REGINA – The opposition New Democrats are again raising the prospect of a hike in power bills after Sask Power reported losses in quarter one.
“Quietly last week, Sask Power released its Q1 financial reports showing that they are in a position of historic loss,” said Aleana Young, NDP critic for SaskPower.
“SaskPower has lost $136 million just in the first quarter of this year alone. And the Government of Saskatchewan, the minister responsible (Jeremy Harrison), is saying the quiet part out loud now. In a recent interview with the Globe and Mail, he said that affordability didn't play a major role in the decisions that he was making for Sask Power.
Young said the loss “tells us one thing, and it tells us that people's power bills are going to be going up as the government's management and mismanagement of this Crown is nothing short of appalling.”
In speaking to reporters outside of SaskPower in Regina, Young said her party’s focus was on “keeping the lights on” and “keeping people working.”
“Affordability should be front of mind for everyone in this province. This Saskatchewan is unfortunately the province with the highest level of economic insecurity, and instead what we see is the Sask Party more focused on things like manipulating the Crowns, getting their cronies and insiders on Crown boards, and not focused on keeping people's power bills low, keeping Saskatchewan an affordable place for industry and investment. And that's what they need to be focused on because this Q1 report is damning. SaskPower is essentially having to borrow money to keep operations going and keep the lights on. So not only are they $136 million down, their debt is up by over $340 million and has increased their debt ratio over the last three months.”
As for the role of the carbon tax changes, Young said it has been significant. “There's some glaring inconsistencies between the government's accounting and Sass Power's, which merits some looking into. But again, this is essentially the find-out part of what the government has been doing. We see, again, Sass Power showing a $136 million loss in one quarter. Revenues are down. Expenses are up. Debt is up. Their ROE is down negative 20 per cent. It's, like I said, this is nothing short of astonishingly bad management of our crown corporations.”
Young also said SaskPower had no plan on how they will reduce their expenses.
“They have to spend a bunch of money. We need more generating capacity in this province. That's something I think we all agree on. But there's no plan from the government in terms of how they can possibly do this without raising rates.
We saw this last term, we will see this again in an election year, they don't raise rates. And then as soon as the election is done, what we saw last term was they raised power bills three times in a single calendar year. We've seen this story before.”
In response to Young’s media availability, the provincial government issued a statement in which they lambasted the NDP:
“Our government will continue to prioritize reliable, affordable power and stable rates for Saskatchewan residents, unlike the lost and reckless NDP who would shut down coal, embrace the federal government's Clean Electricity Regulations and triple power bills while compromising the reliability of our electricity grid.”
The province also pointed to their efforts seeking to remove the federally mandated industrial carbon tax “to boost affordability, competitiveness and investment in the province,” and noted Premier Scott Moe outlined this in a letter to Prime Minister Carney on May 14. They also noted Saskatchewan has paused industrial carbon tax collections and removed related costs from ending the charging of the federal carbon tax on SaskPower bills.
“Although the OBPS Program remains in legislation, no payments are being collected, and SaskPower is absorbing the cost. Since the OBPS Program has not yet been formally repealed, there is an accounting requirement for the province to continue to forecast revenue at this time. Financial reporting will be updated once the federal tax’s future is confirmed.”
