New Brunswick Power Deals

From the Chronicle Herald

Is the deal to sell NB Power unravelling? Let’s hope

By Dan Leger
Mon. Dec 21 - 4:46 AM

YOU KNOW a politician is hard up for a photo-op when he’s using toilet paper for a backdrop. But that’s what Shawn Graham was doing the other day: visiting a toilet paper plant to promote the sale of NB Power.

The New Brunswick premier was in Dieppe, near Moncton, to cast a positive spin on his unpopular plan to offload NB Power to Hydro-Quebec for $4.75 billion and a promise of cheaper power rates. It’s no accident that the plant is owned by the Irving conglomerate, which is by far the biggest single beneficiary of the deal.

Irving Tissue will save $2 million a year in power costs, helping the company compete with toilet-paper makers around the world. In fact, cheaper power will produce huge financial leverage right across the vertically integrated industrial machine that is Irving.

So let’s take, for example, toilet paper. Trees from the 1.7 million hectares of Irving-owned or controlled land in New Brunswick are felled by Irving crews, loaded onto Irving trucks burning Irving-refined diesel and hauled to the Irving paper mill in Saint John.

The mill produces giant rolls of Irving brand paper, which are loaded onto other Irving trucks and sent to the Irving plant in Dieppe. There they become Irving consumer products, which are often sold in Irving retail stores.

All those Irving companies consume a lot of electricity. So with a 30 per cent rate cut thanks to the Graham government, the richest company in Eastern Canada will get even richer.

That’s if the deal goes ahead. But there are signs it might be unravelling.

Graham won’t admit it but anyone can see there are massive political problems with the deal. And this is a legally mandated election year. Graham will have to defend selling off a vital part of New Brunswick’s economic sovereignty.

New Brunswickers have been protesting and writing letters, the opposition is demanding a plebiscite and two members of NB Power’s board of directors resigned in protest. Last week, an Angus Reid poll suggested only 20 per cent of New Brunswickers approve of Graham’s performance in office.

The deal has attracted opposition outside the province, and not just from Danny Williams. Nova Scotia companies are worried because the deal cedes control of transmission lines through New Brunswick.