An ex-PDG of Hydro Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador estimates that his province has passed a tree by Hydro-Québec, even if the Crown corporation will have to pay tens of billions of more dollars for the Electricity by Churchill Falls.
“The Prime Minister [Andrew Furey] is concerned with his leg, but his name will be sali when people will realize what happened! ” Bill Wells, the old number in Hydro T.-N.-L, inspected in NTV last week last week.
“His uncle, Chuck Furey, was Minister of Energy in 1988. He has already said that the Labrador rivers will flow in the sea, he would never sign another contract like that of Churchill Falls”, a- he added. “He couldn’t predict that his own nephew, 27 years later, would do that!”
Mr. Wells is not the only one, in Newfoundland, to look at the new agreement with a skeptical eye. The former Prime Minister of the province, Danny Williams, also expressed reserves last week, in an interview at CBC.
According to Mr. Williams, the parameters of the agreement in principle concluded in December resemble the 1969 contract very much, which many Newfoundlanders still have across the throat.
“The agreement stipulates a low price over a very very long period,” noted the ex-Prime Minister.
-The agreement already has the green light of Newfoundland
These criticisms occur only a few days after the agreement in principle unveiled on December 12 between Hydro-Québec and Hydro Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador received the green light from elected officials.
According to this agreement, Newfoundland and Labrador would receive around $ 227 billion, a large part of which will come from the new prices that Hydro-Québec will pay for the electricity of the Churchill Falls power station for the next fifty years.
The agreement in principle also promises to put an end to the feeling of injustice arising from a 1969 contract which allowed Hydro-Québec to pay the energy of Churchill Falls at a fixed price of 0.2 cents per kWh, a price much lower than market value.
Under the new scenario, Hydro-Québec will pay 30 times more for electricity, which will bring in Newfoundland and Labrador $ 1 billion per year until 2041, then 4 billion per year after 2056.
On both sides, the agreement was described as “win-win”, but the conservative opposition in Newfoundland and Labrador refused to vote on the agreement.
