Staff
The little engine that could just keeps chugging along and day after day and stop after stop property rights advocate Joe Anglin keeps gaining momentum and support in his fight to force the provincial government and Alberta utility providers to answer some big questions regarding the need for new power lines funded out of the public purse.
Anglin brought his travelling road show to the Bluffton Hall on Feb. 16 where he was greeted by a crowd estimated to be 100 or more in size, a far cry from the 30 or so who were in attendance during his last presentation in Bluffton in the fall of 2009.
“I’ll be giving people the facts that are missing from this debate. The real key here is that the public has been denied the ability to really get at the facts and ask intelligent questions because information has been withheld,” Anglin said prior to the start of the meeting. “As an example, the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) and AltaLink are out there giving this open-ended statement saying that Alberta is a net importer of electricity, which is true. But they give it in the context as if we don’t have enough electricity to meet our own needs and they give it in the context as if it’s a negative, but what the facts tell us is imports keep our electricity prices down be cause we import cheap hydro power.”
Specifically, Anglin said the issue comes to a head every spring during runoff when the importation of electricity drives wholesale prices to zero, but was quick to add that because the provincial government “rigs the market”, consumers never see the benefits of price fluctuations.
“There’s no great benefit for us, but when prices skyrocket through the roof, when does the government step in to protect the consumer’s interests? There’s a lot of hypocrisy here and the public needs to know some data right from the source, which is ASEO and this government, that is hypocritical of some of the things they’ve been saying,” Anglin said. “The real question that people need to be asking is what is good for Albertans and what is a reasonable price to pay for this? We’ve never been able to get involved in that debate and that’s the real issue.”
According to AESO, the cost of replacing the province’s overhead power lines could cost upwards of $20 billion, which they expect will be funded by taxpayers, a policy many of Anglin’s supporters see as socializing the cost, but privatizing the profit.
“I’m sure that we can build transmission lines and we can build really expensive transmission lines. We can also buy every government worker a Ferrari but do we want to do that?” Anglin asked rhetorically. “So we need to be talking about what is reasonable and what is economic and what we’ve done is created a nightmare where AESO can basically just tack on billions of dollars of debt onto the public purse, and they tell us not to worry because, ‘it’s not the taxpayer (paying), it’s the ratepayer’, and that doesn’t fly.”
As for the dramatic increase in the number of seats occupied in his latest tour, Anglin said he expects to see much the same at his next two stops.
“They’ve been very good and as a matter of fact, they’re getting larger. I’ll be going down to Taber on the 24th of this month and I think there’ll be quite a large crowd down there and I’ll be speaking at the Alberta Federation of Surface Rights Groups later next month,” he said.
Whether the efforts of Anglin and his 800-member strong Lavesta Area Group to force the government and utility providers to start answering questions are successful or not, at the end of the day he said there are solutions out there, but it all comes down to educating the public.
“My goal is to get the word out. I’m not trying to convince people of anything. There are lots of solutions out here and lots of solutions available, and I’d like to get to that point but you can’t get to that point until you get people informed and this is where AESO has acted disgracefully,” Anglin said. “They have done a lousy job of getting people informed and AltaLink is guilty of the same offense. They’ve done a lousy job of telling the truth. I’m not going to accuse them of lying, but they’ve been very selective of what they’ve been saying and of what they won’t say.”