It’s just gone from bad, to much worse! There were plenty of reasons before for Manitobans to have objections about the NDP government’s plan to run a new Bi-Pole hydro transmission line down the west side of the province even though a route on the east side of Lake Winnipeg is much shorter.
For starters, an east side route would, because of the fact it is hundreds of kilometers shorter, reduce the amount of electricity that is lost through line-loss. Line-loss is the natural loss of electricity from hydro lines and the longer the line the more electrical power is lost. That is one of the reasons that an east side route would be more environmentally friendly.
Of course, there is also a steep financial cost to building the line on the longer west side route. For years, the NDP have been saying that the cost of the line would be $2.2 billion on the west side. That cost is hundreds of millions of dollars more than building an east side route. But the news got much worse this past week.
On Monday a leaked document was made public by the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation that showed hydro officials now estimate that the cost of running the Bi-Pole line on the west side of Manitoba has ballooned to $4.1 billion. That is nearly double the cost estimate that the NDP government had been relying on before.
Of course, this shouldn’t be a surprise. The NDP isn’t particularly good at budgeting for projects. The most recent example of this is the new football stadium which jumped in price about $85 million in the span of a few months. And of course other projects like the Manitoba Hydro office tower in downtown Winnipeg was also hundreds of millions of dollars over budget.
Just as disturbing as the new cost figures is the fact that the NDP tried so hard to keep the public from learning about them. The document showing that the cost of Bi-Pole III had nearly doubled was produced by Manitoba Hydro staff in October of last year. Yet in responding to questions on 17 different occasions after that date the NDP Minister for Hydro, Rosann Wowchuk and Premier Greg Selinger insisted that the cost of the Bi-Pole line on the west side of the province was still $2.2 billion.
It’s hardly a wonder that the NDP didn’t want news of this new updated cost to be released. Manitobans across the province are already upset with the NDP government’s foolish decision to run the Bi-Pole III line down a longer, less safe, more expensive and less environmentally route than the east side option.
There is some good news in all of this however. And that is that there is still time to change this decision and move the route to the east side of the province if the NDP government is defeated in the October provincial election.
