Town hall meeting gives power to the people

With six weeks to go until the sale of NB Power, many New Brunswickers are concerned. They’re confused about the lack of information about the updated Memorandum of Understanding; and they’re worried the province’s largest industry is keeping information about it out of the newspaper media they control.

The crowd brought signs and T-shirts to prove their point. (Photo submitted)

Yvonne Devine is the chair of the Conservation Council of New Brunswick. She co-ordinated a town hall meeting in Moncton Tuesday night to talk about the proposed sale of NB Power. She wants to help inform the public of the details of the Memorandum of Understanding. And she hopes that everyone stands up and gives their opinions.

After four months of talks, public meetings, and changes to the M.O.U., hundreds arrived at the Moncton Lions Community Centre to get informed about the deal. Devine says people are tired of the confusing information they are getting from the media. She says they have come to meetings like this to get the facts.

“The media in New Brunswick has created a vacuum of information,” Devine said. “People don’t know what to believe or who to trust anymore.”

Hundreds gather at town hall meeting. (Photo by Jason Murray)

The town hall meeting was the second of two held in Moncton in the last few weeks. The first one, on Feb. 11, was in French and attracted hundreds of people looking for answers.  Tuesday night, hundreds more filled the auditorium, waiting to speak and give their opinions. They also had lots of questions for the speaker.

Dr. Yves Gagnon is a professor at Universite de Moncton. He has been following the NB Power deal closely and has spoken out about the details at information sessions all over New Brunswick. He is currently the KC Irving Chair in Sustainable Development and has been around the table of some high profile proponents of the deal.

“This deal is meant to give large industry a boost,” Gagnon said. “They are undoubtedly the biggest beneficiaries of this deal.”

Forty-one of the biggest industries in the province stand to benefit from the proposed deal. Gagnon believes the deal was structured around a push from large industry to lower energy rates in the province. He says their savings could be as much as $100 million dollars a year.

Dr. Gagnon answers questions from the crowd. (Photo by Jason Murray.)

Gagnon says the deal has now become a political issue and less about the sale of the utility. He says the people are unhappy about the secrecy of the negotiations and how no public input was considered.

“I think it will be up to the MLAs to convince their constituents one way or the other now,” Gagnon said. “They will have to decide at this point whether the whole ship goes down, or just a part of it.”

Tennyson Walker is a retired business owner from Moncton. He says we live in an energy hub with wind power, natural gas, and an energy grid. He thinks we should be looking for ways to make our utility more profitable; not trying to sell off our problems to Hydro-Quebec.

“We live in the Saudi Arabia of wind power,” Walker said. “Why are we giving all of our profits away to Alberta companies and now Quebec.”

Walker believes New Brunswick has a lot of potential to sell energy to the eastern United States. He can’t understand why it would sell off one of its remaining assets, instead of trying to create opportunities.

And he might have a point. This is the hottest topic in the province and it’s getting national attention from the country’s king of satire.

Walker sees wind farms and nuclear energy as a large job sector for the province in the future. He doesn’t want to see good work going to another province or to the United States. He thinks New Brunswick is giving up too much in the deal with Hydro-Quebec. He thinks the province should try to make this work for New Brunswickers.

“We already have the infrastructure,” Walker said. “Now all we have to do is make a profit and we can create jobs and opportunity.”

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Posted by Jason Murray on Feb 17, 2010. Filed under News, This Week's Edition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.