Quote:
Originally Posted by Kerplunk
The PPA crapshow is what has convinced me that this NDP government should be no where near power again. Too bad it was so long ago that most people seemed to have forgotten it, even though a reminder is on our power bills every month.
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Don't kid yourselves, the PC's handled this as poorly in 2000 as the NDP did in 2015.
Klein rammed through deregulation as part of his "deregulate everything" mandate to reduce government spending, while pushing the cost back on the consumer. Whenever he deregulated a government run market there were no reciprocal tax breaks; he essentially double dipped. This helped balance his budgets when his tax rates remained the same, but budget line item expenses such as "Power generation location XYZ" were no longer included.
In terms of electricity, he sold off all the Ab government generation capacity for literally cents on the dollar to the likes of Enmax/Enron/Epcor, with the caveat that if it was ever unprofitable for them they could hand it all back to the Balancing Pool (formerly called the "Power Pool"). So not only did they get a sweetheart deal on generation capacity, held all the distrubution, held all the customers, but they also got an escape clause. The original PPA was one of the darkest moments for the Ab power consumer, because he was trying to create a competitive market for something that is nearly impossible to run in a true free market. This isn't commodity trading; true commodities are available and TRANSPORTABLE; electricity is not. All it did was create an environment for the three aforementioned companies to price gouge, and gouge they did.
So yes, the NDP were complete morons for not seeing that clause, but deregulation of that particular industry shouldn't have happened in the first place. To this day it STILL bothers me how little attention was paid to the whole thing, and how much it has cost Albertans on ALL sides of the political spectrum. I mean, it's still lingering around on your power bills. MCAF fees (now called "transport" or "line" fees or some thing) are a direct result of a calculation that includes the average cost of power back in 2000, which (going off memory) was $0.12/kWh. That rate is set by the municipality (like Enmax), and approved by city council. So when they say "we have no control over these charges" they're literally lying to your face, because you don't know any better. Chances are they don't either, which is ridiculous.
Anyway. I hate thinking about all that crap these days. I spent WAAAAAAAY too much time fighting it in 1999.