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Yukon Party MLA Geraldine Van Bibber
MLA critical about electricity bills
Yukon Party MLA Geraldine Van Bibber says her party is continuing to hear from Yukoners “who are facing record-setting electricity bills that the rising cost of electricity is putting their personal finances into bad shape.
Yukon Party MLA Geraldine Van Bibber says her party is continuing to hear from Yukoners “who are facing record-setting electricity bills that the rising cost of electricity is putting their personal finances into bad shape.
“Under the Liberals, the cost of living has been rising, and their misguided electrical policies are making it too expensive to live in our beautiful territory,” she said last Wednesday.
“During the 2021 territorial election campaign, the Yukon Party saw this looming electricity crisis and promised to freeze electrical rates for two years to unravel this government’s Kathleen Wynne-like electrical policy that has resulted in shocking rate swings,” she said, in reference to Ontario’s former Liberal premier.
“The Liberals’ continued policies are driving up the cost of electricity, the cost of heating our homes, and the cost of necessities like groceries,” Van Bibber said.
“The comments from the minister (Energy, Mines and Resources Minister John Streicker) last fall demonstrate how out of touch the Liberal government is and their lack of solutions to the real costs and challenges Yukoners are struggling with day to day,” she added.
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Comments (44)
Up 0 Down 0
Groucho d'North on Feb 21, 2022 at 3:36 pm
Opps! Correction to my post below: I had intended to say Ukraine rather than Yugoslavia. Different times- different conclicts in memory.
Up 4 Down 0
Groucho d'North on Feb 21, 2022 at 1:30 pm
@Politico
I am not disputing your position, Yes, gas companies take advantage of situations to line their pockets. Wait and see what the current forced activities between Russia and Yugoslavia result in. Remember Russia is one of the largest oil producers on the planet and can manipulate prices and availability as they see fit. It's not always through taxes, but governments do influence the price at the pump by a number of means. And in other news, Paris, Bolivia, Ecuador and Chile and other nations are experiencing protests over the price at the pumps influenced by government policies.
Up 3 Down 3
Politico on Feb 21, 2022 at 9:30 am
@ Groucho d'North Maybe you should read the news! https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/dec/06/oil-companies-profits-exxon-chevron-shell-exclusive
I rest my case.
Up 20 Down 1
Groucho d'North on Feb 19, 2022 at 11:53 am
@ Nathan Living.
Mr. Living, not all Yukoners have pre-school aged children who would benefit by a subsidized daycare rate, However we ALL use electricity.
Further, many of us vintage Yukoners paid for our kids to attend daycare out of our own pockets with no financial help from any level of government.
Up 9 Down 2
Insanity on Feb 19, 2022 at 8:09 am
JC sure is triggered, probably a green beautiful person. But what do I know, according to him/her/it I am daft anyway.
Up 9 Down 12
Nathan Living on Feb 18, 2022 at 1:26 pm
Government is being overly generous with daycare and people expect subsidized electrical power as well?
People will soon be lining up for their free recreational drugs paid by government.
Seriously, if you have a home insulate it well and heat it in a way that does not burn a lot of fuel or use excessive electricity.
Stop expecting government to pay for everything it just adds to your children's taxes and debt.
Up 11 Down 2
Groucho d'North on Feb 18, 2022 at 10:04 am
@Politico
The gas industry actions do affect the price like when all the refineries need some upgrades at the same time, yup price manipulation is happening, however the government tax man remains the largest influence on the price at the pump. Excise taxes, Carbon taxes, and GST charged at every stage of the process, from out of the ground-through the refineries and ultimately delivered to the local gas station, taxes are charged at each and every step.
Still don't believe me? Well read it for yourself, I took the liberty of doing a Google search for you, Read which ever one you want- read them all they say the same things. But Yes I agree the industry plays price games too, but not as well as governments do.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=+percentage+of+gas+tax+in+canada&atb=v1-1&ia=web
Up 16 Down 0
DA on Feb 18, 2022 at 8:05 am
JC, I am not doing it wrong. I could be doing everything you do but my ATCO bill would still be $800 during the coldest months. You obviously don't live in an older home with thin walls and double pane windows.
