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There is no way the project can return its costs

The original rationale for the project: Green and clean electric power. There is no way the project can return its costs, which means electricity consumers will be paying higher than market prices for electricity and/or taxpayers will be picking up most of the debt. DBRS recently gave $8 billion of Muskrat Falls’ debt a triple-A rating, but only because the bonds carry a “flow-through” rating from the federal government. As a result, that debt carries “an irrevocable, unconditional, absolute and continuing obligation” of the government of Canada. Translation: Investors are rock-solid and federal taxpayers are screwed.

Around the Great Lakes, Ontario’s electricity regime is a giant house of fiscal smoke and dirty mirrors to fund the green and clean power the province has mandated, including billion-dollar wind and solar projects that produce expensive electricity the province does not need.

The result is a fiscal scam known as the Fair Hydro Plan, in which ratepayers see a fake 25-per-cent reduction in electricity rates. To pay for the rate cut, the province will have to either increase its debt or raise taxes, or both. A report Monday from the province’s Fiscal Accountability Office said Ontario will run up $14.1 billion in debt over the next five years to finance below-cost prices for clean and green energy.

The result is a fiscal scam known as the Fair Hydro Plan

Out Vancouver way, the same smoke and mirror structures are under construction around BC Hydro.

On Monday, B.C. Premier John Horgan announced that his New Democratic government will continue to back BC Hydro’s Site C hydro-generating project, an $11-billion dam expansion along the Peace River, 1,200 kilometres north of Vancouver. At that distance, 14 per cent of the generated power is lost in transmission.