red/green - peru & ontario hydro

[MLuftmensch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Michael Luftmensch)]

red/green - peru & ontario hydro


Infrequently Asked Questions

In the Frequently Asked Questions on Peru Luis Quispe posted the other week,
the life of one man, the chairperson of a military-political party -
the "fourth sun of communism" -  eclipses the lives of the
great many, the Peruvian people.

It was actually a PCP FAQ - not a Peru FAQ.

Generally, Luis, you seem very intent on exposing the list to the turgid
thinking of your chairperson.

Few links are drawn between Peru and other
South American countries in the New Flag. Peru is depicted as a land apart,
although  many of the problems faced by the Peruvian people
are common throughout Latin America and the southern hemisphere.

Privatizations, structural adjustment programmes and other neo-liberal
economic policies are having a devastating effect on working people
throughout the world, widening the gap between rich and poor. Yet the
New Flag seems oblivious to this.

Calls issued by PCP support groups for international solidarity ring
hollow. I wish to suggest that part of the problem lies in the PCP's
refusal to look beyond the borders of Peru.


The Luminous Detail

There are time, however, when Luis Quispe does post an illuminating
detail or two - from a source other than New Flag.

For instance, in a collection of news dispatches on PCP military
operations, I found the following item:

*

Toronto, October 12 (By Leslie Papp, Toronto Star, Pg. A10). Ontario
Hydro's investment in Lima, Peru, has been hit by a blackout after a
bomb attack and the utility's $74 million investment went up in
smoke. Six transmission towers were destroyed in a bomb attack
outside Lima last week, plunging the capital into darkness and
forcing a rationing of electricity.

Canadian embassy sources in Peru said four of the downed towers were
about 100 kilometers east of Lima while two were near the city, to
the north and south. All were destroyed within 20 minutes and Maoist
PCP guerrillas were responsible. Jordan, an officer of Hydro said the
bombing proves Hydro made a major mistake in buying part of the
Peruvian company delivering electricity to Lima. The government and
Hydro chairman Maurice Strong "were duly warned that attacks on
utilities were commonplace," he said in a news release, adding
the government should now realize "just how unsound Hydro's
investment is."

Energy Minister Bud Wildman last month asked the Ontario Energy
Board to examine Hydro's international spending, especially the risk
associated with foreign investments such as the Lima venture.

*

According to information on the Ontario Hydro web page,
"on July 12, 1994 Ontario Hydro International Inc. and its
consortium partners successfully bid for 60% ownership of
Luz del Sur, a Peruvian electrical distribution company. The
purchase price was US$212 million of which Ontario Hydro
International Inc. contributed US$53 million. The government
of Peru retained 40% ownership of Luz del Sur."

Ontario Hydro is also also active in Chile, where "the consortium,
known as Ontario-Quinta, consists of the successful Chilean distribution
company Chilquinta S.A. and international investors. Ontario Hydro
International Inc. owns 25% of the consortium."

*

Ontario Hydro

The following  is a foreword by Ralph Nader to a 1983 book -

*ELECTRIC EMPIRE: The Inside Story of Ontario Hydro
By Paul McKay

LARGE BUREAUCRATIC POWER generating institutions, whether a
Crown corporation like Ontario Hydro, a private investor-owned
utility like Commonwealth Edison, or a publicly-owned
organization like the Washington Public Power Supply System,
tend toward similar behaviour--they are secretive, unaccountable
to their customers and unable to respond to new conditions and
urgencies that challenge the old ways of thinking and planning.

Electric Empire: The Inside Story of Ontario Hydro by Paul McKay
of the Ontario Public Interest Research Group is a major public
service to the citizens of Ontario. No mere expose or muckraking
tract, this study soberly analyses how a formerly successful and
popular utility has become inflexible, arrogant and
intransigent--and how this is adversely affecting consumer
pocketbooks, the economic health of the province and the safety
of the human environment.

When investment and the choice of energy technologies become
rooted in unsustainable growth projections that are now plainly
inaccurate, a utility can go off on a binge of over-investment,
coupled with cost overruns and inflation, that spell a utility
going berserk. Acid rain, radioactive waste problems, poisoned
waterways, project delays, windfall contracts, entrenched energy
waste per capita and the avoidance of superior local energy
resources in favour of energy imports are some of the mounting
substantive problems in the province. When they are coupled with
procedural inequities, such as an abiding secrecy over data and
practices, a non-representative and insulated governing board,
lack of consumer access to decision-making processes and a deep
convergence of Ontario Hydro with the province's political power
grids, the framework for future errors and impositions enlarges.

McKay documents these "reality distortions" which in his words
"have become more and more routine at Ontario Hydro and present
a growing threat to the economic and social equilibrium of the
province itself. Yet in the past decade two Royal Commissions,
six years of Select Committee hearings, five Task Force Hydro
reports, and the creation of a Ministry of Energy have failed to
bring the giant utility under control. Instead, Hydro has
continued to promote expansion, even though Ontario does not
need to build any more power plants in the foreseeable future,
and the province can maintain economic health and prosperity
using far less energy than it does today."

The author takes the reader into the promising realm of
alternate energy sources, from enhanced energy efficiency
systems, to better use of available hydro power and the
development of other forms of solar energy. These approaches
would decrease energy dependency, reduce the agonies of
pollution and provide higher economic efficiencies for business
and consumers.

It can be fairly said that Ontario Hydro and its energy
ideologies and commitments need to be saved from themselves. An
informed public spotlight and debate on Ontario's giant utility
will diminish the momentum whereby Hydro's blunders become your
bills and your health risks. It is fitting that this study about
what is really Ontario's energy future has been funded and
supported by Ontario students--the people who have such a long
stake in that future. The impact of such an initiative will
surely spread to other provinces in Canada.

As McKay puts the challenge: "The time has unquestionably come,
then, to transform the structure of Ontario's energy system. And
to make deep and dramatic changes in the way energy decisions
are made." This book presents many recommendations and
mechanisms for leading Hydro toward a more responsive set of
policies. Among them is a simple consumer organizing proposal
based on a periodic notice, carried in your electric bill, to
enable consumers to exercise a more effective mode of control
over the giant utility's operations.

May the spirit and facts of this report reach the executive
suites of Ontario Hydro and stimulate a reappraisal of their
domain. At the same time, may an increasingly beset public begin
to take more seriously the opportunities and responsibilities of
self-government in this crucial arena.

Ralph Nader
Washington, D.C.
February, 1983

*

A few months ago, a rightwing government came to power in Ontario, and the
privitization of Ontario Hydro has been put on the agenda...


luftmensch




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