Wanna Buy A Dam?

Hopefully the Saskatchewan Government will start doing the same at some point with some of the crowns, but then the NDP will scream bloody murder.

It looks like the Manitoba NDPs are smarter than those in Saskatchewan. They do it on the sly and their lefty press friends give them a pass. Whereas in Saskatchewan most of the press would be broadcasting the news daily.

You should read the link before commenting, Ken.

Manitoba following BC's lead. What could possibly go wrong? You think a few road closures are inconvenient? Wait 'til they turn the power and the water off.

Government. It's in the business of giving your stuff away.

Oops, should have read the whole story and not just skimmed it. I remembered that Manitoba Telephone was privatized some time ago. Wishful thinking. Scratch the whole comment.

However, the Sask Party government hopefully will start to dismantle the huge array of crowns in this province and sell to private enterprises rather than provide an indefinite welfare program for some.

There is too much government involved in business.

NDP ruining another province?

Of course, the NDP don't see this as privatizing because they aren't actually getting any money from it, nor is it being sold to individual "investors".

It's amazing the contortions the NDP can go through to justify doing something like this.

NDP selling public infrastructure built with tax dollars to people(who consider themselves a foreign nation) who pay no taxes and who paid nothing for their share of the purchase of said infrastructure while profiting from the ownership of the infrastructure.

There seems to be a frightful symmetry to this madness that can only be appreciated from a socialist point of view.

First thought about this story was that the MSM was shirking it's job yet again and then I wondered why the Manitoba opposition parties weren't making political hay out of this.

People calling themselves conservatives should not be opposed to privatizing Crown assets on principle. Cutting in FN governance's with equity positions is not quite the same thing.

Ironically it's leftist governments that have the most success at privatization. That was the experience in New Zealand during the Eighties. When the mainstream media is an appendage of the Party, you can do no wrong.

Putting these essential assets in the hands of proven financial managers. What could possibly go wrong? Buying Transalta and Capital Power stock as I write.

Kate, there's another angle you're missing. The aboriginals have demonstrated an ability to block any project they don't like anywhere they claim to have treaty rights. In the 1990s, in alliance with RFK Jr. they stopped Hydro Quebec in its tracks on Grande Balleine. Right now, it's very unclear as to whether or not Gateway will go ahead without a huge buy-off of the aboriginal interests. McKenzie Valley will probably never happen in my lifetime because of the Dene.

The head of Manitoba Hydro is Bob Brennan. He's been the head since the late 1980s, which means he's apolitical having served both NDP and Tory administrations. No one in his right mind would accuse him of being a lefty socialist. What he is is thoroughly pragmatic. Until the political process finds a way to deal with aboriginal obstructions to development, this is the kind of pattern which is going to happen all over Canada. Why do you think that Ontario never expanded its electricity purchases from Manitoba? Very simple. The aboriginal obstruction to building a new transmission line is insuperable at this time. In southern Ontario, the transmission lines going through Six Nations have been repeatedly sabotaged.

These are the constraints into which companies are forced by public and political refusal to confront aboriginal claims squarely and deal with them expeditiously.

cgh @ 2:34:

Excellent info. Thanks!

So they're privatizing-good for Manitoba. They're doing a better job than Wall of Saskatchewan, who certainly acted as a wall to any actual market reform of the province.

cgh

As long as the SCC has the mentality it does, there will be no end to the buying-off of FNs. It's now part of their culture. All resource use on Crown land and increasingly, private land in Canada involves having to grease the FNs in some way. Treaties or not, the SCC has bought into the white pimp - guilt complex industry. Look at what its done for the average person living on the reservation. Canada's greatest (racially segregated) national disgrace!

That's what happened in NS, we once had a successful provincially owned hydro and they sold it with the promise if they didn't make X number of dollars profit the rate payers would make up the short fall. If they don't make said profit they can raise our rate until that is achieved, my hydro has gone up almost 60 percent in under six years.

You can just guess with the dippers put the money. In their own pockets.
Manitoba is in a socialist spiral that Saskatchewan was once in. Pretty soon the only people living their will be the Indians.
Vote NDP if your into decline.

There was one important fact left out of the story.

The NDP will loan the indian bands the millions who will then use those millions to buy a share of the dam.

That should read" the NDP will loan the indian bands the millions, who, "after skimmimg off a few million for the leaders", will then use what's left of those millions to buy a shar of the dam.

This can be an example of soicalist neat trick. They find somebody (apparently natives) to buy into a dam.

The whole deal is still is socialist, though the NDP socialists are not to blame, it's the other guy.

Take a guess where the other guy is getting the money to pay for something the guy has no clue about whatsoever.

Well, take a guess, the federal government maybe?

Socialist schemes are never ending.

Squawk all you want, John, but the fact is that a utility has a business to run, dams to build and load to meet. If the government won't do anything useful about clearing away obstructions, then the utility will just have to find its own way.

It's happening all over the place. Six Nations occupied High Park in Toronto for 12 days, claiming it was an ancient burial ground, until Toronto police finally ordered them out. It's going to go on until the public finally gets fed up enough to tell the federal and provincial government to put a stop to it.

And if you think the FN is the only bunch encroaching on private property rights, think again. You are in serious trouble if you have a species protected under SPEA (Species At Risk Act) on your property. CEAA and the various provincial environmental assessment statutes can impose massive curbs and outside controls on what you do with your property for anything defined as a project. Fortunately, CEAA only applies to Crown projects and property, but the ENGOs try to extend this to all property every time the Act is reviewed (every 10 years.) And by the way, a sign posted within 20 m of a water body is defined as a project under CEAA.

Lev, you really don't know what you're talking about, do you? The natives aren't buying anything. They're extorting money from the utility in the form of equity. This topic isn't about socialism; it's about policy and development extortion practiced by the FN.

LAS: did you fail reading and comprehension in grade 2? This isn't about privatization; it's about extortion.

Rose: NS Power is granted a fixed rate of return. This is typical of all provincial electric utility monopolies. Typically it's set at about 10% rate of return, which is what the utility needs to run its operations, maintain its reserve funds for repairs (had a lot of storm damage this year, didn't you?) and provide a small increment for a capital reserve fund. However, NS Power is predominantly coal-fired, and coal has increased greatly in price over the last five years. So most of your increased electricity rate is coming from increases in the cost of fossil fuel. Unlike Alberta which uses its own domestic fuel and has a domestic coal cost structure, NS uses a lot of imported coal and is thus vulnerable to changes in the global price of steam coal. A part of that is that shipping costs have also risen, thanks in part to increases in fuel and in bottlenecks in the shipping industry.

No, NS Power was not a successful utility. It was loaded with debt because the provincial government kept loading one rate freeze after another on the utility, starving it of cash. When it was sold, a massive amount of investment had to be made to refurbish old infrastructure, particularly on the transmission system. You also had a province with way too much debt on the public books and had to sell assets to avoid raising taxes. In short, you were taking cheap rates today by deferring costs through debt until tomorrow. That pyramid scheme came to an end when NS Power was sold. Now you have to pay the full costs and not defer them to the next generation.

Worse still, your entire electricity supply comes from five small, old coal and oil fired stations and three tiny gas CTUs. Most of your generation, except for tiny Point Aconi on Cape Breton, is nearly 40 years old. It's clapped out and needs replacing. Which is why NS is so happy about the lower Churchill deal. But Labrador dams and TWO submarine transmission cables don't come cheap.

So essentially what's happened is that you are paying for things now that you should have paid for in the past and didn't.