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Wildrose offers full ledger on electricity rate cap – all costs not on bill

May 24, 2017 | 4:27 PM

EDMONTON –  The province’s move to cap electricity rates to stop price hikes doesn’t offer the full story as all the numbers won’t be on the electrical bill. 

The proposed legislation An Act to Cap Regulated Electricity Rates  would cap rates at 6.8 cents per kilowatt hour for four years, starting by June 1 and continuing until May 31 of 2021.

However, the Wildrose Opposition has tagged the NDP’s new power Bill as an admission that the government expects retail rates for electricity to more than double within the next four years and taxpayers will be paying, in one form or another.

Wildrose Electricity and Renewables Shadow Minister, Don MacIntyre, believes the only thing the NDP has learned from the disaster in Ontario, is how to hide the true cost of the government’s transition to renewables.

“Let’s remember that the tax-payer and the rate-payer are the same person, and rapidly amassing uneccesary debt for the tax payer to handle, does not protect Albertans, nor does it make life more affordable for them at all.”

“If you look at the estimate now, we know by the government’s own projections that we’re looking at $4.437 Billion dollars more, just in compensation and fees and costs within the balancing pool and that is going to be covered off by a loan from this govenment – in addition to the costs of going 30 per cent renewables by 2030 has a projected cost anywhere from $20 to $30 Billion.”

“When the government is talking about electricity prices, they’re talking about the price that people see on their electricity bill, and with the current manipulation of how billing is going to go on the capacity market, there’s an awful lot of cost of electricity being shifted onto the tax payer that was on the bill.”

“This government has a genuine fear of seeing anything on the electricity bill indicating an increase in electricity costs, so they’re shifting the burden from the rate-payer to this other person called the tax-payer, which is essentially the very same person.”

MacIntyre also notes the regulated rate option (RRO) is a retail option available to residential consumers, small farm operators and small businesses, but excludes the vast majority of Alberta job creators who not be protected from the drastic increase in electricity rates, which gives the operators another incentive to locate outside the province.  That, in turn, will risk further job losses and the numbers on those losses have yet to be calculated.