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Power rates rising as PUB explores Hydro finances

Whistleblower allegations public?

By: Mary Agnes Welch

Posted: 02/10/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

Power rates will go up nearly three per cent in April, a stop-gap measure while Manitoba Hydro's regulators prepare for a mega-hearing on the Crown corporation's risk and a whistleblower's allegations.

The Public Utilities Board ruled Tuesday that rates will go up 2.9 per cent starting April 1, a hike that will cost homeowners with gas furnaces about $2 extra a month. Manitobans who heat their homes with electricity will pay about $3.80 extra a month.

The rate hike is an interim one meant to tide Manitoba Hydro over until the end of the year while the PUB spends the summer and fall delving into Hydro's finances, its dam-building projects, its export prices and its risk.

Those hearings, slated to start June 1, could give Manitobans their first detailed glimpse of whistleblower allegations that Hydro has misjudged the amount of power it has available for Manitobans and for export, wasted more than $1 billion and developed flawed financial forecasts.

The whistleblower, a New York-based consultant, will be asked to testify at the PUB hearings and could even be compelled to appear, though that requires some legal manoeuevring since she lives outside the board's jurisdiction.

"There is a strong indication the New York consultant is prepared to co-operate with the PUB," said PUB lawyer Bob Peters.

The Free Press has not named the whistleblower since details of her allegations became public last fall. There is now a publication ban on her name as part of a related court case filed by Manitoba Hydro.

Over the next several weeks, there could be internal wrangling over what portions of Hydro's documents become public during the hearing.

Hydro has filed more than 25 internal risk reports with the PUB -- many containing "blue pages" indicating Hydro wants the information kept confidential because the pages contain sensitive commercial information like export prices.

The board will go through all the blue pages to determine if they really ought to be kept secret, and consumer and environmental groups will also have a chance to challenge the confidentiality provisions. The whistleblower's reports are among those that could be made partly or entirely public come June.

maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.ca

Dissenting voice

NOT everyone on the Public Utilities Board wants to give Manitoba Hydro a break.

Kathy Avery Kinew, a social worker and policy analyst, wrote a dissenting opinion saying Hydro should be denied the 2.9 per cent rate increase. She chided the utility for repeatedly missing filling deadlines, delaying the hearing process and failing to come up with a good low-income rate program even though the PUB has asked for one repeatedly.

She said she'd rather hear all the evidence about Hydro's upcoming capital projects and its risks before dinging customers with a rate hike, especially when Hydro is still making a profit this year.

It's extremely rare for a member of the PUB to issue a dissenting opinion. The last time board officials recall it happening was in the early or mid-1990s.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 10, 2010 A4

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