In the dog days of summer, while the rest of the world was fixated on the excruciating minutiae of Trump vs. Clinton, Bill Bennett and Adrian Dix had their own war of words.
This tit for tat erupted over B.C. Hydro’s excessive use of deferral accounts – a way to use debt to kick down-the-road costs and contracts the crown corporation is responsible for.
Dix, the energy critic for the opposition NDP, penned an op-ed criticizing B.C. Hydro for using those deferral accounts like a credit card: “Deferral accounts represent 132 per cent of equity at B.C. Hydro, compared to 11 per cent at Manitoba Hydro and seven per cent at Hydro-Québec,” he wrote.
Bennett, the B.C. Liberal energy minister, fired back, highlighting billions in B.C. Hydro infrastructure investment and noting that the corporation had a 10-year plan to pay down deferral accounts while trying to minimize rate hikes. He also noted the government is winding down Hydro’s responsibility to pay dividends to the B.C. government.
Naturally, a taxpayer watchdog like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) was intrigued. How had cabinet come to such a decision on dividends and how would B.C. Hydro pay down these deferral accounts? Who was on the right track, Dix or Bennett?
That same week, the CTF filed a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to get copies of the documentation prepared for Bennett on dividends and deferral accounts around the end of the 2015/16 fiscal year.
Six full months after we filed the request, we got our response. And it was pitiful.
The government sent along 724 censored pages. It appears eight different cabinet advice documents were censored.
There was not one single word about the annual dividend B.C. Hydro has to pay to government, or how Bennett and cabinet came to the decision that it should be wound down, and what Hydro should do with that money. The FOI had one measly powerpoint with a mention of deferral accounts that was about as deep as a contestant on The Bachelor.
We’re now three months from the provincial election. The government doesn’t seem to want to talk in-depth about B.C. Hydro, so it will be up to the voters to press it as an issue.
What are the parties’ plans to get B.C. Hydro out of debt? How much will they increase our rates? How will they bring costs under control?
Energy poverty is a real threat – ask the people struggling to get by in Ontario. British Columbians don’t want to get into a position of picking heating or eating. If we don’t push our potential premiers for details, we’ll only have ourselves to blame.
Jordan Bateman is B.C. director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
