B.C. Energy Minister Richard Neufeld announced yesterday his government's plan to introduce sustainable energy sources and make the province energy self-sufficient by 2016. For those of you scoring at home, 'sustainable' refers to steadily increasing rates for BC Hydro customers, and 'self-sufficient' means that the Gordon Campbells of the world can live comfortably off their Alcan shares.
This page has his own goal of pointing out that British Columbia was energy self-sufficient in 1996. As some of you may recall, BC Hydro ran record surpluses and sold kilowatt hours by the bushel to California and Alberta, two jurisdictions that drank the toxic, battery-acid laced Kool-Aid of electricity privatization and deregulation. Look in your shoebox or behind the fridge for your old BC Hydro bill from before the Liberals took power in 2001 and have been giving us little sips of the same poison since. Notice that part on your old bills that says "rate freeze" or "rebate"?
If you destroyed all records of that period because the Vancouver Sun and Global TV declared it the "decade of decline", "dismal decade", or "NDP Holocaust", you'll just have to take this page's word for it. Believe it or not, there was a time when Hydro was allowed to build their own plants (so we weren't importing 12 to 15% of our power as Neufeld claims), you weren't being billed from a numbered corporation in Bermuda, and the Ministry of Energy didn't set goals we had in truth accomplished a decade earlier.
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