Is hydro really alternative energy when it is already the largest source of energy in the province? Seems like the definition is being stretched a bit there...

What is alternative about hydro, power that is?
Alternative is wind, solar, and geothermal. Everything else is consuming a resource.

If you really want to make BC the alternative energy province, then you better do something about the prohibitive costs of accessing alternative energy. Right now, the ROI on alternative energy systems is about a 50 year term. most would rather take the easy way and just pay a monthly rate for a stable source. Then there is the matter of tying into the public grid.

BC Hydro does everything it can to prevent micro generation sites from tying into the grid. Really, micro generation is the future. We do not have the room or the inclination for more mega projects like site C. Allow homeowners to install as much generating capacity as financially possible and work with them. The solar generator would be adding capacity to the peak use period of daytime, and pull off less than they put in during the evening. But no, hydro cannot continue to rape its customers if the customers were actually putting in more than they consumed.

The rules about power generation are for the monopolistic nature of our local power authority. They have now reached the point where they are not able to meet the needs of more consumers, yet still insist on totalitarian control of electricity distribution.

What Loki states is unfortunately happening all over Canada. Public utilities seem to have forgotten that they are not really businesses; they exist to serve the populations of their respective provinces.

See Danny Williams vs. Hydro Quebec for further example of a crown corporation acting like a ruthless multinational company.

Greed has been the downfall of so many societies, and that includes our current one.

We really need to put a stop to mega billionaires. Only 5% of the world population has 95% of the wealth. The rest of us share the last 5%.

I heard a rumour once that if they did redistribute the wealth to every one, the same 5% would end up with 95% of the wealth in under 5 years.

I just think that once an individual has more than enough, that is enough. Like Jimmy Pattison, wealthiest person in BC and still making deals. He should retire and live a life rather than make more money than he or his family could possibly spend. As it happens, I like Jimmy for the business person that he is so the comment was for illustration only.

Gordon Campbell, you criminal, I would never call you a liar, but I don't believe one word that spews out from your mouth...time to retire.

I see you've posted that twice now...

Isn't calling someone a criminal worse than calling them a liar anyway?

"But no, hydro cannot continue to rape its customers ..."

In California (and other states) a residential consumer can pay hundreds of dollars per month for electricity.

That's what I would call rape, not the low rates that we are still paying, thanks to a visionary by the name of W.A.C. Bennett.

LOKI, not sure were you are getting your information but speaking for Wind the payback and ROI are nowhere near what you suggest. 50 years please. The truth is returns are favourable to all stakeholders otherwise they wouldn't exist.

Maybe your thinking of a nuclear plant.

LOKI, not sure were you are getting your information but speaking for Wind the payback and ROI are nowhere near what you suggest. 50 years please. The truth is returns are favourable to all stakeholders otherwise they wouldn't exist.

Maybe your thinking of a nuclear plant.

Diplomat you are so right about the visionary comment. Unfortunately our present course, is towards the California model and $300 - $ 400 bills per month for people.

Wolfie...he is a criminal...that is fact..documented....as for being a liar....I can't prove that so I prefer to say I don't believe what he says....

And we'll be just as bankrupt as California is as a result.

That's the problem with Gordon Campbell, he's unable to form an original thought in his head.

Whereas WAC Bennett could, and was far ahead of other government leaders elsewhere in seeing where we should be going, and how best to get there.

Gordo, in contrast, is merely a "global groupie". If Al Gore pays him a visit, he's converted to 'environmentalism' and Carbon Taxes us.

If Sir Roger Douglas, New Zealand's former slash and burn Finance Minister, drops in for a chat, our Gordo sets out to emulate him and cut every government service in sight. And who knows who'll visit him next?

There is just no "leadership". No conception of the idea that he's there to do the greatest good for ALL the BC public.

Not cozy the whole government up to those who hold the purse-strings, by doing their bidding, instead of ours. As if he were still land-pimping in Vancouver, and had to keep his Banker happy to keep the development funds coming.

And what's truly scary is that in the whole BC Liberal Party caucus there isn't ONE MLA, not one single one, that isn't a complete Campbell sychophant. Not one of them can think originally, and express themselves. Bad enough that the NDP has had the same problem for years, but do we really need TWO groups that suffer from the same malady?

Look back at the WAC Bennett years. Social Credit MLAs regularly took their own government to task if WAC's direction differed from the way they thought was best for their constituents on certain issues. Remember Cyril Shelford? And he wasn't the only one who stood up for those who elected him and whose taxes paid his salary.

WAC Bennett had to be pretty sharp to make his case when he faced opposition from within as well as from outside his own caucus. Can you see any of the BC Liberal crowd carrying the concerns of their constituents publicly, to the floor of the Legislature, and opposing the HST? A group of spineless sychophants, that's all they are.

Fair enough, BCRacer.

BC Hydro sits on 25 billion dollars of assets for free, and generates power at almost free, but still charges consumers 8 cents a kilowatt hour. This is the sorry legacy of Bennet and the Socred gang of rightwingers.

The average salary and benefit at BC Hydro is $100,000 a year ! This is due to the unions having a stranglehold on our $25 billion of assets.

And the unions are fighting private power tooth and nail because they know BC Hydro will cannot compete with private power.

PrivatePower, if you look back at BC history the record clearly shows that WAC Bennett and his "Socred gang of rightwingers", as you call them, tried repeatedly to get 'private' power development underway prior to the formation of BC Hydro.

At one point the Wenner-Gren Co. from Sweden was going to be granted a huge concession to develop hydro-electric power on the Peace River, and an integrated forest industry in that region. It came to nothing under their aegis.

The privately owned BC Electric Company was encouraged to develop more generating and distribution facilities elsewhere in the Province, too. It would not invest unless it got to charge what the government believed were unconscionable rates. And even then it wasn't overly enthusiastic.

Prior to that, a great many "private power" providers were only too anxious to unload their aging electric generating and distribution systems to the government owned BC Power Commission.

They didn't want to upgrade or expand them. Case in point, one of many:- Canadian Collieries (Dunsmuir) Ltd. operated a hydro-electric generating facility on the Puntledge River near Courtenay on Vancouver Island.

It was built immediately prior to World War One, and supplied 25-cycle electric power to their coal mines and related facilities, and, through a subsidiary, electricity to the Comox Valley communities.

When the mines wound down in the early 1950's, they didn't want any part of converting their system to the more common 60-cycle, and certainly didn't object when the government bought their facilities through the BC Power Commission and they could exit the electricity business completely.

Now as to your complaint about the "unions" and the "average salary" at Hydro, if a trained lineman can get the juice on again in the middle of the night in a howling blizzard, and do it repeatedly without frying himself or anyone else, I think he's earning his
$ 100,000 ! If that's what he gets. I don't envy him his job one iota.