On Saturday, March 22, thousands of workers, community groups and concerned citizens demonstrated against Quebec Bill 69. The bill proposes reforms that could see public energy infrastructure fall increasingly under the control of large private companies.
The demonstration was organized by the Union of Hydro-Québec Trades Employees (CUPE Local 1500).
“We know that Bill 69 is designed to steer us, our Hydro-Québec, our common good, towards privatization,” Frédéric Savard, provincial president of the union, told The North Star. “It's a major step backwards.”
Protesters highlighted, among others, two significant consequences of the reforms: increased electricity rates for consumers and the loss of public assets and jobs.
“Section 115 of the bill mentions that Hydro-Québec can sell its assets. For Hydro-Québec workers, this is an important point, because we see our assets, our jobs, perhaps going to the private sector, to subcontracting,” explains Savard.
“We have to give the public information because everyone will be paying for it soon. Our heritage is disappearing, the heritage of our children and grandchildren.”
The CAQ government has promised that residential electricity rate increases will be capped at 3% until next year's elections, but the future is uncertain beyond that time.
Infrastructure development included in Bill 69 will require significant investment from the province, which will necessarily drive up rates. Furthermore, Bill 69 would shorten the period between potential rate hikes from five years to three.
Frédéric Savard highlighted the financial impact of privatization on Quebec taxpayers:
“It's a state-owned company. We make hundreds of millions of dollars a year that are redistributed to the Quebec population. We're all Hydro-Québec shareholders, so we want to keep it that way.”
To offset rising costs, Bill 69 would implement government subsidies for electricity consumers—essentially using taxpayers' money to reduce their own hydro bills. This would significantly impact the revenue-generating capacity of Hydro-Québec.
What would this mean for the state-owned company? It would become much less profitable, giving the government even more incentive to sell it off. In this kind of situation, public assets are usually sold off to huge corporations with the means to grab these pricy infrastructures, reinforcing the power of multinationals and private monopolies outside political control.
Shortly after Ontario sold off the majority of its public hydroelectricity utility in the mid 2010s, the province became plagued with billing errors that resulted in residential customers having their power cut in the wintertime. In 2017, then-newly privatized Goreway Power Station in Brampton, Ontario was caught billing taxpayers for inappropriate expenses to the tune of $100 million. For this, it was eventually fined a meagre $10 million.