Dear Premier Wakeham,
I am Tom Lane. I live at 281 Water Street. I own a restaurant here, and an AI company. I am writing as a citizen, not to advance either one.
The 17 August paper is a framework. It is not yet binding. The 1969 contract still governs until new power-purchase agreements are executed. The political target for those agreements is 31 December 2026. The framework itself runs to 31 March 2027 if they are not signed. Either party can still walk. I am asking you to hold the interests of the next generations first of mind while the paper is still paper.
When the cameras are gone, we will still have to look our children and grandchildren in the eye. Energy is the scale of civilization. The next twenty years will reward the places that still own firm, clean power at home — power a mine can contract, a town can grow on, and a company can build the next industry around. A better price today that sells the chance to build tomorrow is only a quieter version of the same mistake we have already lived.
We are not poor in resources. We have the river, the ore, the climate, and a people who have already proved they can build what the rest of the country notices. About ten thousand people work in our technology sector. It contributes close to two billion dollars a year. Last year our companies took most of Atlantic Canada’s startup investment. Verafin was built here and stayed here. Kraken Robotics became a global ocean company from this harbour.
That base does not need another announcement about clean energy. It needs firm power it can actually contract, this decade, in Labrador, at a published price, on a line that reaches the load. Software proved a national company can be built in Newfoundland. The next layer — ocean systems, industrial tools, year-round computing — runs on electricity. If that electricity is already spoken for, those companies will train and host somewhere the lights stay on under someone else’s name.
The tools for designing, simulating, and solving hard problems are cheaper and more widely held than they have ever been. That does not make power less scarce. It makes power more decisive. I do not want this province standing on the sidelines while that work is done elsewhere and then buying the results back. Whatever our hydro makes possible should be made by hands that live here.
Take the better price. Keep a door open.
I support ending two-tenths of a cent on the plant that already stands. That price was an insult to the people who live beside the water. Taking it off this decade is the right thing to do. Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro has stated that the new schedule starts near 1.8 cents in 2027 and reaches about 11.5 cents by 2041, then follows inflation. That is many times what we are paid today. It is also another contract through 2077, with the same buyer and the same operator of the reservoir.
Take the better price. Then put a review in 2051 and 2061. Those years were in the 2024 memorandum. They are not in this paper as it has been described in public. A child born this year will be twenty-five and thirty-five then. They should inherit a lock they can still open, not only an inflation clause. Waiting until 2041 is not a plan for them. We do not own a line that can carry this plant to New England. Fifteen more years at the old mill rate does not build one. The eighteen cents mentioned in the House is the number that makes this schedule whole if we wait. It is not an offer Hydro-Québec has made.
Versus the 2024 memorandum, cash through 2030 is lighter, and payments start in 2027 rather than 2025. That was a trade for structure and megawatts. It should be described as a trade. The promised fifteen percent electricity rebate is a provincial commitment after contracts are signed. It is not a clause Hydro-Québec signed.
Keep enough power in Labrador to build on.
The abundance is the power we keep and use here. Recapture today is 525 megawatts, not the larger headline that arrives only if new plants are built. The material terms describe Newfoundland and Labrador volumes as first-out of the plant. That protection should survive in the long-form. If we do not use what we keep, Hydro-Québec has already written a price for it — one and a half times the new rate, with notice. That is a reservation price, not a development plan.
Before this is called a development agreement, there should be a public allocation: the year, the megawatts, the place, the price, and which line. Mines first on the western line. Towns. Then year-round industrial load at Churchill Falls or Goose Bay, written as a named use of Labrador power alongside the mines, on a line that exists, at a published rate. If that page is blank, unused power will go west by indecision.
Fibre belongs with the power. Labrador’s long-haul network is essentially one path along the highway and the corridor that already runs into Quebec. If a transatlantic cable lands at Goose Bay and the terrestrial pairs simply follow that corridor, the next industrial load will be built where the traffic already breaks out. Ownership of the landing, open access, and an eastbound path toward this Island should be conditions of any approval. Otherwise we will have exported the next industry the same way we exported the last one.
Keep Gull Island a separate decision.
Gull Island is a new plant. It is not payment for 1969. The financing is better than the last memorandum, and the clause that would have left a mountain of leftover debt is gone. That is worth saying. It is still a fifty-year contract for a dam that does not exist. Assignment of the Lower Churchill Impacts and Benefits Agreement to any Gull Island entity has already been named as a condition of closing. An Innu equity partnership is not yet signed. Innu Nation is not a party to the paper on the table this week. Quebec votes on the fifth of October.
If Gull Island does not proceed, volume-cap clauses in the present paper can change what we keep from the plant we already built. Those clauses are not on one public sheet a voter can check. Unpoured concrete should not decide what our children keep. The reopen of the existing plant, and the recapture we already have, should stand in words a court can read even if Gull Island never reaches first power.
Say the figures the way a treasury would.
The $49 billion and $273 billion totals being used in public combine the existing plant, a plant that has not been built, federal support, and construction other governments help finance. Federal money in this file is largely loan guarantees, tax credits, and line support — not a cheque to this treasury. Hydro-Québec still owns 34.2 percent of Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corporation, so a third of what is paid there returns to Quebec as a dividend. When a figure is offered as ours, it should be stated as what this treasury keeps.
The 985 megawatts of transmission announced on 17 August unpacks, in the government’s own release, as 240 megawatts priced off the Champlain Hudson Power Express contract, 200 megawatts priced off the New England Clean Energy Connect contract, 280 megawatts of synthetic exports, and 265 megawatts of a reserved path. The first three are prices at the Quebec border. They are not a wire this province operates. That formula is worth having. It should not be described as if it were.
Some of this is in the published annexes. The power-purchase agreements that would actually bind us have not been signed. Until a year-by-year table of dollars and volumes, and the cap table if Gull Island is not built, are public, people of good faith will keep arguing past one another. That is not a basis on which to ask the public for a final opinion.
I am asking you to treat the existing-plant reopen, the recapture and industrial allocation, and Gull Island as three conversations, not one motion. I am asking that the better price on the plant we have already built survive if the new dam does not; that 2051 and 2061 be written in for the children born this year; that Labrador’s unused power be scheduled onto loads in this province, at a published price, before it is sold back; that a Goose Bay landing, if it comes, turn east as well as west; and that Gull Island be conditioned on an Innu partnership that is equity, a defined cap on leftover capital, and language that cannot quietly cut what we keep from the old plant.
I would be grateful for a written reply before this sitting ends.
Premier, I am asking you plainly: put the next generations first. Hold what we can hold. Our people will use it. They always were ingenious enough. What they have lacked is kilowatts that still belonged to us when they were ready.
Respectfully,
Tom Lane
281 Water Street
St. John’s, NL