hydro to buy more power than it needs to ensure reliable supply. It was the government that imposed debt/equity provisions that exaggerate the cost of BC Hydro financed investments. And it was this government that raised water rentals in a way that directly affected BC Hydro and its customers, but that would not impact private power producers, including Alcan and Teck.”

Anyone who’s run a household budget knows that leads to the poorhouse and bankruptcy.

What this means is that the Campbell/Clark government, as advised by the right wing Fraser Institute, see their dream come true – the end of public power in our province with the ruination of our rivers in ever increasing numbers.

We at The Common Sense Canadian have been saying this for close to two years and as individuals nearly four. I have faced audiences all around the province and have seen disbelief in the faces of the audience saying to me, “No government would do anything so stupid!” Well they have and are about to make it worse.

BC Hydro is the egg that’s become the omelette. The dice were cast and they turned up snake-eyes. The Campbell/Clark government privatized BC Ferries and BC Rail and now it’s moments away from privatizing power by bankrupting our crown jewel – the much coveted BC Hydro and Power Authority..

The story Damien and I and many others including our adviser, economist Erik Andersen, have been telling since 2008, has been difficult to believe.

Well, folks, BELIEVE IT!!!

Postscript – to Vaughn Palmer and Mike Smyth – repeat after me: “The problem with BC Hydro is the massive sweetheart deals made with private power companies where under Hydro must buy ever increasing amounts of power at a huge loss.” Now, having spat it out, PRINT IT!

This is not rocket science, folks. Hydro is forced to pay for privately generated power at double its market value and the total bill is over $40 BILLION. This “buy high/sell low” policy can only have one result – bankruptcy. One tends to look at the immense dams and think of that as representing Hydro’s value but it doesn’t. The real value is in the water rights under the government’s control. The only way BC Hydro looks attractive – and it does do that! – is if the right to use the water, be it for power or use as a very sought after commodity, goes with the deal. The other obvious consequence is that Hydro rates will be set to get what the traffic will bear on the market or under contract – clearly, this means that rates to British Columbia industry and its citizens will skyrocket.

Gordon (Pinocchio) Campbell and his lickspittles assure us that Hydro is not for sale, But he said that about BC Rail too.

Why is Campbell doing this, if it makes no economic sense to do so?

Two reasons – it will bring in a large though short term slug of money; more importantly to him, it satisfies the ideological mindset he has developed from the “right wing” supporters of The Liberal Party not the least of which is the Fraser Institute which holds that no government operation can be as effective as a private one. This isn’t economics but political philosophy.

It’s important to remember that WAC Bennett and his two river dams (Peace and Columbia) were constructed to achieve the cheapest power for industry and citizens. To achieve that, he inflicted horrendous environmental damage but that’s done and now the power is truly green unlike Independent Power Producers who must (pardon the technical talk here) bugger up a lot of BC’s rivers to produce power that for the most part is of no use to BC Hydro because it’s produced at a time that Hydro’s reservoirs are full.

Watch for it, folks – this government is slowly strangling the life out of BC Hydro to satisfy Campbell’s dogmatic hatred for publicly owned companies.

This will be my last blog for a week, as Wendy and I are off for a short vacation to London. London is our version of Maui. Wendy tells me that I look ten years younger when the plane sets down although that still leaves me a bit long in the tooth!

Erik Andersen is a former Transport Canada economist with a long and interesting pedigree of examining the affairs of business and government. He has done a report for The Common Sense Canadian — I am a co-founder and regular contributor — on the state of BC Hydro.

The picture he paints is of a once rock solid Crown corporation placed on the road to fiscal ruin by the Campbell government.

Andersen was asked to examine BC Hydro’s fiscal situation, especially in light of the contracts they have been forced by the Campbell government to enter with Independent Power Producers (IPPs).

Andersen’s report, entitled “Sinister Financial Vectors at BC Hydro,” examines a number of “vectors” which “give information and direction and the magnitude of a changing position.”

Five such vectors, concludes Andersen, indicate the financial position of BC Hydro is headed dangerously downward. Those vectors are:

Operating net income: “In the four year period (beginning with fiscal year 2007) there has been a $628 million reversal of net operating income.”

Recorded demand: “Expressed in GWhs (what BC Hydro sells) total volume of domestic (inside B.C.) sales went from 52,440 in 2006 to 50,233 units by 2010. After five years at the 52/53 thousand levels, demand dropped away sharply in fiscal 2010.”

