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I recently caught wind of Hydro Quebec’s latest effort to control electrical utilities outside of its borders at the expense of the owners of those assets. [READ] The Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador is being overly polite in my opinion. Hydro Quebec fucked his province around the Churchill Falls hydroelectric project – a project that might have softened the blow of a dying fisheries industry was it not for Quebec.

If you’re not familiar with the Churchill Falls issue, here’s the Coles Notes version:

• The Churchill Falls project was started in Newfoundland in 1967 and had potential to be the biggest hydroelectric project in North America.
• Completed in 1971, the dam has the second largest capacity of hydroelectric dam in North American and has the potential to be the biggest with upgrades.
• Newfoundland geographically isolated from the rest of Canada and the US by Quebec.
• Normally, Provinces allow each other to transport electricity across each others borders for sale in other markets in what’s called a “wheeling agreement”
• Wheeling agreements typically allow the Province that is letting the power be transferred along its lines first rights to the power at a fair market price only so far as domestic supply doesn’t meet demand.
• The financial model for Churchill Falls depended on being able to sell power to the US market where better prices could be negotiated.
• After the project was completed, Hydro Quebec began to play games with the wheeling agreements by selling vast amounts of their domestic power to the US market at a healthy markup and then in turn claiming that they had a domestic shortage, giving them the rights to nearly all of Churchill Falls’ output at a much lower price.

This, in effect, is what ruined the potential of Churchill Falls for Newfoundlanders. The project ran into financial trouble early on because it couldn’t sell power to the US (because of Quebec’s maneuvering) and guess who swooped in to bail out the project for majority ownership? Hydro Quebec. The 50 year agreement gave Hydro Quebec exclusive access to all the power Churchill Falls produced at a price even lower than what they would have paid through the wheeling agreement.

That’s what the Premier of Newfoundland is referring to when he says that Hydro Quebec took out $22 billion and left $1 billion for Newfoundland. The $22 billion is likely the amount of profit that Hydro Quebec has generated since 1971 by selling Newfoundland power on the open market while claiming a domestic shortage. This is money that by all rights, should have gone into Newfoundland’s economy.

This is why New Brunswick Power should be wary – Hydro Quebec (and by extension the Quebec government) are like sleazy loan sharks. They give the appearance of helping out their impoverished neighbours when in fact, they are setting these “friends” up for failure. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

When talking about consultants, the term “road warrior” isn’t so much about driving an SUV with a bunch of scrap metal welded to it while wearing hockey armour/squirrel pelts. It’s more about being completely mobile and able to do your work under most conditions. For most people, this means a smart phone and a laptop. You can take it a bit further by getting a sturdy external battery and a 3G wireless modem for your laptop but for most people, a smart phone and laptop will suffice. Despite having moved into a new office in September, I was grateful that I am still well equipped from my road warrior days.

I knew that there was going to be a problem yesterday morning when I got close to the office because all of the traffic lights near my building were out. A quick glance around confirmed my fears – the whole neighbourhood was blacked out. I entered the building anyhow and my building manager had implemented his blackout plan – glow sticks in all the stairwells. We had no emergency lighting.

I had a significant amount of work to do and I was concerned that the whole day was going to be a wash. Thankfully, I had my laptop, heavy duty external battery [read my review here]. I didn’t have internet access because that requires electricity but I could send and receive e-mails from my BlackBerry. In a pinch, I could use my BlackBerry as a wireless modem (and risk going over my data limit on my cellular account).

The power came back on by 2:30pm but I learned a valuable lesson – no matter how comfortable I get in my new office, I need to keep being a road warrior to a certain degree. I suggest that anyone who does consulting for a living should have a good “go bag” that allows them to work from a coffee shop, their car or their own office in case the power goes out.

I almost didn’t post anything for Blog Action Day 2009. I had a lot to say about last years theme – Poverty [READ] but Climate Change is an issue that I have very little to say on despite having worked for years on the science and technology policy side of clean tech. I believe that we need to get our act together in terms of how we use energy and resources. That’s clear. There are a number of reasons for doing so. To highlight the point, I want to illustrate the curious case of Israel and its clean tech mecca.

A recent article in Business Week [READ] talked about how Israel has garnered a lot of international attention for its environmentally sustainable technologies. They have entrepreneurs there who have found ways to squeeze every joule of energy out of the sun, the environment and the non-renewable resources that they use. Why? Because there is a siege mentality there that has driven them since the country was founded. I don’t believe that they conserve and get innovative with clean tech in Israel because they care all that much about the environment. I believe they do so because they must.

