You can tell the gang pushing Muskrat falls are having trouble meeting the arguments against their scheme to jack up power rates and the public debt.
They are now talking about selling it off.
Yes, you got that right.
Selling it off.
Someone named T.E. Bursey wrote an opinion piece for the Telegram that appeared last Saturday. He wrote:
Others have complained our portion of the $6.2 billion cost will add significantly to our public debt, which is true, but what is not mentioned is the financial community consider hydro assets to have a long-term resalable value in addition to revenue generation.
Now for starters, T.E. Bursey talks about “our portion” of the debt. The taxpayers of the province are on the hook for the whole shooting match, give or take. Given the likelihood of massive cost over-runs, $6.2 billion would be the very smallest amount taxpayers of the province will owe.
But look at that bit at the end.
Long-term resalable value.
T.E. Bursey thinks Muskrat Falls is a wonderful idea, so wonderful in fact that if it turns out to be a gigantic bust we can hock it.
After all that’s the only reason you’d consider selling it again.
Or, in the way T.E. Bursey is talking about it here, if the provincial government and Nalcor couldn’t keep up the payments on the Great White Retirement Elephant, the creditors could hock it and get their cash back.
Oh yeah.
Selling it off in the event we went bankrupt.
There’s a thought to warm your heart.
Sounds familiar though.
Someone very famous talked about fattening up Nalcor and then selling off the assets for cash. He said it April 2008 in the House of Assembly but the local media didn’t report that for the rest of the world to know:
…This particular government wants to strengthen Hydro, wants to make it a very valuable corporation: a corporation that will ultimately pay significant dividends back to the people of this Province; a corporation that perhaps some day may have enough value in its assets overall as a result of the Hebron deal and the White Rose deal, possible Hibernia deal, possible deals on gas, possible deals on oil refineries and other exploration projects, where hopefully we might be able to sell it some day and pay off all the debt of this Province, and that would be a good thing.
- srbp -