Giving it a try...but not there yet

The Four York Harbourmen

This latest entry on the bondpapers demonstrates the lack of knowledge respecting the Upper Churchill Mr. Hollett possesses. He speaks of HQ's profits in certain years being 700 or 800 million in total. That would be correct and he's talking about the 80's and in the 90's it started to increase further from export prices and "other investments" which we will get to later.
Basics:
The Churhill Falls Labrador Corporation is owned roughly 2/3 by NLH and 1/3 HQ, that company generates the power and pays the bills - the majority of the power is sold to HQ.
HQ then puts it it on their grid and we go from there.
If we actually owned 1/2 the power, that is it was not an automatic sale to HQ at ridiculous prices we could sell it to them for market value. It would have no problem reaching at any time in recent history for 400 - 500 million dollars.
Then Ed mixes the profit shown by HQ which is the buyer at the border.
ED it's like this they take their windfall from cheap profit buy assets, build assets (around the world), invest in foreign power developments and on it goes. Each of these moves have employed thousands of Quebeckers and netted hundreds of thousands of dollars. The other little maneuver by HQ in the 90's was to deliberately lower their profits while not submitting profits directly to the Government of Quebec. In this way the province manipulated the equalization formula while delivering programs essential to it's people.
This is the basic way it works, if profits from a crown corp are submitted to the province they count as revenues to the province for the purpose of equalization, further if a crown corp makes a profit but does not submit those revenues, the crown corp's results make up part of the formula to be considered for equalization.
To make matters worse the ability of a province to achieve water power rentals whether they actually do or not is counted for equalization purposes. That is to say until the early 90's, although this province could not generate the revenues expected by water power rentals at Churchill Falls because of the CHEAP power sales and lopsided project, Ottawa counted them as if we could thereby negatively impacting or decreasing our equalization.
In the early 90's the government of Canada shifted some of that ability to Quebec - because of the lop-sided deal and this helped to improve our equalization position.
Meanwhile, HQ spent a fortune of their windfall our loss on investments worldwide and subsidized operations of what normally would be considered projects for Government Departments. They helped build low income housing, subsidized every part of tourism and Quebec culture and even spent significantly in the post-secondary sector.
This was the result for the 90's decade...
HQ showed less profit
HQ submitted very little to none of the profits to the government of Quebec
HQ delivered government programs normally delivered by govt. departments
HQ invested heavily in R & D, Quebec companies, global energy projects, gas companies, and delivered a heritage pool of cheap stable prices to its customers.
They brilliantly used the equalization formula to assist their province while building the company. The lower profits were deliberate and do not reflect real expenses of utility only operation.
Ed my friend, when I say a billion I am being generous, if only our loss were that small.
Time to go educate yourself a little more. They are spinning circles around your ignorance while they move forward with such prowess they can single handedly finance our project. That was not always the case..the 500 mill they floated in the late 60's for the Upper Churchill was risky but brilliant, we are certainly able to do the same. They were dealing with $5 a barrel for oil to ensure the sale of hydro. Any chance we can do the same with oil over $70 bucks?