BCUC: One Man's Opinion

By Ben Meisner

 The British Columbia Utilities Commission has now spoken, echoing what the rest of the province’s residents have been saying for some time.

The deal cobbled together by BC Hydro / Provincial Government  was not more than an effort to have the individual users of hydro electric power in this province pay more for their electricity so that Alcan could build a new smelter employing 500 fewer people.

If the Province feels compelled to subsidize Alcan, then have the guts and conviction to simply hand them over $1 billion dollars and then suffer the consequences as the work force declines. 

Handing over $1 billion dollars to Alcan would cost the government its majority and the Liberals know it. Alcan is not known as a star player in this province and even the people of Kitimat, fighting so hard to keep their community afloat, know it.

The move to do an end around on the people of this province by BC Hydro (and ultimately the Provincial Government) was just that and they were caught in their own juices.
When the City of Terrace dropped a few grand into an ad in the Vancouver paper recently promoting Alcan, you couldn’t help but wonder, what’s in it for them?  The ad was not only misleading, it was downright wrong.

But then Alcan has been very successful in employing "a divide and conquer" method whereby one community is placed against the other. They have used this approach world wide and it has been successful.

If Alcan won’t build a new smelter on its own money, then we don’t need their power.  They may find that indeed electricity cannot be stored and they may need the people of this province if they hope to find a willing customer to buy electricity that has no shelf life.

If Alcan wants to play hard ball, then its time for us to get out our bats, they do not control the province or its waterways or its electricity grid, we in the province do, and the BCUC indicated that recently in no uncertain terms.

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

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