Scott Simpson Column on IPPs and NAFTA

Scott Simpson of the Vancouver Sun has his columns online and they are worth reading. Today he wrote about the idea that NAFTA somehow forces the government here to continue sales of power to the US once they start. Not that he is saying that, some of the NDP candidates are saying that.

There are some major fallacies with the argument that NAFTA would force a commodity to be sold in perpetuity.

1) No one can force a private company to sell the power they produce to the Americans.
2) BC has a sovereign right to regulate water issues under constitution. The federal Crown does not have the power to force the provincial Crown to bend to their will. No treaty Canada signs can bind a province in an area of provincial jurisdiction.
3) No one has ever come up with a true scare story of what NAFTA does.

I suspect that the licenses will be renewed in the future given the fact that it makes rational sense because the infrastructure is in place.

Of course our power is going to the US, we can produce loads of green power and are connected into a north - south grid.