Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The government tabled their response to the electricity rate review and Power Corporation review recently. I would like to provide some additional perspectives on that.

First I would like to start with a few positive results of the recommendations in that report. The first is that a reduction in power rates for commercial users is real and especially in the very expensive communities. We need additional local economic development and this will hopefully help businesses with that.

The second is collapsing the rate system from 33 to seven rate zones. Surely we will enjoy a modest administrative gain there and a slight reduction in cost.

Finally, the government has agreed to stabilize rates, with no additional costs for the next two years. I think that will be a welcome relief to our ratepayers, although at what cost?

Mr. Speaker, what is the government really doing here? In my mind, they are largely simply shifting our costs from upfront rate rider ratepayer costs to behind the scenes costs to taxpayers, and they’re doing this in three ways. The first is buying out the rate riders at the rate of $3 million per year for the next two years, and, by the way, where is that money coming from? That’s money coming from the $60 million fund slated supposedly for energy efficiency and renewable energy, real reductions in costs. So we’re getting this artificial transfer of dollars to buy out the rate riders.

Secondly, we’re forgiving the dividends that the Power Corp normally pays to the government, which indirectly we use to help pay the subsidies. So, again, the taxpayer is picking up those subsidies which used to be minimized through those dividends.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, we’re adjusting our thresholds in communities where in every single diesel community the average consumption is already well below the current threshold of 700. We’re raising it to 1,000. We’re telling people go spend more energy, use more energy and we’ll provide the huge subsidies to cover those costs, which I don’t think is the message we really want, and it was the one saving grace of the current system. So that reduces the personal incentive to reduce energy use and offering these up as savings to local resident users is the ultimate shell game because, of course, those residents are not using that energy now.