Up 15 Down 3
Bingo on Feb 18, 2022 at 12:46 am
@JC…ok so you like to throw stones eh….you say now you do have hot water, well that’s good but you don’t heat it with electricity so you must heat it with something, you are bearing a cost. I’m not going to tear my hot water heater out it’s fairly new. Your argument is pure drivel hence the initials. Also people with electric cars get rebates and reduced prices at the pump for their charging and as of today pay no road tax or carbon tax. So when everybody gets hooked on the cheapness, provinces and territories will start charging these EVs by mileage so just wait for that whopper of an tax.
Up 11 Down 7
Politico on Feb 17, 2022 at 3:02 pm
@Groucho d'North In case you haven't noticed the gas taxes haven't gone up but the price of gas sure has. Pure price gouging!
Up 15 Down 4
JC on Feb 17, 2022 at 2:33 pm
@Insanity
Do you... do you think people who charge their cars dont pay for that power? That somehow other consumers pay for that cost? Are you daft?
Electric cars are dirtier than gas ones if the power comes from fossil fuels, but that's not always the way it is up here. Every month the majority of power is generated using hydro, and in the non-winter months, it's often all hydro.
Anyone who complains about electric cars over electric heat misses the point anyways. We rely on diesel most when heat is most in demand. Houses built with electric heat should be avoided until we have the hydro capacity to sustain them.
Up 10 Down 4
JC on Feb 17, 2022 at 1:05 pm
@ Bingo
I didn't say I don't have hot water. I said I stopped heating with electricity.
If you can't read a sentence, what confidence should we have you're capable of analyzing a power bill?
Up 20 Down 1
Alberta Nomad on Feb 17, 2022 at 12:56 pm
My electricity bill doubled from December to January, even though our energy use dropped. Bit of a shock.
Up 13 Down 2
AdmiralA$$ on Feb 17, 2022 at 9:32 am
Visible cost of loss of purchasing power. Inflation now up 5.1%. Of course if you have been writing prices down over the last year you would see, it is much closer to 15% for the vast majority of things we buy consistently. When our BoC has a mandate of currency degradation the net result is that it cost more loonies to buy more crap. Now add reduced goods and reduced good movement while money is handed out to continue to purchase goods and you are left with a new tax called runaway inflation. Of course our government that has created this monster can only think of solutions that sounds so nice but only work to make it worse. Nanny, Nanny help me the mean old electric company has to charge more because you created an increasingly inflationary environment. Even John Keynes is spinning in his grave at the very thought of all this MMT crap.
Up 57 Down 7
Insanity on Feb 16, 2022 at 1:58 pm
Why again are the e-car charging stations free? Oh, right, because only the beautiful, green and oh-so environmentally conscious people are using them. And us idiots pay for it. Twice.
Up 40 Down 6
NeilAlexGeddy on Feb 16, 2022 at 1:04 pm
Look at the riders for use of the diesel generators.
I'm betting if Silver had followed the lead of the NWT when negotiating with the feds on carbon emissions policy, the Yukon consumer wouldn't be taking it up the old electric socket. Silver has done nothing measurable to spur alternate options, and has offered us flagellation in return.
Up 41 Down 2
Resident on Feb 16, 2022 at 12:40 pm
Do you honestly think Atco is going to pass on the savings? I have no doubt they'd come up with some bulls**t reason to increase rates even if their costs are static. Got to keep those shareholders' quarterly profits up.
Up 21 Down 3
Bingo on Feb 16, 2022 at 11:41 am
@JC...I like a hot shower not sure what your willing to sacrifice but it's where I draw the line.
Up 57 Down 2
Yukoner '71 on Feb 16, 2022 at 10:34 am
Almost 50 years ago in the 1970's my father was the only wage earner in our home and supported my mother and four kids well. He had two good vehicles, a nice boat and double track ski doo and we went on weeks long driving vacations in the family station wagon all over North America each summer. Electricity was an afterthought included with our rent at that time and we didn't even have a electric meter on any house we lived in until the early 80's.
