She swings and swings at the big piñata, but darn it all if the treats just won't fall into her lap. Here we see our Premier of British Columbia, Christy "Just Call Me C.C." Clark trying to get value out of her B.C. Hydro Smart Meter Program by beating the living hell out of it. Please click on this link to read my take on the Smart Meters, and be sure to follow up on the research and references!
If you are following B.C. Politics, you'll know that this is the very same B.C. Hydro Smart Meter program that was forced into law a couple years back. This law made it mandatory that every household in the province convert their nothing-at-all-wrong-with-them traditional meter to a first-generation B.C. Hydro Smart meter (likely rejected by the failed U.S. Smart Meter program), which among other things emits no less than five times the radiation of a microwave oven at intervals throughout the day, and can remotely shut off the entire power to your house like a breaker switch. Through a system of demanding and demeaning phone calls to customers plus an army of sub-contractor technicians carrying demolition tools, the customers of B.C. Hydro were forcibly frog-marched into making the conversion.
And now that the process is finally nearly complete, Christy Clark's endearingly unpredictable Energy Minister Rich Coleman suddenly and unexpectedly decided in public view that the Smart Meter program was only just a suggestion, and lifted the mandatory nature of the program. Really, Minister Coleman? I suppose the harassing phone calls from B.C. Hydro were just the Legislature's version of being "punk'd"? That the "Just For Laughs" team had a hidden camera in the toolbox along with the bolt cutters and forged-iron pry-bars? Gosh, all this, and somehow I forgot to laugh. So did the rest of the province.
My guess is that the cumbersome and yet somehow profitable B.C. Hydro has resisted the Liberal Party's efforts to be dismantled and privatized. As you can see in the image, the banner of B.C. Hydro has been battered and torn from repeated political pummelling. Let's face it: a green-trending utility company based on a renewable resource may just be too big a plum for even an incumbent Liberal cabinet well-tutored in Gordon Campbell-style economics to eat in one bite. Swing as she may, C.C. has not broken open the piñata prize before election time in May. Strange, considering that the Liberals with Ms. Clark appear to have extensive experience dismantling useful public works - or is defunct B.C. Rail too distant a memory for the voters?
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