Power Problems Spark Comment: One Man's Opinion

By Ben Meisner

When MLA John Rustad spouted off this past week about the power problems in BC he must have had his head in his hand or worse yet.

The week before that, Paul Ramsey had waded into the issue by suggesting the former NDP had done a masterful job in looking after the interests of the people of BC with the Alcan, Kitimat deal. He also must have had his head in his hand or worse yet.

It was under the pen of Paul Ramsey that the “new deal” with Alcan was struck. In return for an announcement that the company would explore the idea of some new mills, (right at election time) the government would cut a new deal which would enable Alcan to sell excess power with no strings attached.

Remember the agreement Paul?

Well Alcan said they looked at a new plant and then dropped the idea in favour of selling more power through Powerex to the USA. Alcan lived up to their promise, they made an announcement they would study the idea, and you got elected.  You may also remember that the State of California took the matter to court saying they had been gouged through excessive power costs and had it rolled back. Now you will remember Paul that California won because you were Minister of Finance and you had to substantially cut the take from BC Hydro. 

Jobs were cut at Kitimat, pot lines shut down. Now finally the City of Kitimat had to jump into the action at this point, saying you're killing our city. Indeed they were right, but they had been long before been sold out by the Glen Clark government. So the NDP got dumped and who came to power? 

Well lo and behold, the Liberals.

Now the Liberals have been in office for five years John and it sure as hell doesn’t take five years to decide 1)you’re going to be short of power and 2) do something about it.

We now are, as you say, importing between 12 and 14% of the power that we need in the province. Did someone not stick a pin in the board oh back five years ago and say Gee! our population is growing, we are going to need more power , like site C , but come to think of it that one is too political now isn’t it?  So lets whack the people of Kitimat one more time and get the power from Alcan. They after all have the deal of the world for water so they can make lots of money on the backs of the people of this province, never mind the fact that the original agreement says, the excess power is to be used for "development within the vicinity of the works. 

Well Vancouver is in the "vicinity", maybe if you stretch it a bit, well maybe a whole lot.

So Alcan gets a contract with BC Hydro, the people of the province get paid a pittance for the water rentals. Now suddenly John jumps on board telling us how good the deal is.

You forgot to mention John. that you, the Province, also agreed to pay 50 million towards a cold water release, now will all the water that is freed up come down stream?  No you say, it will be diverted, allowing Alcan to make more power and more money.  Now that’s a good deal, the people of the Province pay to have Alcan make more money. 

So in the end, you’ve had 5 years and counting, if you couldn’t figure out that we were going to need some new power sources in that time, then you should pull out your grade two readers. The ball has been dropped on this one so many times it is bent out of shape and for both Ramsey and Rustad  to tell us how it really is should have the whole area laughing.

I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion.

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