PUC SHOULD STOP BCE ‘LOSS LEADERS' Showdown looms on power issu! By NIGEL MORGAN A political showdown is shaping up on the public versus private power issue in B.C. Charges that the B.C. Electric is supplying the U.S.-owned Hooker Chemicals in North Van- couver with power “at a price... which averages out much less than the published costs of producing power in the lower mainland” have brought the long-smouldering conflict be- tween public and _— private power interests to open war- fare again. Political dynamite is packed in the charges, too, Not only is the future of the publicly- owned B.C. Power Commis- $ion system at stake, for if power is being sold to the U.S. chemical trust below “the costs, of producing power,” then obviously other classes of customers must be subsi- dizing it. Coming at this time, when the B.C. Electric has asked the Public Utilities Commission to approve a 12 to 14 percent boost in its light and power rates to other cus- tomers, the charges are likely to touch off a public storm, particularly when it be- comes known, as it will during the PUC hearings, that Vancouver already has the highest rate of all leading Canadian cities for 300 kilo- watt hours. Why should the BCE be allowed to exploit the homeowner to subsidize a below - cost - of - production rate to a U.S. trust? Addressing the Lake Cowi- chan Kiwanis Club recently, C. W. Nash, director of load development for the B.C. Power Commission, let the cat out of the bag when he accused the BCE of using the “loss leader” technique. of selling below cost in order to get a foothold in the B.C. Power Commission’s increas- ingly profitable Crofton-Dun- | can territory on Vancouver Island. “For over two years Penns- sylvania Salt, an American electro-chemical company, has been trying to establish a plant next door to the new B.C. Forest Products pulp mil] at Crofton. Another com- peting electro-chemical plant, Hooker Chemical, has already been established in North Vancouver. The _ chemical ¢ompany wishing to establish at Crofton has said power price must be competi- tive with that available on the. mainland,” he said. * “Power at the price request- ed by the company for serv- ice at Crofton cannot be pro- duced and delivered in bulk on Vancouver Island. Nor can it be produced on the lower mainland,” Nash declared. “They want power at half the price we now have to charge the pulp mills. On the lower mainland there is no surplus merchandise, if we are to judge from the facts that power supply is to be backed up by thermal stations, that power has been pur- chased from time to time from the United States, and still is being purchased from the B.C. Power Commission on the Island. This purchase from the commission, is at a price of about one and a half times that offered from the mainland to the chemical com- pany. “The chemical company has said that it has been offered power from the mainland at the price it is prepared to pay, compared to that price paid by its competitor in North Vancouver. If power is avail- able on Vancouver Island from any source whatever, the commission would purchase, it for the benefit of you and its other existing customers” the speaker assured his audi- ence. “Tf the mainland source were to supply the chemical company at Crofton, it would want the. business of the pulp mill and all the surrounding area with its residential and commercial customers as well. “Supply to the chemical eompany by itself would be a loss at the rate requested’ That loss would have to be made up by others. I need not speculate on the future of power supply and costs to you. Electricity users throughout the province would be very quick to figure out the results. “Tf you, the commission’s customers, are to continue to carry the burden of expand- ing electrical service into the rural areas of this province, you certainly cannot affo1d to give away power thai you haven’t got at prices less than it would cost you to produce it,’ he said. “Must we discourage in- dustry locally, or are we to develop this province the way most people would like to see it developed on a _ provincial basis? Ontario found out how to do it fifty years ago and has been doing it very suc- cessfully ever since.” Nash might have added that in cities where hydro is pub- licly owned — such as Mont- real, Toronto and even Win- nipeg (where it is thermal generated) — the price is less than half that in Vancou- Vers es + Bos The Hooker-Pennsalt episode is but one aspect of life-and- death struggle that has been developing ever since the Socreds ‘free-enterprise” ad- ministration assumed power. Organized 13 years ago to pro- vide ‘“power-at-cost,” step-up rural electrification and im- prove service through inte- gration of facilities of vari- ous communities and the in- austries which support them, the $140 million B.C. Power Commission’s system has been an example of comprehensive resource development of great benefit to the province. Premier Bennett’s govern- ment; which fell heir to the Communists gain votes in French local elections PARIS—The French Communist party gained 100,000 votes in constituencies where it ran a candidate in the second round of the recent cantonal elections. Elsewhere in these elections—roughly equivalent to muni- cipal elections—Communists had stood down after the first-round voting a week before in order to get maximum unity against right wing candidates. The Communists received 1,717,741 votes in the first- round poll, an increase of 200,000 over the 1951 elections. This was 23 percent of the 7,672,986 total of votes cast and the largest vote won by any single party. The anomalies of the French majority election system were shown by the fact that it took 69,000 votes for every Comu- munist-won seat, compared with 26,000 for a Socialist one and 10,000 for a Catholic one. So the Communist party won only 50 seats — about 3.5 percent of all seats — al- though it had 23 percent of the total vote. responsibility of administer- ing the system, has repeatedly demonstrated its favoritism of the BCE. Charges have been heard in and outside the legis- lature that the government- owned system, indirectly fi- nanced by provincial taxpay- ers, has had its development handicapped by being con- fined to operation within the sparsely - populated and con- sequently least profitable areas of B.C. Turning over of the lucra- tive Powell River contract to the BCE when Premier Ben- nett’s cabinet ordered the commission {o withdraw in 1954, has continued to rankle. The non-commital attitude of the Socred government in re- gard to popular public de- mands for the commission (already established in the Okanagan and at Whatshan on the Arrow Lakes) to get the rights to public develop- x Robert Sommers, Social Credit MLA for nossiandttae former lands and forests minister, is seen her lawyer, Nicholas Mussallem. His trial on 26 chars gf ing conspiracy and bribery opened in Supreme Tuesday this week. ph May 9, 1958 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE— i ment of Columbia bin providing further caust concern. y It is against this pacltt that the latest discon) the B.C. Power C4 becomes so startling: i 5! serve to alert the publi if P ng how its welfare 38 pel trayed. é +o Sup Wide and effective att should be rallied © tigi the present impass€ wel ton from being TeS?s ie another BCE grab a v Premier Bennett o on hands of the publicly ii system. The PUC § oe ip in and stop the ust ae leaders,” which 1 owt™ charged to the hom bill. : Public ownershP power utilities is ina (i needed and the Bent ernment must be & to accept the will © jority.