Ratio of debt-to-equity: “A ratio of 100/0 can be evidence of insolvency. At BC Hydro this ratio had traditionally hovered around the 70/30 mark. The 2009 Annual report showed a remarkable change to 81/19. After calling upon the ‘regulatory account’ for the 2010 year the debt-to-equity ratio is now presented as 80/20. If the ‘regulatory account’ transfers were stripped from the BC Hydro financial statements, the ratios for 2009 and 2010 respectively would be 87/13 and 89/11.”

Productivity (a measure of whether shareholders are getting value for money): “In fiscal 2007 about $236,000 of capital was used to produce one GWh. By 2010 it took 38 per cent more capital to get the same quantity of energy for domestic customers. By this evidence it looks as though the system is becoming less efficient. Liabilities also mirrored this vector.”

New and expensive contractual obligations associated with the call for power from Independent Power Producers (IPPs): ”The 2010 Annual Report BC Hydro states that ‘During fiscal 2010, IPPs provided 8,893 GWhs of energy to the BC Hydro system, which accounted for about 16 per cent of total domestic electricity requirements.’ A Dec. 2009 report from Price WaterhouseCoopers projects that existing and potential IPP projects will deliver 35,470 GWhs by 2020. The estimated total capital deployed would be $26.144 billion. That translates into $737,074 of new capital to produce one GWh or 126 per cent greater than the already elevated 2010 level. Amazing!”

Andersen’s conclusion? “As the evidence of need for more electricity is not apparent, the aggressive borrowing/investing/contracting with IPPs is clearly wrong.”

In the same report Andersen describes, “BC Hydro borrowing/spending (on IPPs)” as “irresponsible of Hydro’s Board and management as it has increased the risk of financial insolvency.”

He points out that “Hydro is paying IPPs more than double the open market rates” and that “from now to 2020 new IPP producers will use more than double the capital now used to produce a single unit of saleable energy.”

To rub it in even further, BC Hydro will no longer be able to pay its annual dividend of hundreds of millions to the B.C. government, money which went for schools, hospitals, etc.

Ideology trumps business sense

There it is — ruined rivers and their ecosystems for power we don’t need and can’t use. Power profits going to IPP-investor entities beyond B.C., including Warren Buffett and General Electric. And an iconic crown corporation, BC Hydro, hurtling towards bankruptcy, all thanks to Gordon Campbell and his hard right fiscal philosophy.

Just to be clear, Andersen is a “contributor” to The Common Sense Canadian along with about 25 others whose backgrounds vary as much as their politics, ranging from academics considered, at least by the Campbell government, as “left” to Conservative MP John Cummins and independent MLA Vicki Huntington. Andersen and other contributors to the site do not get any remuneration whatsoever.

The visionary Socred premier W.A.C. Bennett saw that if B.C., with a growing economy, was to compete and prosper, it must have reliable — and cheap — power. He knew that private companies would be concerned with profit only. (He created BC Ferries and BC Rail for the same reasons, both of which have been privatized by the Campbell government).

Bennett developed his “Two Rivers” policy, putting large dams on the Peace and Columbia Rivers. B.C., and especially those who lived in the areas affected, paid a huge environmental price but we got what he bargained for.

B.C. can be power-sufficient for years to come by exercising the conservation projects of BC Hydro, by upgrading existing generators, by placing generators on “flood control” dams and by taking back our power we now export under the Columbia River Treaty. The Campbell government has chosen to ignore these uncomfortable facts, one can only assume for ideological commitment to private power.

By all rules of decency the Campbell government must resign, having, as Andersen’s vectors show, planted the seeds of destruction in the bowels of BC Hydro.

Thanks to the work of Economist Erik Andersen, we now know that Gordon (Pinocchio) Campbell has set BC Hydro on the road to bankruptcy. We have had confirmed what Damien Gillis and I have been writing and saying for 2 ½ years; BC Hydro has been forced into giving Independent Power Producers (IPPS) sweetheart “take or pay” contracts requiring Hydro to buy power it doesn’t need thus must sell for ½  of what it paid. We’ve also seen that IPPS account for 16% of Hydro’s domestic power meaning Hydro has bought hugely expensive power that it can produce itself for a fraction of the cost. We also know that the substantial dividend Hydro used to pay the BC government each year is gone – unless they charge us higher rates so they can pay it back to us!

The Common Sense Canadian (www.thecanadian.org) sent Mr. Andersen’s report to nearly all the newspapers in BC, a day before the press release along with releases to the principal columnists as well as to about 2000 people and there has been no response from the papers; I gather CBC has done an interview with Mr. Andersen.

