cope Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union Local 378 378 2nd Floor, 4S9S Canada Way, , BC V5G 1J9 TEL 604-299-0378 TOLL FREE iN Be 1-800-665-6838 rAX 604-299-8211 www.cope378.ca LF: BCH-ll-0311

August 15, 2011

Mr. John Dyble Deputy Minister to Premier Room 156, West Annex Parliament Buildings, Victoria, B.C. V8V 1X4

Dear Mr. Dyble:

Re: Review of Be Hydro deeply flawed by selective statistics

It is with deep disappointment and rising anger I write and request that you correct the false, misleading and hurtful portrayal of BC Hydro and Power Authority employees in the deeply flawed report, Review of BC Hydro.

My disappointment stems from the opportunity squandered by you and your co-authors, Peter Milburn and Cheryl Wenezenki-Yolland. The three of you, each a veteran of the B.C. public service, had a rare and welcome opportunity to conduct an objective, thorough and balanced examination of the jewel of 'S Crown corporations.

Instead, you chose to undertake a blatantly superficial analysis, apparently relying unquestioningly on misinformation provided by BC Hydro executives and avoiding the real issues underlying the proposed rate increases. It is difficult to see much use in your report on our province's largest and most-vital utility.

My anger is the result of your gratuitous and unwarranted assault on BC Hydro employees, and the selective use of data to paint a deceptive portrait of thousands of dedicated workers who frequently are attacked merely because they - like you and many other hard working British Columbians - happen to work in the public sector.

Your report claims:

• That between 2006 and 2010, BC Hydro "experienced" employee growth of 41 per cent (p. 5),

• That BC Hydro's workforce should be slashed from approximately 6,000 to "a more reasonable staffing level ... in the order of 4,800 employees." (Pp. 6 and 43),

• That 1,000 to 1,200 BC Hydro employees ought to lose their jobs even though direct labour costs represent only about 11 per cent of the Crown corporation's annual expenditures,

climatesrnari Page 2 Ltr to John Oyb/e Re: Review of Be Hydro

I do not seek an apology for the unprovoked injuries - and fear - that you and your colleagues have inflicted on thousands of hard-working BC Hydro employees and their families. Rather, I ask you to correct the public record by issuing a revised report that accurately depicts BC Hydro's work-force and its related costs and benefits.

The political and partisan nature of Review of BC Hydro is revealed by its use of 2006 (that is, fiscal year 2005/06) as the base from which to calculate the growth of BC Hydro's workforce.

Why did you select that apparently random year, as opposed to, say, 2004? Or, 2007?

Readily-available empirical data reveal the answer. Because of policies enacted by Christy Clark, and the BC Liberals after their election to government in 2001, BC Hydro's work-force by 2006 was at its lowest level in well over a decade.

In 1995/96, BC Hydro's workforce stood at 5,988, and five years later, in the first full year under a BC Liberal government, the comparable number was 6,144.

Yet by 2005/06, the year you and your colleagues arbitrarily chose to depict BC Hydro's workforce as growing out-of-control, the Crown corporation's payroll had plunged to just 4,203 employees. By then BC Hydro had 1,785 fewer workers than in the mid-1990s, and 1,941 fewer than at the beginning of the BC Liberals' ascension to power.

Let's explore why BC Hydro's workforce shrunk so dramatically between 2001 and 2006: two policy decisions by Gordon Campbell, Christy Clark and the BC Liberals led to the massive reduction in the number of BC Hydro employees.

First, the BC Liberal government in 2003 enacted legislation that required BC Hydro to "outsource" certain operations to the private sector. Shortly thereafter 1,600 of the Crown corporation's employees were privatized to Accenture, a consulting firm then based in Bermuda (to avoid taxes), now headquartered in Ireland (again, for tax purposes).

Second, also in 2003, the BC Liberals ordered BC Hydro to hive-off its transmission operations to a newly-created Crown entity, BC Transmission Corporation. As many as 276 BC Hydro employees were arbitrarily told to report to work at the new BCTe.

It is painfully evident why 2006 was the base year selected by you and your colleagues from which to analyze the growth of BC Hydro's workforce.

Simply, that year was the multi-decade nadir of employment at the Crown corporation - BC Hydro's workforce by then had been cut by Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark to just two-thirds its size compared to when they first formed the government in 2001 - and a direct result of failed BC Liberal policies. Page 3 Ltr to john Oyb/e Re: Review of Be Hydro

Those two policy initiatives resulted in more than 1,800 BC Hydro workers being removed from the Crown corporation's payroll. And both initiatives, as countless observers predicted at the time, proved to be costly experiments to manage.

• In 2010, the BC Liberals passed legislation to abolish the BC Transmission Corporation, and many BCTC employees were transferred back into BC Hydro; and

• In July 2011, BC Hydro advised Accenture that its IT (information technology) contract would be cancelled. The jobs of 400 to 450 workers doing the Crown corporation's IT work are now are in jeopardy.

These wasteful expenditures and failed policies received a bare mention in your Review of BC Hydro.

In your report you acknowledge that Independent Power Providers (lPPs) costs have 64% increase in IPP costs over the past 3 years - to $568 million in 2010 (more than BC Hydro's entire labour force costs) and that in Fiscal 2010 IPPs produced 16% of total domestic electricity requirements, while IPP electricity costs represented 49% of the overall domestic energy cost.

Even more shocking, the report paid lip service to the BC Liberals' doomed-to-fail Smart Meter Initiative, budgeted at nearly $1 billion, merely regurgitating questionable assertions and even describing its dubious business case as "reasonable."

But only 4 of the 50-plus recommendations in your report address the mismanagement brought about by government policy. And those recommendations are without weight or teeth, unlike your recommendation to axe BC Hydro's workforce. It seerns to rne government should stick to government policy and stay out of labour force and other management measures.

Over the last five years, as is made clear in your report, BC Hydro has had to hire hundreds of new employees "largely due to the volume of work required for maintaining aging infrastructure and changes in legal, regulatory and environmentallegislation/practices ",," (pp. 5 and 35.)

Lastly, your report praises the BC Hydro board for its governance. But, if it were true as you suggest that BC Hydro could operate with 1,000 - 1,200 fewer employees would that not indicate haphazard planning and mismanagement at the Board level?

It would have been relatively easy for you and your colleagues to present an objective, balanced and helpful portrait of BC Hydro's workforce - and I sincerely wish that you had done so.

Regrettably, you chose instead to advance the political agenda of Christy Clark and the BC Liberals, and deliberately attack - and frighten with the prospect of unemployment - thousands of hard­ working BC Hydro employees and their families. Page 4 Ltr to John Dyb/e Re: Review of Be Hydro

I reiterate my request that you correct the public record by issuing a revised report accurately depicting BC Hydro's work-force and its related costs and benefits.

Yours truly, V ,Jut

(//~ David Black President, COPE 378

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cc: Christy Clark, Premier of British Columbia Peter Milburn, Deputy Minister of Health Cheryl Wenezenki-Yolland, Acting Deputy Minister of Advanced Education , Minister for Energy Mines and Petroleum , Opposition Critic for Energy Mines and Dave Cobb, President and CEO, BC Hydro Michelle Laurie, President, !SEW 258