Fast forward to today, I work the exact same job my father did and truthfully if I had to go it alone I couldn't even support my wife let alone any kids. She has to work full time as well to help take care of the household bills and we aren't living high on the hog by any means. We are lucky as we bought our house long before prices went through the roof, (how does paying $150K for a good Riverdale house in the 90's sound?). I don't know how people are making it with today's housing prices as we wouldn't be able to. I see first hand with my own eyes how the standard of living here has completely collapsed in less than 50 years, basics like electricity are something that now cause stress and anxiety in peoples lives.
Up 27 Down 2
Groucho d'North on Feb 16, 2022 at 10:23 am
@Memory
Your comments triggered my memory to that sad Faro mine situation with the NDP. When the mine shut down Clifford Frame had a small mountain of ore that could have been collateral against their outstanding energy bill. But somehow that ore found its way to the dock in Skagway and the government raised the road weight restrictions so it could be moved there faster. Yup, we consumers are paying for another government screw-up.
Up 25 Down 20
JC on Feb 16, 2022 at 9:44 am
Yukon residents: have giant flatscreen on 16 hours a day, multiple computers, electric stove, and a giant electric hot water tank they've probably never replaced the elements on.
Also Yukon residents: why is my electric bill so high?
Up 20 Down 4
Groucho d'North on Feb 16, 2022 at 9:21 am
@Politico,
While the free-market economy does ebb and flow certain product prices for a variety of reasons, taxation remains one of the largest influences on the price of goods. Buy any gas lately? But back to your comment about beer.
"...The excise tax on beer in Canada was increased today (Apl 1, 2021) for the fifth time in four years, and the second time during the pandemic.
Despite ongoing calls by more than 250 businesses and organizations requesting that the federal government put a freeze on beer taxes to provide much-needed relief to the hospitality sector, one of the highest beer tax rates in the world – almost 50% of the price of beer – has gone up yet again."
Read all about it: https://www.probrewer.com/beverage-industry-news/international/excise-tax-on-beer-in-canada-goes-up-again/
Up 39 Down 12
Matthew on Feb 16, 2022 at 7:52 am
LOL! Anyone actually shocked? Welcome to Agenda 2030, where you will own nothing and be happy!
Up 38 Down 15
Dave on Feb 16, 2022 at 6:49 am
If Yukon energy wasn’t giving the mines so much power rates would go down. They should be powering their own mines.
Up 47 Down 2
Memory on Feb 15, 2022 at 11:55 pm
The NDP under Piers M gave Faro Mine a deferral on energy bills to help the owners keep the mine going. The mine never paid its bills and is now Canada's largest environmental cleanup. Now the energy company (Atco) has been charging the rider ever since 1991 to pay for the NDP mistake. So all the NDP people who have big solutions of wind, solar and so on need to look a little deeper at their history of suggesting expensive bad ideas.
Up 34 Down 3
Max Mack on Feb 15, 2022 at 9:49 pm
There are serious problems with how energy policies and prices are set in the Yukon.
Seems that government and its political toadies at YEC and the Yukon Utilities Board are determined to raise rates till our eyes bleed. After all, think of all the money to be stuffed into the pockets of FN Dev Corps so they can build "green" energy projects. And let's not forget all those virtue signalling elites adding solar panels to their houses at our cost.
Residential energy prices in the Yukon rose 28.9% between 2020 and 2021 (to date).
https://www.energyhub.org/electricity-prices
Up 30 Down 7
George Moss on Feb 15, 2022 at 9:29 pm
Prices through the roof on fuel, power, food, housing, yet the damn government and some people still think/believe in affordable housing… pull your head outa yer a**, when Pat Duncan was running the territory for one term before she single handedly decimated the liberals because of her cocky arrogant attitude..she envisioned 100 grand for the territory’s population in the future. She didn’t say how much it was gonna cost the people living here to build that infrastructure…look who is in power now and how much government has grown…a false economy, and still now restores industry other than Vic gold and placer miners.
Up 18 Down 24
JC on Feb 15, 2022 at 7:56 pm
@Bingo
I have led lights, I use my dryer, and I have a boiler system. I have 3 kids.
