The City of Edmonton is holding a series of public hearings which began last week, reviewing the RBC-Dominion Securities report recommending the privatization of the city power and water utility, EPCOR/AQUALTA. City council paid hundreds of thousands for this study by the investment arm of the Royal Bank.

Last fall the Parkland Institute, a public policy think-tank at the University of Alberta, offered to provide an objective evaluation of the RBC report and the actual benefits of keeping the city power and water utility public, for a paltry $50,000. The city council rejected the offer.

Undaunted, the Parkland Institute conducted its own study, which was released last week, just in time for the three months of public discussion the city and EPCOR have planned around this issue.

Entitled Light Among the Shadows: The Re-Regulation of the Electrical Industry and the Future of EPCOR, the Parkland study reviews the RBC-Dominion Securities report in light of experiences that deregulation or market liberalization (euphemisms for privatization) have had in the United Kingdom and the United States.

The report notes that with public utility deregulation (or as the report calls it, re-regulation), consumers have suffered due to increased service costs while managers, brokers, directors and others have pocketed hefty financial rewards at the public’s expense.

Who would benefit from the sale of EPCOR? RBC-Dominion Securities could pocket hundreds of millions of dollars in fees if the city decided to privatize and offer the company up as a public share offering.

TransAlta Utilities, a huge supporter of last year’s legislative drive to deregulate utilities, could do well by EPCOR’s sale. EPCOR is a large-scale generator of power and several companies, including TransAlta, would be happy to get their hands on it.

TransAlta is one of two Canadian companies that can buy and sell electrical power in the American market. It’s also a key player in promoting the deregulation of Ontario Hydro. In Ontario, TransAlta plans to develop its own power stations once deregulation is complete. TransAlta has been busy developing power stations in B.C. as well. This power generation is not for local use but for export. Power generated here will be sold to the U.S.

The consumer in Alberta will face increasing blackouts and increases in costs of electricity. The blackouts last summer are not a result of lacking capacity for electrical generation, but the fact that companies like TransAlta are shipping electricity to the U.S.

The losers in this deal would be the rest of us, the citizens of Edmonton, Alberta and Canada. Workers face massive job losses if the company is privatized. A study by the European Federation of Public Service Unions released in Brussels this week shows that more than 250,000 utility jobs have been lost since 1990 in Europe as countries there began to prepare for deregulation of the electrical markets. The study, A New Era or a Dark Age? Electricity Liberalization To Cause Job Chaos predicts another 250,000 European jobs could be lost in the next five years.

Its not too late to voice your concern. EPCARE, a citizen’s action committee has been formed to lobby to keep EPCOR a public utility. A web page opposed to the privatization of EPCOR/AQUALTA has been launched (www.labournet.ca/epcor.html), and contains background information on utility privatization and the international movement to stop it. The site also contains links to city council, the EPCOR report and other studies.

(Eugene Plawiuk is president of the CUPE Edmonton District Council and a web activist.)