My reaction is this – why haven’t we risen as one to condemn this disgraceful state of affairs?

I think I know the answer. The numbers can be easily confused and the Campbell government and its supporters, dwindling though they may be, use this complexity to discourage people from getting involved.

What I’ve just told you is bad enough but there’s more – upwards of 600 rivers will be, to all intents and purposes, killed along with the ecologies they support if we don’t put a stop to it.

Damien Gillis and I have formed The Common Sense Canadian whose principal endeavours are to save our power and rivers as well as fight fish farms. There is a “donate” button on the website (www.thecanadian.org).

The Wilderness Committee with Joe Foy and Gwen Barlee leading the charge are valuable allies.

It’s your power company and the rivers belong to you. Both are being ruined and will be successfully ruined if we don’t fight.

The situation Gordon “Pinocchio” Campbell has got us in is all but impossible to believe, but he’s done it.

Let me quickly lay out why we have a publicly owned power company.

Back in the late 50s and early 60s then Premier W.A.C. Bennett made three decisions – he decided that Black Ball Ferries, being privately owned, would never serve any communities unless it was profitable; he decided the same thing for the old PGE railway; and he held that BC needed an abundance of cheap power for both industry and the general public so he nationalized BC Railway in 1961. Thus we had BC Ferries, BC Rail, and BC Hydro and Power Authority.

The power didn’t come cheap either fiscally or environmentally as huge dams were built on the Peace and Columbia Rivers, however Bennett had got the job done and we had an abundance of cheap power. In fact we British Columbians owned what many felt was the best power company in the world.

Enter Gordon Campbell and his energy policy of 2002. What he did was simple and it was breathtaking. So much so that many British Columbians are only now waking up to what has happened:

1.   All new power was to come from private companies and except for upgrading their facilities and Site “C” should they wish to develop that, BC HYDRO was denied the right to create new power.

2.   We were told by the government that these projects would be “run-of-river”, namely that the river would be undisturbed.

3.   We were informed that these would all be small “mom and pop” operations.

4.   We were told that BC was a net importer of energy and that these Independent Power Producers would ensure that we would be self sufficient by 2016.

For the past 2 ½ years Damien Gillis and I, along with Joe Foy and Gwen Barlee of the Wilderness Committee have been speaking around the province telling people the truth. Namely, that these plants were hugely intrusive and destructive of the rivers and their ecosystems, that the companies were huge, such as Ledcor and General Electric, that BC was not short of energy and need never be if we made some modest changes to our policy and that this independent power, because it can only be generated during the run-off, was of no use to BC Hydro since at that time their reservoirs were full and they needed no help.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, we slowly but surely learned what the deals were that Hydro was forced by the Campbell government to make with these IPP’s. And we could not believe what we learned.

To put it shortly and bluntly, Hydro was forced to buy power, on a “take or pay” basis, at double or more what they could get on the export market! If that wasn’t bad enough, HYDRO would be forced to export private power because, as explained above, it was surplus to their needs.

Erik Andersen was only known to The Common Sense Canadian through blogs he did and I was on his mailing list. We have a list of contributors, which you can find on our website at www.thecanadian.org, numbering about 25. These men and women from all walks of life and of every political stripe are asked to do a column for us from time to time for which they aren’t paid a dime.

Erik Andersen did a blog or two which dealt with the issues we’re involved with and we asked him to become one of our contributors and he kindly consented. Erik has been an economist for many years and his resume is fascinating.

On his own, Erik did a blog dealing with many of the points I have above and we asked him if he could flesh that out and give us a report we could circulate.

What Erik was able to do, because of his expertise, was to find the numbers that justified the position we had been taking for the past 2 ½ years – and then some.

I urge you to read this report and send it to friends. What we have here is theft – legalized theft of our rivers, their ecologies and our power. Not only is our power, and the profit traditionally given to the government by BC HYDRO, being sent out of the Province, but we are paying private companies to do it! We get nothing for this, nothing except the same taxes the government would get from a grocery store.

I’m not a young man anymore – in fact I’ve seen many governments come and go and have even been part of one.

Never in my life have I seen such outrageous behaviour as this. It’s made all the more shameful by the government MLA’s doing and saying nothing as their province is ravished.

Read Erik Andersen’s report and weep at the outrages inflicted and still being inflicted on British Columbia by this evil government

Goal: Sending our energy south for private profits

Hobbling BC Hydro so private firms can profit big is bad public policy.