My bill *maybe* goes over 100 dollars 1 month a year. Maybe. It was 125, but I stopped heating hot water with electricity
My dollar per energy charge hasn't changed in over 4 years. I used to pay more in riders than I did in January, which was abt 4x what it was in December.
Whatever you people are doing, you're doing it wrong.
Up 29 Down 5
N.N. on Feb 15, 2022 at 7:45 pm
Every bill is full of made up/ trumped up charges that make no sense.
If you do not shovel a path to the meter - you will also see that reflected on the bill… snow is too high-means punch in random numbers?!
If the expense of solar or wind turbines was reasonable, I would be installing them all over my roof and yard- but then they also want your excess power generated to sell for triple.
Your “clean” energy is going to ensure no one has power. Life by candle light…
Up 50 Down 6
North_of_60 on Feb 15, 2022 at 7:24 pm
I agree with the comments from Groucho, Bingo and Yukoner. We also heat with wood, hang laundry to dry, conserve hot water, use energy-efficient appliances and LED lights. Plus there's a timer on the vehicle engine heater and we only use a bit of supplemental electric heat when it's 30 below and colder. None of that was subsidized with government hand-outs. With that frugal use of electricity we manage to barely stay below 1000 kWh in the coldest months, yet every winter our electric bills keep going up and up.
On our most recent bill, which was just under $200, 70% was the customer and energy charges, the rest was various adjustments, riders and taxes. I call that extra 30% the Yukon Government Energy Resource Mismanagement Tax. Because instead of using the energy tax rebate to significantly reduce that 30% surcharge on every Yukoner's residential electricity bill, they waste it subsidizing their wealthy-woke voter base with generous gifts to install solar panels and buy battery powered cars and bikes. On top of that they further subsidize the solar installations, which only provide surplus energy when we have adequate hydro power, with buy-back rates as if they were displacing diesel fuel that's seldom burned when the solar is producing useful energy.
That energy tax rebate that's supposed to be returned to all Yukoners is also wasted to subsidize wind turbines, electric vehicle charging stations and multi-million dollar battery banks made in Asia. Instead of investing in long term energy solutions like Made in Canada hydro or even small modular nuclear like Canada built in the 70s, this government wastes money on short-term, virtue-signaling, greenwashed, boondoggles which send our hard earned dollars overseas.
The Yukon doesn't have an energy problem, we have an energy resource mismanagement problem that we pay for on every overpriced electricity bill.
Up 16 Down 29
Ice Face on Feb 15, 2022 at 7:21 pm
Bahaha this is hilarious a YP MLA criticizing Libs for the power cost issues. 6-7 years ago YP pushed for LNG fracked gas burning generators for tens of millions. This is the real reason these costs are hitting consumers across the territory.
Up 22 Down 0
@resident on Feb 15, 2022 at 4:17 pm
A reminder that ATCO is Yukon Energy's biggest customer. So their rate increases affect your ATCO bill.
Up 21 Down 20
BnR on Feb 15, 2022 at 4:09 pm
So the party of capitalism, free enterprise, free markets, etc., wants government to pay for people’s power. Oh the entitlement. We’re cheaper than BC for God sakes. BC is $0.126/kWh and Yukon is $0.124/kWh (block 1).
Power generation costs money. Diesel isn’t cheap and neither is natural gas. Infrastructure upgrades don’t pay for themselves. If you’re heating electrically, that’s on you.
Up 43 Down 14
Anti Liberal Death Cult and Economic Terrorism on Feb 15, 2022 at 4:06 pm
Ya, ya, we are all critical about where our money goes. Do something about it!!
Can’t afford a mortgage.
Can’t afford rent.
Can’t afford electricity.
Can’t afford oil or gas.
Can’t afford food… That is, if there is any on the shelves to begin with.
Nice job Liberals! Waiting for the budget to balance itself too but it’s not happening. Thanks for the global reset and the economic tsunami that is about to wipe everyone out.
The Liberal Party should be outlawed and any party members should be required to pay reparations! Bring back affordable gas so we can drive and have more affordable electricity!
