PRIORITY
OF DEBATE
Impact of SaskEnergy Proposed Rate Increases
The
Speaker:
— Members, before orders of the day, I want to make a statement.
Today at 11:20 a.m. I received a request from the member for Swift
Current, a written request pursuant to rule 19, to move priority
of debate motion. In examining whether or not the matter is proper
to be discussed, I find that the member for Swift Current has made
sufficient case. The issue at hand concerns the administrative
responsibilities of government, and could come within the scope of
ministerial action. In considering whether this matter could be
brought before the House by other means within a reasonable time,
I note that there does not appear to be any obvious alternative
way for this issue to be debated within the next few days.
Therefore I call upon the member to move his priority of debate
motion.
Some
Hon. Members:
Hear, hear!
Mr.
Wall:
— Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate your
ruling in that regard. We on this side of the House, and we hope
that members on the government side of the House, believe this to
be a very urgent matter that this legislature would be dealing
with. If this rate hike is approved, it will be the largest
utility rate hike in the history of our province. And as we tried
to outline in question period, Mr. Speaker, it will affect every
facet of life in the province of Saskatchewan. It’ll affect
people in rural Saskatchewan, be they in business or be they in
the service of providing health care and education. It’ll most
definitely affect agriculture, Mr. Speaker. It’ll affect
specifically health care in both rural and urban areas. As the
member for Kelvington-Wadena has pointed out, it will drastically
impact on schools in our province, and on the budgets that school
boards have already passed, I would point out, Mr. Speaker, in
terms of the fiscal year that’s underway now. And, Mr. Speaker,
it will impact on manufacturing and it will impact on small
business. Now we on this side of the House understand as well as
any, that the world price for commodities such as natural gas will
and must have an impact on our economy here in the province of
Saskatchewan. We understand that completely. We believe in
liberalized trade, Mr. Speaker. We understand that whether we like
it or not all the time, this is truly a global economy and because
of that, not only will we benefit from international markets, but
sometimes we will be price takers from international markets. But
in the case of natural gas, Mr. Speaker, that isn’t even
necessarily the case that we are only price takers. Because that
would imply that we don’t benefit at all when the price of gas
or the price of oil goes to the roof, as we have seen it do over
the last period of months. In fact, Mr. Speaker, we are one of
only two provinces in the Dominion that are benefactors to any
significant degree from high energy prices. Alberta and
Saskatchewan, as major oil and gas producers, clearly are
benefactors when the price of natural gas goes to the roof or the
price of West Texas crude, Mr. Speaker, because the province
generates royalty revenue off of that. In fact, Mr. Speaker, this
government’s sitting on $400 million in windfall oil and gas
royalty that they’ve generated from this sector. So the same
situation that does cause consumers some difficulty — i.e., the
high cost of their monthly gas bill; i.e., the price of gas at the
pumps — also affords Saskatchewan people a benefit in that they
are owners of the resource and therefore are paid a royalty by the
private sector who developed those resources. And that royalty
accrues to the government. But, Mr. Speaker, there is absolutely
no benefit, no benefit for Saskatchewan people if the government
that collects that revenue has its priorities wrong in terms of
either the expenditure of those royalty revenues, or perhaps the
saving, as the case may be. And that seems to be the problem with
this government, Mr. Speaker. And it’s why we have stood on
countless occasions in this Assembly to exhort the government to
treat that royalty, that windfall oil and gas royalty, like it is
the people’s money and not like it is their own. Because it’s
surely the former, Mr. Speaker, make no doubt about that. More
recently though, Mr. Speaker, last week, in fact the very day that
. . . And the member for Saskatoon Nutana was here on Friday. She
will know, if she bothered to check the Internet . . . and I’m
not sure they do, because they proved today they aren’t aware of
the current price for natural gas in either this province or
Alberta. But she would know if she was here on Friday, that the
price for natural gas that day was $5 a gigajoule. Well actually
it was a little less than $5; it was $5 per thousand cubic metre.
