Roger Grimes made a public statement yesterday in a Letter to the Editor; the Telegram's Weekend Edition.
With reasoning - more thoughtful than the garbage information we have been fed by Dunderdale and Co. - Grimes highlights gaping errors in the thinking used to make this particular Muskrat Falls deal.
The former Premier also made a comment which reflects the true signs of leadership - the project can still be stopped. The Tories approach of well now that its started, sanctioned, signed - gotta keep going - is simply trying to convince people that there is no hope left to stop this mess.
The NDP in Nova Scotia has shown two qualities during this process - an ability and a weakness.
Somehow their politicians have shown that they are able to convince our politicians - that subsidizing power for Nova Scotia is a good thing and the people of Newfoundland and Labrador should be happy to do that. The weakness of course is that they appeared to do this work for a private company, Emera and by doing so just simply ammassed wealth for the private corporation on the backs of their own people.
So for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador the deal is bad - very bad - and in my opinion that is either from naivety or corruption on some level or a combination of both.
Corporately, Emera and Nalcor, will make money on each and every kw - Emera (private) - Nalcor (crown). The question is who is that good for specifically?
Emera's shareholders (private) will make a killing if they operate in any way similar to how they currently operate both domestic and foreign assets while Nalcor's shareholders (the people of NL) will be gouged to keep Nalcor's spending viable.
When the PUBlic Utilities Board was banished from it's role as a regulator - protecting us - from unnecessary spending by our own corporation - Nalcor - became an agent by which politicians could cut deals that they wanted for whatever reasons - and those reasons can be very self-serving and sinister.
The PUB may have rejected this expenditure on behalf of the consumers of electricity - and the fact that people like Kathy Dunderdale, Jerome Kennedy, Tom Marshall, and Darin King felt it okay to bypass the ratepayer component of the process is legislatively corrupt.
Now the PUB should have no right to stop a deal for power development - if others - not us - the ratepayers - are paying for it. If the government wanted to make this pet project a legacy - they should have directly pinned it on the taxpayers and forced every taxpayer in the province to pay for this disaster. In this way the political fall-out is more instant - more direct.
Roger's points in his letter make sense - in a very basic real way. We have no real idea what the true energy asset base is in the province and whether or not those assets could have been used differently, expanded, or altered to accommodate the Island need for power. As for Labrador - this development - if allowed to proceed would not remove many Labradorians from thermal generation or supply from Quebec. That is ridiculous.
The idea of developing such a valuable resource such as Muskrat and then Gull Island in either order should have accomplished the following:
1. Mandatory renewable assets for all inhabited regions of Labrador,
2. Development of Industry which would spur tens of thousands of jobs (long-term) after the construction phase is complete, or
3. The sale of the majority of power to another Province or State wherein the power produced would cause our rates to be kept where they are now - for a generation or two, money for our treasury, and equity build-up for our people (similar to a tenant renting your property) they pay the mortgage - we own the asset,
4. Some combination of 2 and 3.
The added little bonus for the private Emera is that they now are going to be paid every time you and I pay our electric bill. They get a cut of the action that was once held solely for Newfoundland Power and Nalcor (Newfoundland and Labraor Hydro division). Why are they getting that cut? The truthful answer to that will start to unravel some pretty questionable decisions by our government.
There was and is a real potential to stabilize our rates by simply acquiring Newfoundland Power and eliminating the doubling up profits and eliminate administrative and asset duplication. By doing what we have done - Nalcor gets it up price, passed to Emera for its up price and then on to Newfoundland Power for its piece.
If we continue with this project - we are absolutely getting the least out of this asset - which in time will look worse than the Upper Churchill.
The former Premier should be commended for his leadership and be an example for those seeking to take office and government. The project should be stopped.
1 comment:
The consensus among people I talk to is that this project cannot be stopped. I personally hold out the hope that it CAN be stopped, because it is an unmitigated financial disaster in the making.
It has already negatively impacted our budgets, despite the government's dismissal of such claims, and will most certainly negatively impact our ability, as a province, to provide basic infrastructure to our people.
Sadly, most people I know are comatose, when it comes to government's activities and actions on projects like Muskrat Falls. They are clueless and want to remain clueless. Only when the enormity of this gross mistake hits them in the pocketbook will most people realize just how bad it is.
They harp on the government's mismanagement of yearly budgets and their fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach to governance but don't see or don't want to see the deeper wounds this administration is causing to preserve Danny's legacy. They don't understand that we may very well lose our fiscal capability for independent action going forward and will resort to being the economic dependent we were prior to becoming a "have" province.
Where is the spirit embodied in "the fighting Newfoundlander" that we were always so proud of? It saddens me to think that we are now simply caricatures of a proud people. Even worse, we have been betrayed the the very people who touted our sense of nationalism. We have been badly served by Danny Williams and his minions, who continue to pursue his reckless legacy.
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