The British Columbia is carefully observing the actions of the Prime Minister of Ontario, Doug Ford, of the Government Efficiency Department (Doge) of Elon Musk when it comes to administering his energy supply, says BC Prime Minister David Eby.
The aggressive movements of each could have an impact on the ability of BC to buy and sell electricity in the United States.
For its part, Ford is directed directly with its political and economic struggle with the United States, saying that it is following its promise to slapped a 25 percent surcharge on the electricity of its province that is sold to 1.5 million customers in Minnesota, New York and Michigan.
He says that he acknowledges that individual Americans are not to blame for the continuous threats of tariffs and annexation, but wants to send a message to the president of the United States, Donald Trump, which should not be taken for granted.
“You touch the stove once, they burn you, you don’t touch that stove again,” Ford said. “We will make sure we continue with what we said we were going to do.”
“We have to continue until he leaves the rates completely.”
Meanwhile, the massive shots to an American energy supplier, the result of Doge shares, has EBy looking for this, instead of southern, for future energy sales.
But so far he has expressed interest in following Ford’s leadership by hitting the United States in their energy banks.
“We are working with other prime ministers and with the federal government on how we can support the Canada team approach with responses without tariffs,” he said on March 5 about the possibility that BC imposes his own surcharges.
“There is no monopoly in good ideas … but we will do it in a coordinated manner with other ministers and the federal government.”
An integrated BC-US energy system
Part of that doubt is due to the highly integrated nature of the BC energy system with the west of the United States, mainly the state of Washington, but also in Oregon and California.
Most BC power is generated using hydroelectric dams, which generally produce sufficient electricity so that the province is self -sufficient.
But that is not always the case: in 2024, for example, extended drought and reduced snow layers meant that approximately 20 percent of BC’s power was imported from other regions, including the United States, said Sam Harrison, Senior Analyst of Navius Research with headquarters in Vancouver.
Even so, said Harrison, the province also managed to obtain a gain of approximately $ 1.5 billion selling electricity to other jurisdictions, mainly the United States.
This is because BC sells electricity to the south when the rates are high and tries to buy when they are low, maintaining a profitability advantage.
Eby said that if British Columbia closed energy sales to the United States, it would probably result in drugs and blackouts along the west coast.
But it would also mean renouncing the “almost one billion dollars” won every year selling south, not to mention that it causes damage to some key allies south of the border.
The states along the west coast, said, a Democrat, with governments that are in opposition to Trump, and that during the forest fires of California, the president seemed to show “a complete indifference” to the region due to those political differences.
“It’s a factor for me,” he said.
Doge Planning, working with Alberta
That said, Eby also said that he is working on “contingency planning” if things increase.
For example, he noticed the impacts of Elon Musk’s Dux, the Government’s efficiency department, in BC’s electric partners.
The BC electric network is connected to the United States through the Power Administration by Bonneville, an agency within the United States Energy Department that buys and sells to British Columbia, as necessary.
The agency has dropped hundreds of positions after massive shots by the Trump administration.
Eby said he had been sure that Bonneville can still maintain critical operations, but he has his doubts.
“They say they are focused on the high voltage network on which we depend, but from distance, chaos, uncertainty and potential instability that this type of decisions cause means that we have to have backup plans,” he said.
Most of that, until now, is to try to improve ties with the Alberta network.
Eby and Harrison said that BC has been hindered in the past because Alberta has its own regulatory scheme for power management, focused on private suppliers, while the BC network is based on the Hydro of BC of public property.
But with greater interest in interprovincial trade, Eby said they were advancing in the harmonization of the standards to allow power to flow more freely through the rocky mountains, something that Harrison applauded.
Eby also said that similar conversations were happening with Yukon, where barriers are more about geography and lack of infrastructure instead of politics.
BC has also announced plans to quickly increase its own power supply both through the completion of the C Site Dam and the rapid monitoring of several wind energy projects throughout the province.
Eby said that much of the work that was done was similar to the planning that occurs in place to prepare the province to respond to natural disasters such as fires or storms.
“Unfortunately, it is now a contingency planning around a disaster caused by the man made by the president of the United States,” he said.
What about natural gas?
Harrison said that, unlike electricity, which is mainly consumed in BC, natural gas production, which can be used for heat and energy, is a great export for the province.
“We produce approximately 10 times more natural gas … than we consume ourselves,” he said.
Most of that passes through the pipes to the United States, mainly through the Westcoast transmission line, which covers more than 2,900 kilometers from Fort Nelson at the north end to the border with Canada-United States. When a part of that pipe broke in 2018, it had impacts on Washington and BC all
The main concern, said Harrison, would be tariffs or surcharges that reduce demand and reduce the profits of the BC industry.
He pointed out that the province is taking measures to develop a liquefied natural gas industry, which allows the gas of the pipes to compress and sell abroad.
He said that would help diversify the economy, but it would not still be enough to compensate for possible losses in US markets, and pointed out that compression has a high carbon cost, which goes against the environmental objectives of the province.
“There are compensation,” he said.
