AllYourCrownJewels
AreTurnedToDustVille
A fellow named David Bond, who is a retired bank economist, has written a most interesting column in the Kelowna Courier about the state of play at BC Hydro.
After a detailed preamble about the Crony Party's nefarious accounting practices, Mr. Bond gets straight to the
heart of the matter:
...The upshot is that BC Hydro’s pension account is $1.2 billion below what is required for actuarial solvency, the deferral accounts have grown to several billion, and the total debt is over $20 billion. About $2 billion of that will have to be paid down in the next fiscal year. BC Hydro has asked the BC Utilities Commission for an unprecedented 12 years to catch up on its pension liability...
So.
How to deal with this?
Well, Mr. Bond has a four point plan:
First, immediately shutting down the unnecessary Site C would stop much future bleeding.
Second, BC Hydro’s capital expenditures include about a billion a year for new power, over and above the amount needed to sustain existing facilities. Stop that.
Third, many agreements with Independent Power Producers that forced Hydro to pay non-market prices for power are in default. Cancelling these contracts would yield substantial savings.
Fourth, allow Hydro to charge rates equal to their costs and if the rate shock is unbearable, transfer some of the debt to the province.
****
Look.
Cleaning up the mess created by sixteen years of BC Liberal rule is going to be painful.
And, clearly, it is going to be the job of the coalition to start the cleaning and cauterizing.
All of which will lead to howls of derision from the cronies, the quislings, and the bought-and-paid-for sycophants.
But...
The fact of the matter is, as anyone who has been paying attention throughout the length and breadth of the Golden Era knows, sooner or later the citizenry was going to have to pay for the budgetary malfeasance and chicanery that stretches back through de Jong, Falcon, the second coming of the Hansen advantage, Taylor, and the Hansen advantage (the first!).....All the way to
he who never testified about the wolfening, Mr. Farrell-Collins.
OK?
______
Mr. Bond also explains how ICBC has been systematically looted in his piece....The entire thing is most certainly worth a read.
Of course, this is not something you will read about in local Lotusland-central proMedia print organs...However, if you want more, and more specifically on the folly that is Site C, Norm Farrell delves into the informed commentary of Harry Swain and Emma Gilchrist....Here...Norm also has Erik Andersen explain the original grift that forces Hydro to keep overestimating demand year after year after year after year despite actual evidence/reality to the contrary.
.
