Whether it’s claims of an $11,000 per household surcharge to route a planned new transmission line, or threats that the Crown Corporation will fall into private hands, Manitoba Hydro is providing a powerful focus for striking accusations in the lead-up to the Oct. 4 Manitoba Provincial Election.

The NDP’s planned route for the Bipole III transmission line offers a 1,400 kilometre target for PC leader Hugh McFayden’s cost comparisons. The route on the west side of Lake Winnipeg is 50 per cent longer than the east side route favoured by the Conservatives.

In addition to higher construction costs, a longer line loses more power along the route, critics contend.

“When we’re talking about cost, there’s a huge assumption that the option we are comparing the west side line to is even possible,” said Rob Altemeyer, NDP MLA for Wolseley. “There is no way that he could get a Bipole built on the east side with all the litigation and lawsuits that would tie it up in court.”

The litigation Altemeyer foresees would involve First Nations and environmental advocates trying to keep Bipole III out of the boreal forest on the east side.

Kelvin Goertzen, PC MLA for Steinbach, confirmed that his party hasn’t budged on the claim McFayden made this spring regarding the cost difference between routes.

“The calculation that we’ve come up with is $11,748 per Manitoba family, and at an additional cost of $3.6 billion,” he said. 

In May, outgoing Hydro President Bob Brennan suggested the cost difference per household, assuming a 60-year life for the new line, would amount to $13.86 annually. He based this on a construction cost difference of $428 million.

Retired University of Winnipeg geography professor John Ryan says this estimate has now increased to $455 million. Add in line losses of $232 million and the total comes to $687 million.

But since households only consume about a third of the power produced in the province, the hike on a residential bill would be somewhere between $6 and $10 a year.

Will Tishinski, a retired Manitoba Hydro vice-president, is a member of the Bipole III Coalition, a group of farmers, engineers and former Hydro employees who oppose the west side route. He says the route will be vulnerable to storm damage as it passes through “Tornado Alley” in south-central Manitoba. And if Bipole I or II were to fail, the longer line would be difficult to run in parallel with the remaining shorter line.

Altemeyer said what Hydro needs most to improve reliability of the system is a second converter station in southern Manitoba, which the NDP’s west side route will provide.

“If something horrific was to happen at Dorsey (Converter Station), we are looking at not having power (that’s generated in our province) for up to three years,” he said.

He said McFayden’s “astronomical numbers” for the cost of the NDP’s plan show he’s not including a new converter in his alternative plan.

“Rather than spending money on our long-term future in Manitoba, McFayden would rather crank up Hydro rates, which he has said he would do,” Altemeyer said.

“He’s the only leader to say he thinks the people of Manitoba should pay the private market rate here, which would mean huge increases.”

Hydro rates in Saskatchewan and Ontario, for example, are more than $600 higher than ours, Altemeyer said.

Ryan says Manitoba Hydro offers the lowest energy cost in North America in almost all categories.

“If the cost of energy went up ... it would lower the standard of living for everyone,” he said.

To sell or not to sell

Altemeyer said the PCs intend to privatize Hydro, as they did with Manitoba Telephone System when they were last in power.

“McFayden would ... take more money out of Manitobans pockets and fatten up Hydro for slaughter,” claimed Altemeyer. “Hugh McFayden’s done it twice before, and the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour.”

PC MLA Goertzen doesn’t buy that.

“What’s behind those suggestions is a desperate government that’s trying to run a campaign on fear,” he said.

“There’s never been any indication from anybody within our party and certainly not from our leader, Hugh McFayden, that there should be or would be the privatization of Hydro.”

“It’s ridiculous,” he added. “Hydro is a Crown Corporation. It’s a jewel for our province. It will remain a publicly owned company.”

So why is Canadian Union of Public Employees spending hundreds of thousands of advertising dollars to remind Manitobans to hold on tight to their public utility?

“It’s not so much that we’re saying that they will, it’s that we want to make sure that they don’t,” explained Liam Martin, communications representative for the CUPE.

“This is a trend across the world for Conservative governments to deregulate power utilities, and there is no reason for us to think that they’d do anything different.”

He said the sale of MTS caught unions off guard.

“The one regret that labour has is that they were caught flat-footed, and that they didn’t do any preparation work ahead of the election to make sure that people were aware of this issue. We vowed that that would not be the case again. So we’re being proactive,” said Martin.

Peter Holle, founding president of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, would like to see Hydro sold eventually. But he agrees with pundits who say it won’t happen while public opinion is strongly against it.

Published in Volume 66, Number 2 of The Uniter (September 8, 2011)