By Stephen Hume, Vancouver Sun, October 24, 2011
Smart meters emerge as a policy Waterloo for the Liberals and could become nails in Premier Christy Clark’s political coffin.
You’d think the Liberals would have learned something on their stumbling retreat from the Moscow of the Harmonized Sales Tax, what with Bill Vander Zalm’s and Chris Delaney’s take-no-prisoners referendum and recall campaigns so fresh in their memories.
It seems not.
This week began, on Vancouver Island, with a demonstration against BC Hydro’s vaunted smart meters at the tiny Qualicum Beach Farmer’s Market, where protesters waved placards, collected names for a petition and proselytized passersby.
The protesters vowed to be back every weekend. One of them described the event not as a one-off demo but “a resistance movement.”
It was preceded by a resolution, passed in late September at the annual general meeting of the Union of B.C. Municipalities, calling for the province to impose a moratorium on BC Hydro’s plan to install almost a billion dollars’ worth of smart meters in the homes and business premises of 1.8 million customers whether they want them or not. The mayors, closer to the ground than Liberal cabinet ministers, already sensed where this is going and passed the resolution.
Smart meters track electricity consumption and then beam the data back to BC Hydro using wireless transmissions. The provincial utility says the ability to track consumption more precisely will make the energy grid more efficient, reduce labour costs, build sustainability and make it easier to locate and respond to power outages. This may all be true, but like the economic arguments for the HST, it may prove irrelevant.
Critics say smart meters are just a sugar-coated scheme for a cash grab, enabling BC Hydro to raise rates for customers who use electricity during peak load periods. BC Hydro and the province deny this. Critics claim experience elsewhere shows that individual electricity bills inevitably rise for most consumers after smart metering.
Yet other critics express worry about possible health hazards from the wireless radiation emitted when smart meters transmit data. There are also concerns about privacy, as the meters report household electricity-usage patterns.
Finally, there are philosophical objections to Big Brother arbitrarily installing monitors of citizens’ behaviour in their own homes without consent. BC Hydro and the provincial government pooh-pooh these concerns, but they also admit they never bothered to consult the public about them beforehand, thereby making themselves a lightning rod for every embittered complaint about government arrogance, insensitivity and intrusion.
A quick scan of weekly newspapers from around the province suggests that the public disquiet is growing as opponents take their campaign to the Internet, launch petitions like the one at Qualicum Beach last weekend and successfully pressure municipal councils to pass their own resolutions urging a moratorium — among the first to succumb, the provincial capital, Victoria.
Clark swept to power on a promise of change. Her perky, family-friendly approach was to offer a fresh alternative to the old order. But the province’s policy on this controversial new technology already reeks of the same old arrogance that sank her predecessor, the one-time Teflon premier, Gordon Campbell.
Nothing seemed to stick to Campbell during his three terms: not cabinet scandals; not the BC Rail quagmire; not the illegal, unconstitutional brutalizing of labour relations; not contempt for the legislature itself; not even a drunk-driving conviction.
Then came one fatal error in high-handedness, an apparent snap decision to shove the HST down the public’s throat without genuine consultation, without adequate explanation and seemingly without giving two hoots what the hoi polloi had to say about it.
The public outrage created an opening for Vander Zalm and Delaney, whose shrewd fanning of the flames with the mischievous assistance of the NDP and its diligent apparatchiks turned sparks of discontent into the firestorm of resentment that drove Campbell from office.
When I heard Energy Minister Rich Coleman and Premier Clark brush off the public’s negative reactions as ill-informed and irrelevant, I thought, this sounds like the early days of the HST all over again.
Remember, those provincewide HST protests are so recent that the organizational infrastructure is largely intact. Does anyone in whatever passes for the Liberal leadership believe that with a scant 16 months to the next election, the likes of Vander Zalm and Delaney, not to mention Conservative John Cummins and the NDP’s Adrian Dix, won’t be taking note — like the mayors — of where public sentiment is headed?
If the premier and her party remain determined to march to Waterloo armed with smart meters, you can bet that it won’t be a “near run thing;” it will be an utter rout.
shume@islandnet.com
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