And actually a thousand cubic metres is about 95 per cent a
gigajoule. So the price was more around $4.75, Mr. Speaker, the
day that we rose in this Assembly to question the government on
SaskEnergy’s request for a rate increase which is based on $7 a
gigajoule, Mr. Speaker. And so, Mr. Speaker, there was some
confusion over on the government side, and that remains today in
terms of what the actual price for gas is. And we just encourage
them to check out the Internet because the prices are all there.
AECO, that’s the price the Minister of Finance has ballyhooed
that the government uses — Alberta Energy Corporation prices.
Today if he would have gone to the Internet and checked it out, he
would have seen, Mr. Speaker, he would have seen what the actual
price for gas forecasts in Alberta are. Mr. Speaker, they range
from $4.98 to 5.32 at the high end. That’s what was on the
Internet today. If he had bothered to look, if his staff maybe had
clicked a few Web sites on the Internet, he wouldn’t have looked
quite so foolish as he did in question period today when he was
talking about what the price in Alberta was. In fact, I think he
stood up on his feet this afternoon, Mr. Speaker, and said the
price of natural gas in Alberta today was 8 . . . (inaudible
interjection) . . . My colleagues say 8 to 9 to $10 a gigajoule.
Mr. Speaker, even after we pointed out to him that the price EPCOR
is charging, that’s Edmonton Light . . . that’s the former
Edmonton Light & Power, by the way, which is right now a
municipally owned Crown corporation, if you will, of the city of
Edmonton, of the city council of Edmonton. You know what they’re
charging today, Mr. Speaker? About 6.69, and that’s if you lock
in to three to five years, that’s if you lock in, Mr. Speaker.
That’s if . . . (inaudible interjection) . . . And the Minister
of Labour is chirping from the back seat. He doesn’t even fully
comprehend that that’s a lock in price over the long term. These
people have demonstrated Friday and today, in spades, that they
don’t have a clue about this industry, and if Saskatchewan
people are worried that they’ll make the final decision on the
panel’s recommendation, I don’t blame them for being worried.
I’m worried too, I’m worried too.
Some
Hon. Members:
Hear, hear!
Mr.
Wall:
— The minister doesn’t know what the price of gas is. He’s
their designated hit man today in question period. These questions
clearly should have been answered by his colleague, the minister
for SaskEnergy who’s been having more than his share of trouble
this session. And he doesn’t like to micromanage. So the
Minister of Finance fields all these questions on the SaskEnergy
rate increase. Surely he knew we were going to ask them today, and
he didn’t even bother to do a research to find out what the
price was; to find out the most important point of all, Mr.
Speaker, which is this: if the panel recommendations are approved,
even at 7 per cent less than was SaskEnergy was asking for, our
prices in Saskatchewan will no longer be the lowest in Canada or
North America. And that’s significant, Mr. Speaker, because it
would represent another broken promise of this NDP government.
Last
Friday and today, the Minister of Finance promised and committed
to the people of Saskatchewan that after the smoke clears on this
rate increase request, that we would have the lowest prices in all
of the Dominion and then he went on to say North America as well.
Well the minister was unaware apparently that if he approves the
panel recommendations — even in their watered-down state as the
panel has reduced the amount provided to SaskEnergy — we indeed,
Mr. Speaker, will not have the lowest rates. We could tell you
today they won’t be lower than EPCOR’s. The evil empire next
door, as the government would characterize them as regards energy,
are going to be lower if you do that, Mr. Speaker, if the
government approves the panel recommendations as they are. And so
these are the questions that we’re asking. And we’ve asked
them in the media since then. And I was involved in an interview
this morning on a Regina radio station and tried to be
non-political, frankly, Mr. Speaker, because the issue is very
important . . . (inaudible interjection) . . . Well it’s true.
In fact I defended
the process that the government has put in place. And then we
simply said what we’re asking the government to do, all we’re
asking them to do is to clarify why the price on which they’re
going to base their decision — $7 a gigajoule — why the price
they’re going to base their decision on is 40 per cent higher
than the price today, 40 per cent higher than the price forecast
through to October, 2002. I think the member for Regina Victoria
just bellowed out — maybe he wasn’t here a few minutes ago —
I think he just bellowed out about the lowest prices in North
America. |
