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Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/394777
bCbUSINeSS.Ca November 2014 BCBusiness 53 cornered by constituents who want to congratulate him or have their picture taken with him. When one complains about how hard it is to fi nd a family doctor in town, Bennett tells her: "You can't pay them to move here." Bennett's BlackBerry rings. It's Chris Sandve, his chief of staff , calling from Victoria. Global TV wants him to respond to comments made by Richard Stout, executive director of the Asso- ciation of Major Power Customers—an industry lobby—who's complaining about the higher hydro rates that came into eff ect last April. The opposition to changes to the ALR will be a walk in the park compared to what Bennett faces at BC Hydro. The utility is in desperate need of critical capital investment: upgrades, rebuilds and the potential addition of a third dam and generating station on the Peace River, the $7.9-billion Site C Proj- ect. All of this means unprecedented rate hikes, for both consumers and industry, in the order of 28 per cent over the next fi ve years. "In the 1990s, there were no rate increases," explains Bennett as we head back to his constituency offi ce, where he'll conduct the Global inter- view by remote camera. "The NDP bragged about it. But what other busi- ness can you run where you don't at least keep up with the rate of infl ation? Your investment in infrastructure is not going to happen if you're not increas- ing your revenue, and the only way for Hydro to make that investment is to reduce its expenses, yes—but mainly to increase rates." month af ter Sam Steele Days—at the John Hart Generat- ing Station in Camp- bell River, with three 90-metre-tall surge towers as his back- drop—Bennett makes the case for rate hikes. He's here, along with newly minted BC Hydro CEO Jessica McDonald, to launch construction on a $1.1-billion replacement project for the 67-year-old facility, which sits on the banks of the popular salmon-fi shing river in northern Vancouver Island. The John Hart revitalization, which will take fi ve years to complete, is the larg- est infrastructure project undertaken by BC Hydro since the 1980s. "It's a lot of money, even in today's terms, and it's an indication of what BC Hydro is facing right across the province, not just here on Vancouver Island," Ben- nett tells the crowd of Hydro workers, First Nations leaders, local politicians and media. While the necessary invest- ment means higher rates, he says, BC Hydro is working hard to control costs. "And our part, as government, is to take less money from BC Hydro over the next 10 years—and we'll be taking consider- ably less for dividends, considerably less in terms of net income. That will leave Hydro with several billion dollars that they wouldn't otherwise have had, that they frankly don't need to borrow and repay with ratepayer's money." Bennett transitions seamlessly from the guy defending individual prop- erty rights in the ALR to the guy who's essentially raising taxes. "The fact is," says Horgan, the NDP's longtime energy critic before he became leader last May, "Christy Clark has given him an almost impossible task, which is to rein in BC Hydro after the government had inter- fered so many times in the operation of the Crown. I think it's a bit of a poison pill for him." Equally challenging will be repairing damage to the mining industry caused by the Mount Polley breach. Millions of cubic metres of waste were released into the Fraser River watershed from a mine owned by Imperial Metals. While the water was later deemed to be at safe levels, the incident raised serious ques- tions about the safety of tailing ponds across the province. Within weeks, Bennett had ordered two independent investigations—one into the Mount Pol- ley incident (to be completed by January 31, 2015), the other a series of inspec- tions of all the tailing ponds in B.C. (to be completed by this December). It's telling that Bennett, and not the premier, has been out in front on both issues—Hydro rate hikes and Mount Polley. When there's bad news to be delivered, Bennett's the minister who's trusted to do it, and do it well. "I don't think it was an accident that he was given the energy portfolio, because A