The Muskrat Falls Hydro Project was a financial mistake. The manner in which the Newfoundland government and its instrument, Nalcor, went about justifying the insistence upon sanctioning this project, is a classic case of how a government, pursuing the mistaken agenda of one popular leader, leads a whole people into a financial dead-end.
Newfoundland, a society of 500,000, has now been burdened with new debt of $24,000 per person because the institutions, including the parliamentary system, were incapable of stopping the inertia driving this mistake.
The product of this $12B debt, (being 500 megawatts of island electricity), could have been achieved by a 2012 investment of less than $300,000,000. In other words, 2.5% of the amount that Newfoundland actually spent. The difference is the measure of the political backwardness of Newfoundland political culture.
Conway submission to Public Utilities Board February 29 2012: 23-EC-2012-02-29
Inquiry didn’t ask the right questions (August 7 2019)more:
