N.B. eyes Quebec's industrial power rates

The New Brunswick government is still committed to offering Quebec-level power rates for big industry, Premier Shawn Graham said on Thursday.

The province's largest industrial clients would have been given a 23 per cent rate cut under the failed deal to sell parts of NB Power to Hydro-Qubec.

Although that deal fell apart last week, Graham said Quebec rates for industry is still the best way to make New Brunswick competitive and to create new jobs or keep existing ones.

"There's going to be a number of options we're going to be looking at to help lower the cost of electricity to these large industrial users," Graham said.

"It reinforces what we were saying all along: we need rates today that are competitive to Quebec rates if we want these companies to choose to locate here in New Brunswick or to remain here in New Brunswick."

Under the failed energy deal, the majority of NB Power's assets would have been sold for $3.2 billion. New Brunswick's biggest power users would have seen a cut of 23 per cent and medium-sized companies would have seen a 15 per cent reduction. Residential rates would have been frozen for five years.

Graham said electricity rates that rival those in neighbouring Quebec was one of the reasons Umoe Solar agreed to set up a manufacturing plant in Miramichi.

The Norwegian company purchased all of UPM's assets in New Brunswick, including its closed paper mill in Miramichi and a sawmill near Bathurst.

The company told city politicians a year ago that it was planning to spend $600 million in the area and create 350 new jobs.

The New Brunswick premier said on Thursday that his latest information is that the company remains committed to the site despite the collapse of the power deal.

PC plan coming 'very shortly'

Opposition MLA Jody Carr said on Thursday the premier's musings about cheaper power for large industrial customers proves he hasn't learned anything from the six-month controversy over the deal to sell NB Power.

"The premier again is focusing on big business, not all the people of New Brunswick. That was a problem over the last year that we've seen from the premier," Carr said.

Carr said the Progressive Conservative Party will release a detailed energy policy very soon. He said his party will include public consultation for a long-term plan, but he said there would be "short-term measures, such as mandating NB Power to freeze rates [and] to manage well."

He said the Tory plan could include signing power purchase agreements with neighbouring jurisdictions, such as Maine, Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador.

"We are going to see very shortly the issues of lower rates, keeping ownership of NB Power," Carr said.

"A lot of the stuff the government was looking at doing, that wasn't wrong, it was the way how they were doing it. People wanted to be invovled in it."