Photo: Lethbridge News Now

By David Opinko (Lethbridge News Now)

Utility Rates

Former MLA: Albertans being gouged by “rigged” utility system

Oct 4, 2019 | 6:15 AM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – Joe Anglin made a presentation at the Royal Canadian Legion in Lethbridge on Thursday to talk about how and why Albertans are paying so much for their utilities, despite much of this energy coming from the same province.

Anglin is a former MLA for Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre as a member of the now-defunct Alberta Greens and later as an independent, as well as a leader of the Lavesta Area Group, an association that fights against transmission expansions and deregulation.

He claims the energy sector, when it comes to supplying electricity and natural gas to consumers, is rigged against the average person.

“We presume the regulators are there for the public interest – the average taxpayers, ratepayer, the citizens of Alberta – but what the facts show us is the regulators are not doing their job representing us. The legislation is constructed so that they can’t represent our interests.”

“The way we’ve constructed that legislation, the way the courts have interpreted that legislation, it is, in my opinion, been an abusive authority that certain regulators are just running unchecked with authorities and powers that they were never intended to have.”

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In regards to the regulators, he is specifically talking about the Alberta Energy Regulator, the Alberta Utilities Commission, and the National Energy Board.

Anglin gives the example that a homeowner might only use $30-40 worth of electricity in a given month, yet their bill comes out to more than $200. This is partly due to the range of extra fees and hidden charges many residents and business owners are not aware of.

The other major factor at hand is how the sector has been de-regulated and traded between companies.

“When SNC Lavalin first purchased the transmission system that they purchased, they paid an overinflated price for that and we knew that. The question is, when you overpay for something as a business person, how do you intend to make that money back? In the utilities, it’s real clear, you get the consumer to pay it.”

He claims the same thing happened when SNC Lavalin later sold the transmission system to Berkshire Hathaway.

“If you know a bull sells for $5,000, why would you pay $8,000?…This is what they did with our transmission system, they paid $8,000. I sat in the room with Berkshire Hathaway and I said, ‘You’re overpaying. How are do you plan to make that back?’ They won’t answer that question.”

In order to make any significant progress on these issues and to see utility rates get back to what is deemed “fair”, Anglin says the people need to make elected government officials aware of what is happening and to put pressure on them.

“I’m proposing that, for our citizens, for our taxpayers, we should be cutting our costs at the pump in half, we take our royalties in barrels of bitumen. We could easily drive down the price of retail in this province, and particularly with home natural gas and electricity.

“The purpose behind that theory is we fix those prices extremely low because, as an energy-producing jurisdiction, we can do it. All the others do it in the world, why not us? That would make this a very attractive place for other industries to look to come to Alberta because we have the labour force, we have a low tax base, and we would have a low energy cost.”

Right now, Anglin says Alberta is the only energy-producing jurisdiction that charges its own residents world prices for retail energy.