Up 18 Down 5
JustSayin' on Feb 15, 2022 at 3:34 pm
Why are we paying rates for the same service around town. I live in C and C, the amount of power bumps, service interruptions, power outages which occur is atrocious.
Up 84 Down 7
DA on Feb 15, 2022 at 2:52 pm
$950 for electric one month, $850 the next. This is not affordable.
I called ATCO regarding my $950 bill and they thought they might make me feel better by informing me that they recently decreased their rates. They conveniently did not mention how many times they've increased their rates over the last five years, far exceeding inflation. Electric prices need to be better regulated.
Perhaps the government isn't doing anything about it because they want people to be forced into make their homes more heat efficient. How much will that cost for an older home? $100,000, at least?
Up 104 Down 8
Resident on Feb 15, 2022 at 2:51 pm
A reminder that 'freeze the rates' refers to Yukon Energy, not Atco. The majority of us are not buying power from Yukon Energy.
The Liberal energy policies suck. The Yukon Party energy policies suck. Stop trying to score political points and solve this problem together. We need long-term solutions. I don't care if it's hydro, solar, thermal, or burning unicorns in a firepit. Do your homework and get this done. It's beyond absurd.
Up 35 Down 49
Nathan Living on Feb 15, 2022 at 2:33 pm
My last electric bill was an estimate and it covered 35 or so days.
It was a very reasonable total so no complaint from this homeowner.
People who heat with electrical power should expect to pay far more during a cold spell because they are using more power.
Why freeze electrical power prices? I think that was done in the past and that is why the rider was added to the bill to recover what was given away.
I would like to politicians to stop the false indignation and giveaways.
Up 26 Down 54
Politico on Feb 15, 2022 at 2:17 pm
Miss Obvious has not noticed that all prices are rising. The free enterprise system that she supports is allowed to charge the market what ever they want. How about doing something about the price of beer!
Up 35 Down 57
Chuck Farley on Feb 15, 2022 at 1:29 pm
Geraldine; you need to realize this is not a liberal manufactured crisis. The inflation is global; does not matter where one lives, everything has gone up, however one cannot ignore the corporate world's direct role in the high cost of living
Up 56 Down 18
Dave on Feb 15, 2022 at 1:23 pm
Newsflash!
It's getting too expensive to live in ugly territory too.
It's a normal part of the new post-CoVid reality that inflation is going to bite.
Time to pay the piper for two years of Profligate Pandemic Panic.
Up 112 Down 3
Bingo on Feb 15, 2022 at 1:04 pm
I burn wood, have led lights, no kids at home and hang my clothes to dry and my bills are still over $200 month, I look at the bill and the energy charge is actually $93…then all the add ones. There is this fuel rider of $53 what is this, could this be all the fuel they are burning to heat and light the so called “green energy” in Whistlebend? Why am I subsiding electric usage dysfunction promoted by a dysfunction government? It should be user pay, you want green energy then start handing over some greenback cause this is ridiculous.
Up 100 Down 15
Yukoner on Feb 15, 2022 at 12:57 pm
Someone has to pay for all the useless solar panels are being put up because the true cost isn't being accounted for, why are people/businesses being paid excess of the market rate for the useless power they generate during the summer when we are no where near capacity.
YG needs to stop with the patchwork solutions and build a new dam. And the NIMBYs and environmentalist need to understand the trade off of building a new dam and changing an area/destroying some habitat vs getting off diesel.
Can't have your cake and eat it unless you go nuclear; but good luck getting that through Yesab.
Up 97 Down 4
Groucho d'North on Feb 15, 2022 at 12:24 pm
I'd like to see an accounting of all the riders that have been on our electrical bills since the Faro mine shut down.
An annual report on the riders, explaining what each is for, when it was applied, how much money it has generated to date and the end date for when it will be removed. Some clarity on the riders would be a wonderful thing.
Through a variety of energy efficency improvements paid for out of my own pocket with no rebates, we have managed to keep our monthly household electrical consumption under 900 Kwh, yet the bill keeps getting larger.