Two Simon Fraser University professors, both experts in power issues, have written scathing critiques of the Campbell government’s energy policy.

First, they affirm the argument I’ve been making for over a year — that BC Hydro is being forced to buy private power at up to double its market value, sell it at a huge loss, and then, assuming that this idiotic government tubes Burrard Thermal as our backup power, it has buy back that power at high import prices!

Here’s how Professor Douglas McArthur confirms that opinion on his blog PolicyCentre.ca:

“Private hydro produces most of its power in the spring and summer when B.C. already has a surplus of power from BC Hydro’s already established plants. It doesn’t need more power in the spring and summer when the runoff is high. But the government is making BC Hydro buy the power from these producers at inflated prices, even though it will have to turn around and sell it into export markets at much lower spring and summer market prices. Then, in the winter, BC Hydro will have to buy very expensive power from producers in the U.S. The private hydro producers will make a lot of money, Hydro will lose huge amounts of money on the whole complicated deal, and BC Hydro customers will make up the difference in higher rates… [The] government explanations just don’t add up when subjected to scrutiny. If this was happening in India or Pakistan we would be raising no end of questions.”

Dr. Marvin Shaffer, an acknowledged power expert also from SFU, confirms this analysis, concluding that the Campbell government “force[s] BC Hydro to look only to the private sector to develop new sources of energy, no matter how costly and low in value many of these sources are, or what cumulative environmental impacts they have.”

What’s good about this deal?

In a nutshell, then, Campbell forces BC Hydro to buy all the private power produced on a “take or pay basis” at up to twice its value at a time when its not needed, meaning Hydro must sell it at half price into the export market and buy it back at much, much higher prices if they do need power.

How do they get away with it?

The Campbell government plays upon the public’s inaccurate understanding that the Burrard Thermal power plant is a huge despoiler of the environment — in fact, it uses relatively benign natural gas for power and it’s only used in rare times of emergency with a minuscule, short-term environmental impact. [By way of aside, hospitals and media outlets have this sort of backup, and what else would one expect? So do many citizens especially in Lions Bay where I live, which is subject to power losses more often than elsewhere. No, I don't take it personally! The environmental impact of these emergency backup arrangements is minute.]

What, then, will happen to BC Hydro?

At present it’s on the hooks for $31 billion in future “take or pay” contracts which will, it’s estimated, double if the Bute Inlet private development goes through. Every new license ups the ante. So, how does BC Hydro handle this?

BC Hydro is not permitted to bring new power on stream, with the exception of upgrading its own facilities and bringing on the Site C dam. The latter is hugely damaging to the environment, and unpopular. In fact this is a “man of straw” because Campbell and company are setting up a false dichotomy: it’s either private power or Site C. This is nonsense.

How long can Hydro buy high, sell low and be deprived of its back-up in Burrard Thermal for those few days a year it requires its power?

Citizens will have to pay

Is it any wonder that the SFU professors are looking for a reason for all of this madness?

This so-called “energy policy” is indeed mad. No intelligent government would create such an idiotic scheme. In fact, in speaking to citizens around the province as I did last spring, even in the face of unassailable evidence people were reluctant to assume that any government could be so stupid. They doubted me — even though I reminded them of Mair’s Axiom I. Namely, it is: “You make a very serious mistake in assuming that those in charge know what the hell they’re doing!”

What, then, are BC Hydro’s options?

The first is obvious. It fails to meet its obligations and it is, for all intents and purposes, put into bankruptcy with its assets sold to pay off its capital debt. Now, if that seems like indigestible public policy, remember that with BC Rail, that’s precisely what happened — despite the most solemn of vows from Gordon Campbell not to do it.

The second is perhaps more likely. BC Hydro simply raises its domestic prices so that we the people — with our businesses and industries — finance the heavy losses resulting from its forced export of private power. In short, the dividends paid to shareholders of large offshore companies are being paid by us through our electricity bills, and through the cost of energy passed on to us by corporations. Think on that as your electricity bills come in!

This cannot be stated too often:

1. We do not have an energy crisis in B.C. All future needs can be met by employing conservation methods, upgrades to present Hydro facilities and Hydro putting generators on flood control dams — and by taking back the Columbia River benefits in power rather than taking it in money.

2. Even if we were short of power, how can it be replaced by private power when that power is only created at a time when BC Hydro can’t use it? Clearly, when the government says we must have energy self-sufficiency by a certain date — energy which will come from private power — they are terminologically inexactituding through their teeth!

