Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - June 27, 2012, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A6 A 6 WINNIPEG FREE PRESS, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 27, 2012 MANITOBA winnipegfreepress. com MF22068- 0512 There is no greater gift than the gift of hope and healing Recognize your loved ones, honour life's milestones or express sympathy, while supporting St- Boniface Hospital. To make a gift in honour or in memory of a loved one, call 204- 237- 2067 or email info@ stbhf. org. www. saintboniface. ca " I make tribute gifts to honour my loved ones and contribute to exceptional care at St- Boniface Hospital." Dennis Sweeney, St- Boniface Hospital Foundation donor since 1988. STARS ON STAGE STARCASINO. COM MAHNOMEN, MN 800.453. STAR( 7827) C A S I N O H O T E L E N T E RTA I N M E N T Proudly owned and successfully operated by the White Earth Nation. � 2012 White Earth Reservation. 800.313. SHOW( 7469) CALL FOR TICKETS Ted Nugent July 27 | 8PM TICKETS ON SALE NOW! Clay Walker July 13 | 8PM TICKETS ON SALE NOW! Bill Engvall Aug 10 | 8PM TICKETS ON SALE JULY 9 Celebrate an Explosive Independence Day! July 4 | Dusk with the installation of 203 FERRY ROAD 888- 2288 www. nisby. ca Power Smart Hydro Loan at 3.9 % 5 WINDOWS INSTALLED! F o r as l o w as W I N D O W S . SI D I N G . ST U C C O C O AT I N G . DO O R S LIFETIME WARRANTY! WE HANDLE HAIL DAMAGE CLAIMS s ET IM E ETIMEE $ $ 49 0 0 00 AMONTH! * Full details available online. All gifts made to the Imagine a Place Campaign during the month of June will be MATCHED dollar for dollar. * Visit Imagineaplace . ca or call 927- 8080 to take part. Four days left! Help us reach $ 1 million in June! I S this the end of the much- vaunted Manitoba Advantage? For most of the last 13 years, the NDP government here has trumpeted " the Manitoba Advantage," a slogan that envelops the reasons this province is the best place in the country to live and work. The Manitoba Advantage included clean air and water, modest housing prices and, perhaps most importantly, cheap electricity. Although it's more marketing than mathematics, the Manitoba Advantage was a hit. First and foremost, it was designed to make Manitobans feel good about living in Manitoba. As many of us know, leaving Manitoba and then moaning and whining about what it was like back home is the right of any former Manitoban. The Manitoba Advantage was a soothing salve for all the sharp- tongued resentment former Manitobans love to emit, and the chronically poor selfimage remaining Manitobans can't help but display. However, the Manitoba Advantage was also part of a campaign to attract immigrants and businesses. And in those goals, there was perhaps no greater lever in the Manitoba Advantage tool box than Manitoba Hydro. Cheap electricity has been a benefit to Manitobans. Although many lower- tax advocates want to tie themselves into knots worrying about how our tax brackets compare with Alberta's, the low cost of living in Manitoba is a benefit. And cheap electricity is a big part of that. However, cheap electricity has never really been the great economic development tool as it was once billed. Businesses did come to Manitoba for the cheap electricity. But they did not employ many people or produce much in the way of value or wealth in the province's economy. There is a strong baseline of economic activity from the construction of new generating stations, but it will not leave behind lasting wealth or employment. Hydro has never been, and will never be, to Manitoba what oil is to Alberta or Newfoundland. As the price of the black gold rises, so too do government royalties. Electricity has never produced the level of revenue oil has. Manitoba collects " water rental" taxes, a fee on the amount of water that flows over and through Hydro's northern dams. However, those taxes are not tied to the price of electricity, and so have none of the growth potential of oil and gas royalties. Electricity is a valuable commodity, but the sale of it is limited to customers who are hooked up to the same grid as the generating stations. Manitoba once dreamed of seeing an east- west national electricity grid built that would allow it to send electricity to provinces to the east and west. The grid was dashed by its sheer cost, and along with it, the dream of earning billions in electricity sales to Ontario's industrial heartland. That leaves us with transmission lines south to Minnesota and Wisconsin. And while those contracts have been lucrative for Hydro, they are becoming less lucrative over time. Why? The culprit is natural gas. Huge, cheap reserves of natural gas pried out of rock formations by high- pressure water and chemicals in a process called fracking. Despite its very questionable environmental footprint, fracking has flooded the U. S. market with cheap natural gas, much of which is being burned to generate electricity sold at rates much lower than Manitoba Hydro's export prices. Fracking has completely turned the North American