BC Hydro Bleeding Badly

By February 9, 2013Issues

From Rafe Mair. The Vancouver Sun, the Fraser Institute’s poodle. has it wrong again in denouncing the NDP press release re BC HYDRO accounts. John Horgan, the Opposition environment critic says that HYDRO is bleeding badly, the it will lose $1billion in the next four years and that much of that is to do with the buddy buddy deals Hydro has been forced by the Campbell/Clark government.

Economist Erik Anderson answers the Sun thusly:

“Oh my goodness, the Vancouver Sun’s new editor gave the green light to this piece of fiction/propaganda. Now it should be clear what part the new Sun editor plans to play in the coming election.

One of several misrepresentations; the so called California electricity crisis. The Enron parasites gamed the deregulated California market Ken Lay lusted after for the whole of the USA to the tune of ripping off California ratepayers by tens of billions. There was no crisis there was only a deliberately contrived shortage that rightly brought fines and jail time for the Enron psychopaths.

Mr. Scott needs to do some reading homework. It is not the NDP projecting Hydro losses, it is the Auditor General saying that the Regulatory Assets Accounts, now at about $3 billion, are projected to increase to $5 billion in a couple of years. For the sake of clarity these wrongly labeled “asset” accounts are in truth the amounts ratepayers owe to Hydro so they are the debts for us all until rates go high enough to pay them off. Of course with the lucrative to producer IPP taker-pay purchase agreements the amount will no doubt exceed even the $5 billion.

If Mr. Scott examined the Hydro financial statements he would notice the corporation’s revenues are made up of cash and receivables that then magically get turned into income. Hydro has and is running its operations with negative cash flow and booking future expected income much the way Enron practiced using “mark-to-market” accounting of predicted future income.”

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