Here it is in a nutshell. Kim-il Campbell and the pusillanimous lickspittles he surrounds himself with are shattering our environment by ruining our rivers and the animals and vegetation they sustain. They’re making out with province shareholders rich with our public resources. They’re either bankrupting BC Hydro, the most important and successful of our crown corporations, or forcing it to make the B.C. citizens pay with their own electricity bills for the immense profits of private companies.

And here’s a question for the premier that he’s utterly failed to deal with — every year BC Hydro pays the province hundreds of millions of dollars by way of dividend, which goes to our schools and healthcare. Now this money is sucked out of B.C. and into the pockets of private shareholders like Warren Buffett.

Why are you doing this Premier Campbell?

There is absolutely no sense to this policy which devastates us environmentally and fiscally, so why are you doing all this to our wonderful province which has been entrusted to your care?

Environment Minister Barry Penner and other officials at controversial Harrison Lake run-of-river project

Far be it from me to ruin the happy tune, but here are three key questions.

I can hear it now… Tom Jones is telling us about stepping off the train… the old house is still standing… there’s his Momma and his Poppa… and of course sweet Mary with hair of gold and lips like cherry… how good it will be to touch the green, green grass of home. At that point you’re feeling all warm and fuzzy about this cat — but then, it happens. It’s all a dream, and he’s about to be fried in the electric chair.

This reminds me of Premier Campbell. Spin a good story and hope that no one wants to hear the last stanzas or asks what really happened (which would be unlikely to make the mainstream media anyway). Now, I don’t say that women take their panties off and fling them at him when the premier sings — but still the style’s the same.

In his speech to the Independent Power Producers (IPP) Mr. Campbell produced — big time. Even more rivers are going to be ruined. Even more corporate despoilers will be amongst us. Even more money will go from you and me to the shareholders of corporate America. An even bigger burden will be placed on BC Hydro as it must pay more and more money for power it must accept on a “take or pay” basis, and then sold for half the amount that was paid for it.

Those poor frustrated IPPs

I just love this line, don’t you? “IPPs have been frustrated at times by protracted sales contract negotiations with BC Hydro, which have made it challenging to attract investor support for their projects.” Imagine our company — the power company that B.C. citizens own — bargaining hard for us so that we only have to pay the despoilers double what our energy is worth! Gadfrey Daniel! That is indeed frustrating when you were expecting those cash donations to the Liberal party to produce triple or quadruple.

I wouldn’t want anyone to get the notion that Mr. Campbell isn’t consulting people, because he is. He’s consulting all the corporations who have a piece of the action and want more, and with any more newcomers who want to do their charity work for us in this distant paradise whose government is clamoring to be stripped of its water, bears, birds, trees and money so that it can feed these corporate sharks as they keep California swimming pools warm and air conditioners cool.

We will not have one, two or three task forces — count ‘em — we’ll have four. They’ll all be safe and sound under the tent of the Green Energy Advisory Task Force that Premier Campbell promised last August.

Bye bye BC Utilities Commission

There is yet another dollop for the independent power thieves. The BC Utilities Commission (BCUC), which has made such a nuisance of itself by standing up for public values that it threatens to stop progress just because it isn’t what the public wants, is getting tubed.

Imagine those churlish cretins at the BC Utilities Commission daring to say that the Independent Power Producers’ sacred legacy — the BC Energy Plan they did so much to produce — is not in the public interest! Talk about trivial reasons! Any right-thinking British Columbian knows that with Gordon Campbell standing up for us and our rights, no one needs bureaucratic nuisances like the BCUC messing things up for Warren Buffett and General Electric who are bent on doing so many wonderful things for us!

(By the way, as far as BC Hydro Chairman Bob Elton being replaced, surely no one thinks that its because he was saying things that Gordon Campbell didn’t want people to hear! Perish the thought.)

You will be comforted to know that these task forces will be reporting to notorious wild-eyed environmentalists like Environment Minister Barry Penner and Energy Minister Blair Lekstrom, plus the hand-picked chairmen of BC Hydro and the BC Transmission Corporation. Jeez, if those four toadies… sorry… learned gentlemen… and the premier can’t be trusted to stand up for us, who can we trust? As the line in that wonderful musical of the fifties, Lil Abner, goes: “The country’s in the very best of hands.”

You in the back, be quiet!

