Re: Dumb leaders attack smart meters (Tom Fletcher PNR Oct. 5). If the expression on Tom Fletcher's visage is anything other than smug, then his own quote below his latest rant says it all, “I've argued with numerous people about this.” What he utterly fails to do is to address the legitimate criticisms of the smart meter program other than the one concerning health issues (getting more important daily, but not the only concern).
What he ignores is as important as what he says. eg:
1. The scheme is a colossal waste of taxpayers money. How can “spending $l billion dollars save $500 million in electricity theft”?
2. Sacking hundreds of meter readers in tough economic times is callous mismanagement.
3. The utterly arrogant way in which the scheme was introduced: no public discussions, take it or leave it, HST style, which badly backfired.
4. The real reason the (Campbell) government devised this scheme was to make money — and vast amounts of it — for the appliance manufacturing industry’s honchos: IBM, Cisco, GE, Oracle etc. It is to sell smart meters and then smart appliances. BC Hydro gave the first contract to Corix Utilities, one of whose co-owners is David Emerson. Is it a coincidence that he is executive chairman of the BC Transmission Corp., chair of the BC Premier's Economic Advisory Council, chair of the Alberta Premier's Council for Economic Strategy, director of Timberwest Forest Corp., former CEO of Canfor, etc? And, incidentally, on Tom's own admission, 55 per cent of municipal leaders at the UBCM meeting voted for the moratorium.
Is that a majority, or what?
Hans U.P. Edwards,
North Saanich