‘Pallister’s antics’ compared by Métis to Trump
Manitoba Hydro woes spread beyond finances
On Monday morning, Sanford Riley, chairman of the board of Manitoba Hydro, t he province’s marquee Crown corporation, received a call, he says. It was from a senior staffer in Premier Brian Pallister’s office. The official wanted to talk to him about a job, and informed Riley, a prominent kingmaker in Manitoba business and Progressive Conservative party circles, that the Pallister government was planning to shuffle people to different Crown boards in an effort to refresh the enterprises.
The official suggested that, after a good two- year run at Hydro, perhaps Riley would be willing to take the lead role at another Crown property?
Riley, an affable fellow with a deep, rich voice, laughed. Partly because he was insulted by the offer, and partly because he figured it had to be some kind of joke, since his good “two- year” run at Hydro included a 12-month stretch — ongoing as of that point Monday — where Manitoba’s curlingenthusiast premier refused to meet with him to discuss the myriad issues facing the financially imperilled ( and heavily indebted) Manitoba Hydro.
“I said, I’m not going to move to a different Crown board,” Riley said Friday — 48 hours after he and eight others on the 10- member board, resigned. “I didn’t sign up to be head of Hydro because of ego. I did it because I knew there was a problem. I wanted to help.”
The mass resignation of the Manitoba Hydro board capped a bizarre, cynical and incendiary week for Pallister, a politician already famed, and not just locally, for his head- scratching antics. For example: sending out a holiday greeting, a few years back, where he described atheists as infidels; making 15 trips (at last count) to Costa Rica since 2012; bashing Halloween for being deleterious for kids; and breaking his arm on a solo hike in New Mexico, just days before his 2017 throne speech.
And now Manitoba Hydro, but not just hydro: in the week that was, Pallister quashed the Crown entity’s proposed $ 67- million payout to the Manitoba Metis Federation, characterizing it as “hush money,” while casting the Metis Nation as a “special” interest group. The payout had been negotiated in exchange for the MMF’s agreement not to oppose any hydro projects currently underway, or for the next 50 years. The MMF hailed the prospective deal as a positive step forward; a means to avoid costly, constant litigation and wrangling over land rights. The premier assailed it, telling reporters: “This would be like a father selling his daughter’s voting rights … It purports to give away a right in the future.”
David Chartrand is president of the MMF. He has been trying to meet with Pallister for 15 months.
“Premier Pallister’s antics have made Donald Trump look like a pillar of stability and truth,” he said.
“The Metis Nation has earned its rights. We’ ve worked a long time to fit ourselves into Confederation, and see where we fit in Confederation, because for so long we were cast as outsider, and for Pallister to categorize us as a people that would sell out our rights and sell out our position — it’s insulting.”
Burbling away beneath Pallister’s rhetorical hand grenades are the hard financial truths of Manitoba Hydro.
Manitoba’s would-be cash cow is a mess, beset by cashflow deficiencies, overspending on massive capital projects and a $ 16- billion ( and growing) debt. And as Hydro goes, so, ultimately, will Manitoba’s taxpayers ( and Hydro’s customers) go — as well as the province’s credit rating and its future ability to borrow money and avoid insolvency.
Such was the stark financial picture that Riley and the now- departed Hydro board reported to Pallister in October 2016. The premier had campaigned on several talk-
NEVER ANY INTENTION TO HAVE A DISCUSSION WITH US.
ing points, including how he would fix the mess at Hydro.
“You had all these risk factors that we as business people could see, and you might keep your fingers crossed and hope that you got through it, but that’s not a strategy — hoping, and keeping your toes and fingers crossed,” Riley says.
“Once we called out the problem in the public, we had to be starting to talk about solutions. You couldn’t just say, ‘ Well, here’s the problem, and let it just sit there.’”
But sit it did. More or less, while the Hydro chief begged the premier to return his calls and heard nothing but crickets — until Monday, when he heard that the premier was set to offer him a job at another Crown company.
“There was never any intention to have a discussion with us,” Riley says. “It’s cynical, the way the government did things.”
On Friday, Manitoba Hydro appointed five new members to the board.
“I hope they have a better relationship with the premier than we did,” Riley says. “I hope they are able to get processes in place where they are able to engage with Indigenous communities in ways that will work, and get the government to engage in what I see as a fundamental issue for Manitoba — fixing Hydro.”