Provincial government shafts Surrey Schools

The Surrey Leader nailed it. More specifically Kevin Diakiw did. I can't find the article online but the printed edition has an inspiring article that states residential growth in Surrey contributed $585M to BC coffers over last decade then points out they only devoted 18.4% of that to building new schools. It's not surprising that article isn't available online. It was quickly replaced with a Christy Clark Corporate spin and photoshoot announcing new schools. Better late than never.

Recently there has been a lot of hype in the media about how Surrey has to slow down it's new construction because there aren't enough schools. Then I start thinking wait a minute, building new schools is a provincial budget not a civic budget. Then we hear that some kids in Surrey might have to be bussed into Vancouver to go to school because there isn't enough room in Surrey. But we discover that Vancouver is facing the possibility of closing schools that are full. Why? To save money because of their being over budget.

Once again we see the ugly face of the BC Hydro fraud reveal itself. In Christy Clark's' fudge it budget she said she was going to balance the budget by extracting a dividend from BC Hydro knowing full well that was a lie. The Campbell government created the BC Hydro crisis and their ballooning deficit made it impossible for Christy Clark to extract a dividend to fix her fudge it budget. Instead they had to lend the money to BC Hydro to pay the dividend they didn't have to *balance* Christy's budget.

The real crisis was created by the one and only Gordon Campbell who privatized the power brokers that sell power to the public company at above market rates so his campaign contributors could literally make a fortune off the taxpayers back. If he hadn't done that, BC Hydro's debt would not be ballooning out of control and we could in fact have extracted a dividend from them to balance the budget and fund more schools. This is the same fraud that created the Greek Financial Crisis. What was public money became private then disappeared. Buyer Beware.



BC Hydro's Amazingly Bad Deal for Ratepayers

The Tyee reported that "Not only had B.C. Hydro agreed to buy three times the power requested in the tender, it had done so at locked-in prices far above projected market rates. We give big firms $15 billion. We get higher prices, no assets, no guarantee of supply."

Financial Fraud at BC Hydro

The Northern Insights bog reported that: "In fiscal year 2015, BC Hydro purchased 13,377 GWh of electricity from independent power producers for $1,064,000,000 ($79,540 per GWh). In the same period, BC Hydro sold 14,020 GWh to large industrial users for $748,000,000 ($53,250 per GWh). In other words, each GWh of power purchased from IPPs was resold for $26,290 less that it cost. However, the loss was not limited to $352 million since the utility had to pay distribution, administration and other overhead costs in addition to the power acquisition price."

How BC Hydro Wound Up $76 Billion in Debt

The Watershed Sentinel reported that "By 2015, BC Hydro had 105 operating projects on contract, nominally capable of 18,902 gigawatt hours (GWh) of energy, with 3,098 GWh to come from 23 IPP projects still in development. In 2015 it purchased 13,377 GWh of energy at a cost of $1,064 million. That is 24 per cent of BC Hydro’s domestic supply at 76 per cent of its cost of power; $79.54 per megawatt hour (MWh), compared to $8.11 per MWh for power from BC Hydro’s dams. This describes the haemorrhage of cash which is now flowing out of ratepayers’ pockets through BC Hydro to IPPs. The contractual commitments add up to $54 billion over 56 years."

Note: If you move to Surrey and your kids can't get into a school they can always sign up for Surrey Connect online. Evidently it's called SAIL now - Surrey Acadamy of Innovative Learning. That would make a lot more sense then bussing it all he way into Vancouver every day.