Now I hope you aren’t being picky and complaining that no one’s going to ask you or your neighbours, the rabble of the province, what you think. Or to think that opinions should be sought from scientists who might, by asking pointed questions, throw some cold water on this entire balls-up… er, project. Our “Leader,” Kim il-Gordo, says this is no place for controversial opinions. “Let’s get on with it” must be our watchwords.

Did I hear someone in the back complain that the ignorant masses didn’t even have anything to say about the premier’s energy policy when he and Alcan were sorting out the details? And is someone whimpering about how Mr. Campbell took away the right of municipalities to zone for these grand rapes… er, projects for our rivers and streams? Don’t you understand that we must all pull together behind our leader? After all, didn’t almost 25 per cent of us vote for him last May?

I have to make a confession. I’m one of those from the old school who can’t stop asking questions. I have many questions stored up from my time as spokesperson for the Save Our Rivers Society and from scientists I have interviewed. I know that time is short and we must start silting up, diverting and killing our rivers and their ecosystems as soon as possible, so I’ll just confine my queries to these.

Question 1. In light of the fact that the vast majority of private power is created during the run-off when BC Hydro doesn’t need it, doesn’t this mean that nearly all of it will be there for export by BC Hydro at far less than they paid for it? Isn’t it true, to get to the meat of the matter, that the vast majority of private power will not be for our use here in B.C., where the wreckage takes place, but outside our borders?

Question 2. Doesn’t this mean that BC Hydro will have one of two choices — go bankrupt, or make up its losses by raising rates for B.C. industry, business and the public — with, of course, the business and industrial rate increases passed on to us, the general public?

Question 3. Forgive me premier, just one more inquiry. Your old colleague Ralph Klein, ex-premier of Alberta, left office to get a big cushy position in the international energy field, making boodles of money, in part here in B.C. Is something like that waiting for you and your loyal colleagues?

Just thought I’d ask.

Postscript: Elegy for TALK 1410

The flameout of Vancouver’s TALK 1410AM radio is good news for the Campbell government as it removes — let’s pray not for too long — the voice of Simi Sara, who was the hope of all of us who yearn for the return of real talk radio to our airwaves. Sorely missed, as well, will be Dave Brindle from the same station, whose show held big power accountable by combining intelligent muckraking and fresh thinking.

This Plan took away BC Hydro’s right to create new energy and gave that job to the private sector. It also forced BC Hydro into making sweetheart “use or pay” contracts with private producers which gives the term “sweetheart deal” a whole new meaning.

Evidently the light has gone in the Premier’s office and he has, at long last, seen the consequences of this deal.

The consequence for BC Hydro is Grade I arithmetic. It can’t avoid for long the fact that either it will go bankrupt if it must pay to the private sector double what it can sell it for in the US or charge British Columbia usurious electricity rates.

Why does that happen?

Because the vast bulk of private power comes when we don’t need it! Private plants develop their power during he Spring run-off, the very time BC Hydro has full reservoirs with plenty of power to meet its demands. The BC government have been very silent on this matter and much of the blame falls upon the NDP who didn’t understand the this issue during the May election and didn’t press it. To this day only a handful of NDP MLAs have a clue about the Energy Policy.

The consequences of the Energy Policy are that either Hydro must go broke because it cannot pay the billions of dollars it has in obligations to private power or it must substantially raise its rates to BC industry and homeowners to cover off its losses. If the latter is the option, you and I will be subsidizing Hydro exports to the US – big time!

Both policies will hit British Columbians very hard indeed. The marvelous power creation we have in this province of ours, BC Hydro, faces the dilemma “do we bankrupt our company or do we bankrupt the public?

The BC Utilities Commission has stepped on Mr. Campbell’s corns and the premier is thrashing around to find an easy way out. But there isn’t one. BCUC has already found that the Campbell Energy Policy is “not in the province’s best interests”. For Premier Campbell to allow BCUC to continue to overturn rocks and find government crawlies is not on he’s shut it down.

The government has been lying about this issue from the outset. Two statements suffice to prove that. One Campbell has stated that BC needs this new energy which is utterly false. Then he says the private power companies ruining our rivers, clear-cutting for roads and transmission lines will make up this mythical need we have for more energy. This is horse buns for as noted above, we certainly wouldn’t be able to use private power which is of no help to British Columbians because of the time it’s produced.

Campbell has shut down the public’s sharp eye on power production and has turned that obligation over to himself and the nit wits that make up his government.

The chickens are indeed coming home to roost.

What the head rooster does now will be interesting – and very costly – to see.