Anarchist Mountain Community Society President Mark McKenney (right) spoke to MLA Linda Larson in December at a meeting about two-tier electricity rates. The society asked Larson to help arrange a meeting with Energy Minister Bill Bennett. It took four months to arrange a conference call and by that time the decision was made. (Richard McGuire file photo)
A critic of two-tier electricity rates says he feels angry and frustrated after a conference call with B.C. Energy Minister Bill Bennett, which he believes was sabotaged by a senior bureaucrat.
Nick Marty said the call to the minister took place last Tuesday – nearly four months after he asked MLA Linda Larson to help arrange a meeting with the minister.
He now believes the bureaucrat delayed the call until it was too late to change the policy.
Larson sat in on the call, as did Mark McKenney, president of the Anarchist Mountain Community Society. The bureaucrat, Les MacLaren, assistant deputy minister (ADM) for electricity and alternative energy, also participated in the call.
Marty has been arguing that FortisBC’s Residential Conservation Rate (RCR) discriminates against rural residents who don’t have access to natural gas and, therefore, depend on electricity for space and water heating.
FortisBC and the British Columbia Utilities Commission (BCUC) argue that the RCR encourages energy conservation because electricity customers pay for any consumption above 1600 kilowatt-hours bi-monthly at a higher rate.
But Marty, who has worked for years on energy conservation policy at the federal level, argues that about 70 per cent of electricity customers, who saw their overall rates drop with RCR, actually have no incentive to conserve.
Those without access to natural gas, however, are charged for most of their electricity at the higher tier rate and are unable to conserve enough to bring their bills into the first tier.
Bennett heard contradictory arguments from Marty and MacLaren. Marty said the ADM disputed his claim that 75 per cent of his electric is in the higher tier, even though Marty said his most recent bill showed 77 per cent of his consumption is in block two.
“I don’t believe that my electricity consumption is particularly high for someone who uses electricity for space and water heating,” said Marty. “My house is only one storey with 2,080 square feet of heated space. I use geothermal heating and my house is insulated to R-2000 levels.”
In the end, Bennett said the debate should take place at the BCUC.
The day after the call, however, Marty found that a letter had just been posted to the BCUC website saying the regulatory agency won’t reopen the RCR issue until 2017. That letter was sent to FortisBC on March 26, but this decision wasn’t mentioned during the call with the minister.
In fact, says Marty, the bureaucrat told the minister the decision had not yet been made.
“The (BCUC) … finds there is no evidence that the rate is not achieving conservation as intended and, therefore, there is no reason to make changes to the rate at this time,” says the letter from Erica Hamilton, BCUC secretary.
“So in effect the decision had already been made before I went into that meeting,” said Marty. “I feel set up. They postponed the actual meeting with the minister until after the decision had already been made. We asked to talk to the minister back in December, but they pushed it off and pushed it off.”
Marty doesn’t fault Bennett or Larson.
“I think genuinely that the minister doesn’t really understand the problems with the two-tier system and how it’s discriminating against us and the impact it’s having on us,” he said. “I think his officials have been shielding him from that information.”
The officials, he suggests, were involved in the initial design of the RCR and for them not to defend it would be tantamount to admitting they were wrong, he said.
An online petition started by Anarchist Mountain residents to protest the RCR now has more than 600 signatures.
Marty wonders if residents should now start sending the minister details of their electricity bills to show how the RCR is affecting them.
He realizes, however, that letters sent to the minister don’t reach him and responses come from the officials.
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
