Whistleblower denied status at PUB hearing

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This article was published 27/03/2010 (5752 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A New York consultant who blew the whistle on possible financial risks facing Manitoba Hydro won’t be at the table when the Public Utilities Board (PUB) starts its mega hearing into power rates later this year.

The regulator ruled Friday that the whistleblower — whose identity cannot be revealed because of a court order — will not be given intervener status at the hearing, as she requested earlier this month.

However, PUB vice-chairman Robert Mayer said the board would like the consultant to give advice on Hydro’s risk to the independent experts hired by the PUB for the hearings.

“The Board is grateful that the (whistleblower) is willing to co-operate and therefore defines a role and a process which the Board believes will achieve a useful contribution,” Mayer wrote.

But the whistleblower said she isn’t interested in playing a limited role at the hearings. “I won’t be meeting with the PUB experts under these conditions,” the whistleblower said in an email response to the Free Press.

She said it will now be a one-sided show controlled by Hydro, which will use the hearings as an opportunity to tarnish her reputation and to dismiss her reports. “It’s better not to be involved in a superficial investigation,” said the consultant whose work claims to have found Hydro lost more than $1 billion over the last five years and could even face bankruptcy and blackouts due to bad drought planning and export pricing.

“It just can’t be done in the terms the PUB suggest.”

Mayer said the board was concerned that the whisteblower would use the hearings as a forum in her ongoing dispute with Hydro, which has denied her allegations.

The consultant wanted the PUB to cover her legal costs to participate in the hearing, estimated to be between $300,000 and $800,000. The PUB said it would only pay her up to a maximum of $26,500 in a limited role as adviser to its experts.

The whistleblower’s request for intervener status was opposed by Manitoba Hydro, the Consumers’ Association of Canada/Manitoba Society of Seniors, an industry power users group, and an environmental group, who all argued that the woman has no stake in the hearings and doesn’t meet the traditional criteria for intervener.

The PUB did grant intervener status to the Southern Chiefs Organizations, which represents 36 First Nation communities.

The SCO says it opposes the building of a new hydro transmission line down the west side of the province until a full audit is done of how they’ve been affected by past hydro development. Bipole III is to carry electricity south from northern hydro dams.

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca