You have to hand it to the Alberta NDP. At least they've upped the PR game in their highly questionable legal battle against power purchasing arrangements (PPAs).

Last week, the New Dems tried to blame their own completely inept handling of the PPA file on large corporations and the former Tory government. Instead, they ended up being savaged in the media. So this week, the NDP resorted to that old standby of cornered politicians - leaking documents.

A week ago Monday, Deputy Premier Sarah Hoffman claimed her party had discovered a huge "illegal" clause in power contracts signed by large utilities and energy companies a decade and-a-half ago with the balancing pool - the provincial government-created entity that oversees large, long-term contracts for electricity.

Hoffman said her government was taking the PPAs to court in an effort to have them declared invalid.

Since the NDP came to power nearly 15 months ago, they have announced a doubling of the emissions taxes on coal-generated power and a new $3-billion-a-year carbon tax on everything that moves.

This has made a lot of existing PPAs unprofitable, and major buyers have announced the cancellation of several PPAs. That means the power from those contracts is going to be dumped back into the balancing pool where ordinary consumers will have to compensate the province through higher retail rates for their home and business electricity.

Therefore, Hoffman tried to convince voters and reporters the Dippers' lawsuit amounted to standing up for the little guy against Big Business and the Tories!

(You could almost imagine her donning a Brunhilda wig, staff and shield as she railed against corporate greed and pledged to protect ordinary Albertans from the evil corporations.)

Trouble was, almost no one bought Hoffman's excuses. The story simply went from bad to worse for the government.

So the NDP started this week by leaking a few emails from an executive at the discredited U.S. power company, Enron, in which he claims to have convinced the Alberta government of the day (1999 and 2000) to install cancellation clauses that allowed buyers to get out of PPAs in case they became unprofitable because of government action.

The New Dems seem to be hoping this revelation will convince Albertans that the Tories - and not the Notley government - made the mistake that could soon cost consumers $2 billion or more on their electricity bills.

Unfortunately for the NDP and their new spin job, cancellation clauses (known here as buyer initiated terminations) are common in long-term power contracts between government sellers of electricity and large-scale private buyers.

Also, Neil McCrank, the provincial official who oversaw the balancing pool at the time, insists it was the province's own experts - not shady Enron - who suggested adding cancellation clauses just before the province deregulated the power market.

But let's for the sake of the argument pretend for a moment that a) the back-out clauses are unique to Alberta and that b) they were proposed by Enron.

So? If a corporation signs a 20-or 30-year contract to buy power from a government entity, it only makes sense that they protect themselves and their shareholders by insisting on a cancellation clause that permits them to step away if the government changes the rules midgame. Otherwise the contract would be entirely one-sided.

Governments control the legislative and the regulatory process They could (as the NDP did with their new emissions and carbon taxes), increase the cost of power in the blink of an eye and buyers would have no recourse. Without a cancellation clause, a government could force companies to finance expensive new public policies.

No well-managed corporation would ever sign.

The NDP may have stepped up their game, but they still hold a losing hand.