I recently received a letter from B.C. Hydro telling me that I needed to have the new meter installed. The letter indicated that this billion-dollar program would provide the following benefits to me:

1. Automatically detect power outages. Here I was relying on the fact that the lights did not go on.

2. Access to my hourly electrical data. Do I really need to know this and will I actually look at it? I used to rely on my bill to tell me how much electricity I consumed.

3. Ensure my bill was based on actual consumption. All along I thought that I was paying for actual consumption. There may have been an estimated bill here and there but in the end I always believed that I had paid for all the electricity I consumed.

Am I missing something? I cannot figure out why we need to spend a billion dollars to tell us what we already know or care to know. The Liberal government seems to think we need to do this and so it will be so.

I guess it is like the HST we really needed, like the Sea to Sky Highway we really needed that was paid for with money we have to now pay back to the feds.

Glenn White

Shawnigan Lake

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