View From the Legislature

Following years of NDP mismanagement of Manitoba Hydro, Manitoba’s most important crown corporation is reporting that it is expecting to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in the years ahead. And while the NDP will provide a number of different excuses, their fingerprints are all over the red ink.

Manitoba Hydro has told that Public Utilities Board that it expects to begin losing money in 2018-2019 with a loss of $75 million. It then expects to lose money for at least the following five years of $102 million, $164 million, $192 million, $174 million and $109 million respectively.

How is it that Hydro, which has long been described as a key economic engine for the province, is poised to become an economic drain in the years ahead? The answer is in how the NDP government has mismanaged and meddled in the affairs of Hydro.

It began with the repeated raiding of Hydro profits. Instead of allowing the crown corporation to build up needed reserves, the NDP took the money. Then, when that ran out, they began piling on taxes and fees on the corporation. Water rental fees, essentially a tax on the water that the NDP charged Hydro, skyrocketed. And if this wasn’t enough, the NDP began meddling in how Hydro is run. For example, it demanded that the new Bi-Pole III hydro transmission line be built on one of the longest routes imaginable, instead of the much shorter route down from the north along the east side of Lake Winnipeg. This cost Manitoba Hydro and its ratepayers billions of dollars.

The NDP have also refused to stop the billions in new spending despite the fact that the demand for export hydro power has been negatively impacted by economic conditions in the United States and the new sources of energy being discovered and utilized. Instead, the NDP seem determined to have Manitobans subsidize hydro rates for export customers.

The projected losses by Manitoba Hydro are coming despite the fact the NDP are committed to increasing Hydro rates on Manitobans by nearly 4% a year for the next several years.

In response to all of this, what action has the NDP taken? They have now changed the way the province reports its financial statements to remove Hydro and other crown corporations from the equation. So instead of taking real measures to try to put the crown corporation back on a solid financial path, the NDP have just decided to remove it from the province’s books despite the fact that it is Manitobans who are both the owners and the ultimate financial backers of Hydro.

Hydro has been and still is a major part of Manitoba’s future success. But the NDP’s raiding and mismanagement of this crown jewel is putting that future at risk.