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Committee hears Selinger's sales pitch for power grid

By: Bruce Owen

Posted: 12/8/2011 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

Bruce Bumstead / Brandon Sun archives Premier Greg Selinger is lobbying for an east-west power grid. (BRUCE BUMSTEAD/BRANDON SUN)

Premier Greg Selinger made a last-minute appearance at a Senate committee meeting in Winnipeg on Wednesday to sing the praises of Manitoba Hydro and to lobby for an east-west power grid so Hydro can sell even more power.

"The east-west grid provides an opportunity for us to start having a vision for a grid across the whole country for energy-security purposes," Selinger told the seven-member Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources. "We think hydroelectricity can be part of a solution on having a good reputation for the whole country on clean-energy strategy."

Selinger was the last presenter in daylong public hearings on the future of Canada's energy needs. He followed Jim Carr, president of the Manitoba Business Council, who spoke about the need by governments to move towards a Canadian clean-energy strategy.

Selinger said for the most part power generated in Canada moves more into more lucrative markets south of the border rather than from province to province to offset high energy costs for provinces that rely more on coal or nuclear power.

He also said creation of an east-west grid -- a plan considered by many to be hugely unfeasible because of its cost -- would be a massive boost to the national economy.

"Back in the day, 30 or 40 years ago, they thought hydro development was totally impractical because they couldn't figure out how to transmit it to the south," Selinger said. "Manitoba Hydro is now a world leader in high-voltage direct-current transmission because we solved that problem."

He said Manitoba is currently looking at selling power to Saskatchewan and even Alberta.

The Senate committee, which stops in Regina today, is to put together a report by June on how to protect Canada's energy supply. The committee has already held public hearings in British Columbia, Alberta, Quebec and Atlantic Canada.

Selinger, one of the few premiers to address the committee, also called on it to streamline the approval process for massive projects like northern hydroelectric generating stations, but without shortcutting environmental and aboriginal concerns.

He said the $1.3 billion Wuskwatim dam near Thompson took four years to be approved. The first of its three generator-turbines should be in service later this winter and the last unit by spring.

"Four years is a long time before you even start building so it's a decade before you get a dam finished," he said. "I'm quite happy to get re-elected for another decade, but that's usually longer than the life of a government that initiates a project like that."

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 8, 2011 B4

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