Holy Hydro!

Some consumers taken aback as
soaring bills burn through winter cash

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Five hundred dollars, two months, seven-and-a-half, de Lorimier and Marianne; $385, two months, five-and-a-half, St-Laurent and Bernard; $300, two months, four-and-a-half, Jeanne-Mance and Villeneuve; $650, two months, six-and-a-half, St-Zotique and St-Laurent.

There are a million Hydro bill stories in the freezing city, and these are just a few of them. Admittedly, anecdotal is the worst kind of evidence, but an unusual number of people have been complaining to (and within) the Mirror about their eye-popping bills that arrived in the mail this month and last. Bills that are normally manageable reach into the mid-triple figures, twice or three times higher than the corresponding period the previous year. So what’s up?

According to Environment Canada meteorologist André Cantin, Montreal’s winter of 2008–’09 was not an unusually cold one. Sure, there was that nasty stretch between January 14–17, when the mercury plummeted between -16C to -20C during the day and -23C to -28C at night, but the mean average for the month was an entirely manageable, if not entirely comfortable, -12.8C, a mere 2.6C fluctuation below normal. December’s mean was only -6.6C, just 0.3C below normal. And February, with a mean of -7C, was an easy ride too, a full 1.4C above normal. “This,” says Cantin, “has been an almost normal winter up to now.”

Well, almost. Last month, the provincial energy provider announced another rate hike, of 1.2 per cent, effective April 1. This will make the seventh rate increase in six years.

And while Jean-Philippe Rousseau, a communications officer at Hydro-Québec, says all bills are based entirely on user consumption, Olivier Bourgeois, an analyst at consumer advocacy organization Option consommateur says his office has received an unusual number of complaints relating to electricity bills since last summer. He says one factor may be new computer software the utility installed over the past couple of years that had serious glitches in it, or based its future billing on readings taken over the span of only a month or two. “There was a bug in the system,” he says.

Hélèn Laurin, a Hydro spokesperson responsible for queries about the new software, admits there were a few problems “in the very beginning, but that’s been fixed.” She suggests new energy-sucking appliances, such as plasma TVs or new computers, could be behind a surge in consumption. Hydro seems unaware of any increase in complaints.

Bourgeois, however, is, at least in those directed to his office. He says he used to receive maybe one call every couple of weeks from someone complaining about their bill. Since last summer, he says he’s received “five times the number of calls.”

But what bothers him the most about surging Hydro bills is the unfair onus it places on those least able to afford serial hikes. It seems to him that the provincial Liberals are sending mixed signals about the economy—lowering individual taxes to increase spending, but doing nothing to prohibit yet another boost to the price of electricity. And a year ago, when provincial Finance Minister Monique Jérôme-Forget delivered her 2008–’09 budget speech, she very happily announced that Hydro-Québec would be transferring 75 per cent of its net profit to the government in the form of dividends, as a means of paying down the provincial debt.

“It’s like a flat tax,” says Bourgeois, adding that the hikes squeeze those with the least economic wiggle room. As for better insulating your home, Bourgeois says that, without additional financial incentives, it is a luxury only the rich can afford.

In the meantime, he suggests watching consumption, and calling Hydro. There are mechanisms in place to handle complaints, he says.