Too many parallels to HST debacle in smart meter rollout

justine hunter VICTORIA— From Friday's Globe and Mail

While the B.C. government was busy with what now stands as the province’s worst example of government communications on a major public policy – selling the harmonized sales tax – it discouraged BC Hydro from distracting the public with a sales job of its own.  Which is why officials at the Crown corporation have waited until this month to launch a new ad campaign to persuade British Columbians that smart meters are a good thing.  Driven by a government-imposed deadline, BC Hydro is already well into what it is touting as the fastest smart meter installation program in the world. So the print, radio and television advertising blitz on behalf of the $1-billion program is coming after the point of no return.  And if there is a lesson in the backlash to the HST, it is that British Columbians don’t care to have change forced upon them.  British Columbians first were told in 2007 that the new meters were coming, but details wouldn’t follow until the installation contract was signed early in 2011. In the meantime, completing the picture that British Columbians have no choice in the matter, the meter program was exempt from review by its regulator, the BC Utilities Commission.  With BC Hydro constrained, opponents of the technology have had the field mostly to themselves to raise concerns about health, privacy and job losses. Their message got through to municipal politicians, who united behind a call for a moratorium at this year's gathering of the Union of B.C. Municipalities.  The annual UBCM convention is also where the smart meter story starts. It is where, in 2007, then-premier Gordon Campbell locked the province into the program. “We will give BC Hydro new direction to help all residential and commercial customers to install smart meters.” It would create a modern electricity grid that would encourage customers to use energy at non-peak times, he explained, to encourage conservation. “I’m announcing today that we’re going to do what it takes to have this project fully in place within the next five years, by 2012.”  Those same mayors and councillors who dutifully applauded the premier’s green energy plans then had plenty of reason, by the time they met this September, to reconsider the power of populist forces. Mr. Campbell is gone, forced out by an unprecedented backlash over the imposition of the HST. And his departure still left his B.C. Liberal government crippled, facing a long mop-up job after losing a referendum on the tax.(more)