FRIED GREEN CANADIANS.

While the punditocracy whipped itself into a justifiable if ritual lather over another Ottawa bailout of Bombardier, the $372-million loan is small change compared with the multibillion-dollar green electric power fiascos across the country.

A rough tally of the ballooning financial plight of the electricity sectors in British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Newfoundland quickly runs to more than $50 billion in new debt and imbedded costs for investments that threaten to be money-losing drags on growth and consumers — and the federal government —for years to come.

The looming disasters have two things in common. They are the work of government- controlled and politically manipulated Crown corporations. They are also the product of a deliberate push to produce clean, green and renewable carbon-free electricity. No fossil fuels allowed. Money is no object.

British Columbia: An $ 8.8- billion dam known as the Site C Clean Energy Project in northeastern B.C. has been described as a “white elephant” by a former hydro executive. Last month Moody’s warned that “BC Hydro posts some metrics that are among the weakest of Canadian provincial utilities.” The company’s debt is heading to $20 billion. Hydro, said Moody’s, has the “flexibility to increase utility rates to ensure that its own revenues will continue to support its operations and debt payments.”

Approval of Site C came in the context of the B.C. Green Energy Act, which mandates that 93 per cent of the province’s electricity must come from “clean and renewable resources.” There is, alas, no requirement for economic viability. And in a bit of double-think, B.C. Hydro’s environmental impact statement notes there could be huge demand for Site C power if assorted liquid natural gas projects go ahead. The province will therefore mandate carbon-free renewable power to help produce carbon-containing LNG.

Manitoba: Manitoba Hydro, also building clean and renewable projects worth billions, this week announced 900 layoffs with a warning from Sandy Riley, its new chairman, that the utility is a “ticking time bomb” that needs a financial bailout. Rate increases exceeding 10 per cent per annum are possible.

A report last year from The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) warned that Manitoba Hydro’s debt could double to $23 billion by 2023, propelling the provincial debt/GDP ratio to 65 per cent. If interest costs rise, Manitoba could become “a province with the highest debt per capita of any in Canada,” said Riley. The BCG report also concluded that the projects driving Manitoba Hydro into a fiscal mess were approved based on political and environmental concerns rather than economics. “Imprudence can be traced to systemic decision governance issues,” including lack of clear division of roles among players and the fact that rates were not linked to returns.

Delays and cost overruns are already at play. Complicating matters is Manitoba’s too-clever plan to sell surplus electricity to neighbouring Minnesota and Wisconsin, since they were forced to forgo fossil-fuel generation under a new U. S. Clean Power Plan. But with President Trump in the White House and a U.S. market awash in cheap natural gas, those sales now look doubtful.

Even last year, pre-Trump, BCG warned Manitoba Hydro about the probability of low export prices for electricity, setting Manitoba up for a reversal of the original plan. Instead of subsidizing cheap electricity at home through high export prices, Manitoba could end up with expensive electricity at home and cheap or non-existent export markets.

Whatever the lost merits of Manitoba’s energy project, BCG concluded there could be no going back. Sunk costs of $5 billion and $2 billion in cancellation costs are just too great to justify killing the projects.

Ontario: Under Ontario’s Green Energy Act, the Liberal government of Kathleen Wynne has saddled the province with escalating wind and solar electricity costs that will drain billions from industry and consumers. Power costs have already doubled to nearly 12 cents a kilowatt-hour to pay for the green energy needed to replace coal plants. For a detailed review of Ontario’s electricity troubles, may I suggest a Google search for my column last October under the headline “Boondoggle: How Ontario’s pursuit of renewable energy broke the province’s electricity system.”

Newfoundland: The cost of Muskrat Falls, a giant Labrador hydro project designed to ship “clean” and “cheap” hydro power overland and underwater to Newfoundland, is now said to be approaching $12 billion. Former premier Roger Grimes (whose predecessor, Danny Williams, pushed Muskrat) said recently the project “will haunt all of us, unfortunately, for the rest of my life, my daughter’s life, my granddaughter’s life even.”

Williams defended the project in a speech last month as a job creator that will cost only three to four cents more per kilowatt-hour — numbers energy consultant Tom Adams describes as a fantasy from another world. Muskrat power, if it ever reaches Newfoundland, will arrive at an estimated price of 22 cents per kilowatt-hour on top of the existing 12 cents.

Muskrat Falls is a prototypical modern green-megaproject whose proponents, political and corporate, used the current obsession with carbon reduction to justify billion-dollar spending on “renewable” and “clean” hydro power in the wilds of Labrador. As in Manitoba, the plan is to export the power to other jurisdictions, but no jurisdiction is going to pay 22 cents for Muskrat power that can be bought for at least half that elsewhere.

As in Manitoba and Ontario, massive losses loom for Newfoundland. At a current $12-billion estimated cost (excluding financing), the per capita debt burden on Newfoundlanders increases by $24,000. Since half the Muskrat debt is guaranteed by Ottawa, thanks to prime ministers Harper and Trudeau, federal taxpayers are also on the hook.

The grim state of the electricity sectors in the four provinces (with new risks of generation turmoil and price increases in Alberta) creates an impossible situation for the dreams of the Trudeau government, which announced in November plans to use electricity as a “nation-building effort.” Ottawa would be better off sticking with bailing out Bombardier for a few hundred million bucks rather than getting itself even more tangled in provincial electricity boondoggles where bailouts costs would run to the tens of billions.