It is not normal that our electricity is managed in the dark. That Hydro-Québec rates be set on a discretionary basis, without established and transparent criteria.
Unfortunately, Quebec is preparing to open the door to arbitrariness even wider with its Bill 2 which will set the rules of the game for large industrial customers and which will cap the increase in residential rates.
To understand the problem, we have to go back to 2019, when the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) had the bad idea of tying residential rates to inflation, instead of leaving it to the Régie de l’énergie to establish a reasonable increase, based on Hydro-Québec’s costs.
The goal was to simplify the process. But it was written in the sky that it would turn sour. As a matter of fact, the government is now obliged to cap the tariff increase at 3%, which would have reached 6.4% this year, with galloping inflation.
But why 3%? Why not 2% or 4%? Or zero? The government explains that this is the upper end of the Bank of Canada’s inflation-control range. Frankly, it’s nonsense. It’s management on the corner of the table.
It is not up to politicians to determine the increase in electricity rates, but up to the Régie de l’énergie to carry out the exercise, at intervals of 2 or 3 years, rather than every year as before, in order to reduce task.
But the reign of arbitrariness does not stop at residential. It also affects industrial customers who have become too numerous for us to be able to satisfy them all. There are so many new projects on the table that the equivalent of 13 complexes like the one on the Romaine River would have to be built to meet demand.
As this is not realistic, Quebec will instead allow Hydro-Quebec to refuse to supply electricity to certain projects that require high power (five megawatts). Instead of first come, first served, the new formula will make it possible to select the most promising projects for Quebec.
Very good.
Except that Bill 2 provides that the winning projects will be determined by the office of the Minister of Economy, Innovation and Energy, under criteria that remain to be specified.
How are we going to decide? According to the number of jobs created? GHG reduction? Will we favor the battery sector, so dear to the CAQ, even if it feeds the flow of cars on the roads? Will we rather go for green steel or other sustainable industrial projects?
We need more transparency. Specific and measurable criteria. And the minister should be required to disclose the rationale for each of these decisions. It is a matter of sound governance.
Otherwise, the public will have the impression that Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon can act like Julius Caesar, who decided the life or death of a gladiator with the flick of his thumb.
But let’s give credit where credit is due. The CAQ is very well advised to prepare a public commission on the energy future of Quebec, next spring.
Crowds of questions arise insofar as Bill 2 that the CAQ is piloting at the moment is only an appetizer that will set the table for a much broader reform.
A food for thought: insofar as Hydro-Quebec is now refusing industrial customers, should the market be opened up to competition? If the state monopoly is no longer able to respond to all, why prevent private suppliers of sustainable electricity from doing so in its place?
But still it is necessary that this consultation is not only a spectacle to put on a good face in the public opinion and that, once the extinguished lights, one continues to manage in the dark.