Not One Cent for Bi-Pole III?

NDP Leader Greg Selinger and each of his candidates made a bold statement during the last provincial election. Actually they made a couple. The one most people remember is the promise not to raise the PST, which they did not long after getting re-elected.

But they also made another commitment, and that was that the Bi-Pole III hydro transmission line, which is being built on the longest route imaginable due to the NDP, would not cost Manitobans one cent. In fact, the NDP said that the entire cost of the hydro line would be paid for by the export sales of hydro.

That promise sounded a bit far fetched at the time but Manitobans no doubted wanted to believe it. After all, there wasn’t much else to justify the fact that the NDP were demanding that the line go down a much longer route from the north than necessary at a cost of billions of dollars. It didn’t make environmental or economic sense so the NDP tried to justify it by suggesting that it would be free to Manitobans and that they wouldn’t have to pay a cent for it.

Yet, almost since the day the NDP was re-elected, your hydro rates have been going up- way up. The most recent increase was approved just last week when a 3.95 per cent increase to your Manitoba Hydro rates got the green light. The increase will be effective on August 1. And, according to the Public Utilities Board, nearly two thirds of the increase is going to be used to pay for the Bi-Pole III line which is now expected to cost at least $4.6 billion.

Most concerning, these rate increases, which are well above the rate of inflation, are expected to continue annually for at least the next decade. And much of the annual increase will be going to pay for Bi-Pole III.

Not only did the NDP break their promise that Bi-Pole III wouldn’t cost Manitobans a penny, the reality is that Manitobans will be paying for it for another generation and beyond. And while Premier Greg Selinger and the NDP said that it would be exports that would pay for the line, Manitoba Hydro is projecting tens of millions of dollars in losses over the next several years as a result of the changing export environment.

This is just another example of a project that the NDP have mismanaged that that Manitobans and future Manitobans will be paying for. From the beginning, planning for the Bi-Pole III line was done badly and suffered from political interference by Greg Selinger and the NDP government. And far from the commitment that it wouldn’t cost Manitobans a single penny, every Manitoban will be shelling out to pay for Bi-Pole III for years to come.