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SITTING DOWN TO CHAT with Hydro authors
Jamie Swift and Keith Stewart can
seem a bit daunting at first. Together, they bring
over 40 years' experience to bear on the
discussion, Swift from his long record of working
as an investigative journalist, and Stewart from
his high-level academic studies of resource use.
Yet despite the complexity of utility issues, both
feel keenly that the Ontario public can and should
take Hydro firmly in hand. Keeping the power
on--while protecting the planet and the public
pocketbook--deserves little else.
LS:
Hydro is your first writing collaboration.
What brought each of you to the word processor, as
it were?
KS:
I started working on Hydro issues back in 1990 with
the Ontario Public Interest Research Group in
Peterborough--they actually had research notes
dating back to 1975, which were really useful. At
the same time, I started graduate work on
environmental policy in Ontario. In September 2001,
after receiving my PhD, I signed up with the
Ontario Electricity Coalition. This amalgam of
labour, consumer, and environment groups
fought--and won the battle--to halt the
privatization of Hydro One, the province's
distribution grid. And as current director of the
Toronto Environmental Alliance, I've been following
it fanatically for my job as a
spokesperson.
JS:
I've done a couple of books on resource issues
through the years; one on Inco (The Big
Nickel) in 1977 and one on forestry (Cut and
Run) in 1983. I also did an article for the
Globe and Mail's Report on Business
magazine in 2002 about the privatization of Hydro,
and BTL, who I've worked with in the past, asked if
I'd be interested in doing a book on it. I was
interested, but I felt I needed to work with
someone who had more indepth knowledge. And that's
definitely Keith. As soon as I heard him speak at a
2003 anti-privatization meeting, I was
impressed.
LS: Your book
traces the history of Ontario Hydro from the 1880s
to the current day. What was it like to take a
biographical tack with such a massive
organization?
KS:
It's very important that this issue be examined at
length. As an activist, I often have to summarize
what's wrong with a government proposal in just 15
seconds--when the origins of certain policies go
back to 1977 or 1905. Sound bites are important in
certain contexts, but they're just not enough. So
we follow four threads: the institutional history
of Hydro, the capital-P politics of the relations
between governments and Hydro, the small-p politics
of the environmental movement's relationship to
Hydro, and finally the more recent moves towards
privatization.
JS:
There are books out there about Hydro that are,
shall we say, informative but not terribly
interesting. But here, as in any good story, you
have a good character--a swaggering, arrogant,
institutional character that has basically met its
demise. There's also specific places that are
vividly described, like 1975 Darlington nuclear
protests or Canada's first 1884 street lighting in
Peterborough; this device draws in readers better
than dry facts.
LS: But why
bother discussing Hydro issues right now? Haven't
Ontarians heard enough on this
issue?
KS:
They may feel like they've heard enough, but the
fact is they're not hearing what's important. The
biggest misconception out there right now is that
because we avoided a blackout this summer,
everything's just fine. When really, all the
mistakes of the past are about to be repeated.
We're seeing $3 billion set aside for restarting
nuclear reactors and we're seeing the same token
gesture towards energy conservation. If you follow
the money, we're basically repeating the same
mistakes that were made in the 70s and
80s.
JS:
The difficult thing is that electricity is like air
in our society. You don't notice it until it's not
there. And it's so cheap. The issue disappears from
the public radar screen when the price stops going
up. We're not saying bump up the prices, because
that hurts the poor, who mostly have electric
heating. It's just that prices are currently
managed to create a kind of public inertia around
the issue.
LS: You say in
your book that, despite price caps, everyone ends
up paying higher market prices for their
electricity. How does that work?
KS:
When you pay your Hydro bill right now, the amount
you pay for electricity production is capped at
about 4.3 cents/KwH. But private producers, like
Bruce Power, get their revenues topped up to market
price, which is about 6.3 cents/KwH. Who makes up
the difference? The Ontario government, aka Ontario
taxpayers--basically the same people who are
"paying less" on their Hydro bills.
JS:
Now this situation could be helped by
decentralizing the electricity system. Right now
one body decides how much we pay for all
electricity and who gets to produce it. It's all up
to "experts." We need to get away from that idea.
We need a democratically controlled energy system,
one where people can participate more directly in
decisions about electricity, which are decisions
that ultimately affect their own lives-you can't
just leave it up to the market.
LS: But wasn't
privatization and market pricing halted under the
2002 Hydro One court ruling?
KS:
That's a common misconception, but it's wrong. The
McGuinty government's program is just like the
Tories' privatization plan, but it operates in slow
motion. Basically, all existing public power
generation can stay public, but all new power
generation has to be private. If they succeed at
closing the coal plants by 2007, which is their
goal, then half our power would be private by the
time this government is up for
re-election.
JS:
Since writing the book, since looking at the
changes we have seen over the last 25 years, we can
also see the threats of taking a hard energy path.
What lessons do we learn from that? What are the
consequences of having an economy that keeps
growing exponentially based on the exploitation of
non-renewable resources? Climate change, nuclear
radiation--these are also still parts of the bigger
canvas of the situation.
LS: So what's
the next part of the story? What's going to happen
once the legislature comes back into session this
fall?
KS:
They're going to ram through Bill 100, the new
electricity legislation, right through with no more
public consulation. They've already rejected all
the proposed environmental amendments to the bill,
like prioritizing conservation. They're also in the
midst of negotiating yet another sweetheart deal
with Bruce Power, guaranteeing over $2 billion to a
private corporation--while taxpayers continue to
pay down the debt on the company's
assets!
JS:
Everything that the labour and environmental groups
warned about privatization--rising prices, poor
efficiency, blackouts--all happened in half the
time originally projected. But honestly, we don't
want to say "we told you so" again a few years down
the road. There's a whole planet and its people at
stake.
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