energy market on its ear, and in the process significantly lowered Hydro's long- term outlook. In recent filings to the Public Utilities Board, Hydro concedes it now expects to earn $ 1.1 billion less in export revenues over the next 10 years, and $ 4 billion less over the next 20 years. That's particularly bad news at a time when Hydro is spending billions to build new generating stations. Hydro's own outlook should be the cause of significant concern by the province and its citizens. To maintain some semblance of balance between its debt and equity, Hydro is asking for rate increases. Although there are many ways to slice a Hydro rate increase, it is certainly reasonable to conclude a major factor - perhaps the major factor - in those rate increases is the rising debt from building new generating stations that will earn less revenue than envisioned when the dams were conjured by Hydro engineers. There was a time when it was tough to see how Manitoba Hydro wouldn't be a major advantage to the citizens of this province. Unfortunately, it was also tough to see how natural gas would return to become a dominant competitor. We have a long way to go before the Manitoba Advantage becomes a disadvantage. But we know now it's not quite the advantage we thought it was. dan. lett@ freepress. mb. ca NEIL Burnet has never heard of Ferris Bueller's Day Off . But if he did, he wouldn't get it. Burnet has just completed the odyssey of attending more than 2,500 straight school days without missing a single day. Burnet graduated last week from Lundar School in the Interlake with perfect attendance from kindergarten to Grade 12. His record is less about good health and more about loving school, the 17- year- old said. " There's a reason I didn't miss a day of school. I loved going. I'd still go to school even when I was sick," he explained. Where else can you meet with hundreds of other kids every day, get to play in a gym ( the 6- 2 Burnet was a power forward on the school basketball team), and engage in classroom banter while learning new things? He started thinking about the " iron man" streak in Grade 4, when some teachers pointed out he hadn't missed a day of school yet. They joked he had a chance to have a perfect attendance record if he didn't miss any days for the next eight years. That planted the seed. " I just wanted to do it and, after every year, I realized it could be done," he said. His friend, Chris Kaartinen, said Burnet was already talking about making the record in Grade 9. But Burnet's determination didn't rub off on friends. " I won't put myself through the torture of going to school sick," Kaartinen said. There were days, as graduation neared, when Burnet had to be practically carried to school on a gurney to keep his record intact. Some days he was so sick he had trouble keeping his stomach down and kept a bottle of Pepto- Bismol in his pocket. Friends thought he was crazy, Burnet conceded. But they became very supportive as graduation approached. He wasn't in class one morning and everyone panicked. Students left the classroom on a search party. They were ready to call his home and drag him to school if they had to, math teacher Amy Tycoles said. But Burnet was only at a meeting in another part of the school. " A little bit," kidded Tycoles, Burnet's favourite teacher, when asked if Burnet was a freak. " He loves school. He wouldn't miss. He would still make it in even if it was a ' snow day' ( when classes are cancelled)," said Tycoles. " I've taught him five courses in two years, so I've taught him every day the past two years, and he's always happy to be in class." Tycoles has never heard of a perfect school attendance record before and the public school system doesn't keep track of those records. But the Free Press electronic library shows Corey Caron managed the feat when he graduated from Daniel McIntyre High School in Winnipeg in 2001. The school year is about 200 days long. The average student misses five to 10 days of school per year, Tycoles estimated. Burnet captained the varsity basketball team the past two years and has served on student council. He also made the honour roll this year and was the valedictorian. Lundar school didn't have an award for attendance but made a special certificate to honour Burnet's achievement. He is the youngest of five children - he has two sisters and two brothers. His mom, Jenny Dunn, never urged him to stay home when he was sick. She couldn't stop him anyway. " He loved school so much," she said. " I love school so much that I'm going to go to university so I can become a teacher and come back to school," he said. bill. redekop@ freepress. mb. ca The ' Manitoba advantage' takes a beating DAN LETT In a class by himself Perfect attendance from K- 12 By Bill Redekop BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Lundar School teachers congratulate Neil Burnet for graduating without having missed a day of class - including when he was sick. A_ 06_ Jun- 27- 12_ FP_ 01. indd A6 6/ 26/ 12 9: 06: 32 PM ;