Going it alone, II

Item: Billion-dollar pension fix pleases N.L. unions

The Newfoundland and Labrador government is borrowing almost $1 billion to settle an unfunded liability that threatened to bankrupt a pension plan for thousands of civil servants.

Item: Quebec to go ahead with La Romaine hydro project

Le complexe La Romaine doit comprendre quatre centrales hydroélectriques totalisant 1500 mégawatts d'énergie électrique. Il nécessitera un investissement de 8,5 milliards de dollars, soit 7 milliards pour la construction et 1,5 milliard pour le raccordement au réseau d'Hydro-Québec.

Item: Federal eco-cash raises profile of east-west power grid

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced Tuesday Ontario would use a part of its $586-million share of the $1.5-billion Canada ecoTrust fund "to begin work on an east-west electrical transmission interconnect with Manitoba, which will allow for the flow of new, clean hydroelectric power to the Ontario market.

So... the market for so-called Lower Churchill in Ontario is about to get smaller, thanks to Manitoba's ability to actually strike a deal with someone without hysterically condemning any deal as a "giveaway", and to the federal government's partial underwriting of the project.

The financial capacity of Williams Government to "go it alone", never large to begin with, just got smaller.

And, all the "go it alone" rhetoric notwithstanding, one of the primary targets of Williams Government's efforts to find the billions of dollars of Other People's Money necessary to "go it alone with" — that is, Hydro-Québec — is about to tie up lots of capital and expertise in a stand-alone project on its own soil... an eminently business-sensible course of action on their part.