This letter is about my opinion of why the electrical generators/distributors corporations want these huge price increases for power.
The way I see it is that this is about exports to the United States, which I don’t have a problem with, but I feel that these corporations want us to pay for the upgrades and they will still retain full ownership.
Knowing the power of the Americans, they will likely pay less for the power per kilowatt than we will right here in Alberta while the Alberta users and taxpayer pays for the upgrades.
With this scenario, I have a problem. I feel these corporations should be up front with information about exporting to the United States. The corporations should be forced to tell us, “Yes we are going to export to the U.S.” or “No, we are not going to export to the U.S.”
If these corporations are going to export to the U.S., then there should be a greater cost per KW hour for the power to the U.S. than we pay locally and we should have more details on just what the great master plan secret really is, financially and trade wise.
We would just like some complete and honest answers.
I also feel that manipulating generator maintenance down time to coincide simultaneously with each other is a master plan by the corporations to falsely fabricate power shortages and brown outs.
Using a scenario of how I see this going to happen is the same as a rafter fabricating plant wanting to expand his company. To accomplish this expansion, he goes to the banks and puts together a financial package to expand and when the expansion is completed, the plant is still his and at no cost to the taxpayers. The price of the rafters will remain the same because if the price increases, the other rafter fabricators will get more work due to the cheaper price. If this expanded plant has the capacity and contracts to export to the U.S., that’s his prerogative and of no cost to the local purchasers/users or to the taxpayers.
Since deregulation of our power systems, it appears that the corporations have set themselves a yearly profit margin and to keep that percentage of profit margin, they have to get the money out of the users for any expansions or mismanagements. Nice deal when you have the province on their side.
All the information I have collected and read to date is not really clear or complete and that appears to be what the corporations and government want, and what the government is allowing.
In the Progressive Conservative party leadership campaigns, no candidate seems to be talking about this issue. Why not?
E.T. (Tom) Skoreyko
Red Deer