BC government is reluctant to reveal information about BC Hydro’s Site C project but news that does emerge is useful to knowledgeable analysts…
Non-standard accounting creates imaginary profits and hides failure
Future BC Hydro ratepayers will be paying excessive rates for electricity and BC Hydro financial statements have been distorted by non-standard accounting methods. These allowed the provincial government to direct payments of dividends funded by borrowing, not by real profits of the utility. But other failures and mismanagement at BC Hydro are apparent…
Opprobrium
The analysis by Richard McCandless would be headline material if corporate media were paying attention to the public interest. Burdens imposed on ratepayers measure in the billions and traditional journalists — including the ones who reported for years on far smaller sums lost to fast ferries — report almost no part of the news.
Masking BC Hydro’s financial condition
Under BC Liberals, BC Hydro stopped using regulatory accounts for rate smoothing and used them instead to hide the true state of the utility’s financial condition.
Liberal amounts of fake accounting
Residents of British Columbia understand financial pain that follows when officeholders subvert public utilities to gain political advantage and reward special interests. BC Liberals aimed to privatize public assets and services. When it could not be achieved overtly, it was done by stealth. After inevitable failures and disasters, legislators concealed them by employing a broad misinformation strategy. BC’s success in duping the public on utility matters encouraged Ontario Liberals to adopt accounting fakery in their own province…
Costing Site C Options
The government’s reckless decision to proceed with the $8.8 billion Site C dam project, without a proven medium term domestic need for the additional power, will seriously weaken BC Hydro’s already poor financial outlook. Possible options to finance the dam must not preclude the fiscal capacity of BC Hydro to reform and restore its existing financial situation, within the context of future affordable rate increases…
Hydro’s deferred costs 20x typical
Citizens should be astonished by Richard McCandless’ statement that BC Hydro’s “net income is almost fully insulated from the vagaries of actual revenue and expenditures.” Indeed, the utility books revenues not received or owing to it and treats incurred expenses as if they are assets.
De-Politicization of BC Hydro & ICBC
Richard McCandless, a retired high-level civil servant, is not a partisan for any political group but, for some years, he has been lobbying for more effective governance of British Columbia. In one […]
Let’s not forget
Liberals have been rotating a sharp-pointed metal pin with a raised helical thread within BC Hydro and ICBC but they began with BC Rail and BC Ferries. Lately, I’ve written mostly about BC Hydro but […]
in-sights.ca 
Blair Fix at _Economics from the Top Down_ also wrote two very good papers on the converion of housing into…