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The year 2020 will contain at least one totally predictable event: The beginning of the national financial unravelling of Muskrat Falls, one of the greatest energy follies in the history of the country.

The publicly announced cost figure for Newfoundland and Labrador’s Muskrat Falls green hydropower mega boondoggle is now $12.7 billion, double the original project estimate of $6.2 billion. The good news is that Nalcor, the provincial Crown corporation behind the project, says it is on track to begin delivering power — four years behind schedule — through the 1,100-kilometre power line from northern Labrador to Newfoundland in early 2020. The bad news is that there is no real market for the electricity, which means that Newfoundland taxpayers and electricity consumers are staring into a $12.7-billion financial crisis.

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Nalcor, backed by the province, is about $4 billion in the red over Muskrat. Also on the hook indirectly are federal taxpayers who were involuntarily enlisted as guarantors of $7.9 billion of Muskrat Falls bonds — first by former prime minister Stephen Harper and later by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Now that the project is about to begin delivering over-priced electricity to Newfoundlanders who cannot afford to pay for it, Ottawa is preparing to help “mitigate” the cost of the electricity, which could soar 100 per cent to a ruinous 23 cents a kilowatt hour, or higher, without a federal bailout.