We are in a priviledged position here in Canada because there are not wolves at the gates trying to take our land and our lives. When we make decisions to be more environmentally conscious here its because we feel morally obligated to do so. In Canada, if you choose to drive a gas-guzzling SUV and drink bottled water and run your furnace with the windows open, there are few penalties. Some disapproving looks from your neighbours, perhaps and some financial hits but at the end of the day, if you want to be a jerk and do these things, you can.

In Israel, if people did these things, the country would be falling apart. They barely have enough resources to go around as it is. As a results, greywater systems, solar collector technology and other innovative solutions to mitigate scarce resources are flourishing there. In this way, Israel is showing us what it takes to achieve mass change in consumption and behaviour – the ever looming threat of ruin if you do not do it.

Sure, climate scientists have been saying for over a decade that doom is knocking at our back door but it’s too abstract for most people. I firmly believe that the only way people will behave resposibly with their energy consumption is if it hurts to not do so. The only way to hurt people here in Canada is by hitting them in the wallet. Look what happened when fuel prices went through the roof last year! People were using transit more, they were buying more fuel efficient cars, they were finding ways to save energy. As soon as gas prices went back down a bit, people are right back to their old, bad habits.

Last year, I wrote a lengthy piece of the BC Government’s Gas Tax [READ]. The gist of it is that I didn’t think the gas tax was high enough. It didn’t affect my finances in a noticeable way and as a result, I didn’t end up driving less. Maybe sin taxes on wasteful energy use is the best solution. I don’t know. What I do know is that Israel has found a way to effectively do more with less and while their main goal probably isn’t to save the environment, they’re doing it anyway.

I was supposed to start writing again on August 1 but that heat wave we had really did a number on my ability to write. July and August were exciting months for Friuch Consulting and I wanted to start back into my writing schedule by sharing some of the things that have happened.

Our Office

Back in late June, I posted that we had found A Space of Our Own [LINK]. Shortly after making this announcement, I found out from the City of Vancouver that the lovely space we had found wasn’t zoned for office use. This was very disheartening because I really loved that space. Earlier this month, we thought we’d found another interesting space in Burnaby near Metrotown. That also turned out to be zoned improperly for our purposes.

I was starting to lose hope when I found a lovely space near Chinatown in Vancouver. It’s small but it’s in a beautiful heritage building and it’s walking distance from most things in downtown. We start moving in next week and I’m excited!

The Team

Friuch Consulting has welcomed a whole host of new team members in the last few months including two Angus Reid refugees – Eric Brooke (who will be starting on September 8, 2009) and Caroline Hickton. Sean Peters and Melissa Chungfat, who have been with the firm for a while now, continue to work with us and we’ve added some new associates who will be working with us on a project-by-project basis: Brandy Delves (Brandy Delves Consulting), Ray Walia (Apptastic) and Kirk Hutton.

We’re ramping up to take on a bunch of new projects in the Fall and we’ll be sure to throw a re-launch party so that old friends and new friends will have the chance to meet the expanded team.

Finishing up the Year

Now that we’ve got an expanded team, we’ve got some additional bandwidth to take on new projects. Research projects, communications projects, project management projects – you name it! We’ve got some amazing capabilities these days so if you’d like to learn more, drop us a line. We’d love to hear about your projects and how we might help.

Today, I had the pleasure of viewing Mike Rowe’s TED talk on what he’s learned from doing the Discovery Channel show “Dirty Jobs” [LINK]. TED Talks, if you haven’t seen them, are often inspirational [LINK]. I’ve embedded the Mike Rowe talk below and I want to summarize his main argument on how he feels “we” have declared war on blue collar jobs:

1. Hollywood portrays tradespeople as undesirable. The stereotypical sexist steel worker, the fat plumber whose butt crack hangs out, the silent and stoic construction worker, etc…
2. Madison avenue (advertising companies) who try to sell people that working hard for a living is undesirable
3. Washington (or your equivalent seat of government) who create policies that make it difficult for tradespeople
4. Silicon Valley (as the representative of high tech) who glorifies gadgets over hand tools

I am not going to say that these arguments are flawless but the point is clear – Western societies don’t respect trades jobs like we used to. No big deal, right? Back in January of this year, I wrote a piece on how a looming labour shortage in BC is going to cripple our efforts to maintain and upgrade our infrastructure in this province – a point that Mike Rowe raises in his talk as well [READ]. Enrolment in trades programs at post-secondary institutions are down across the board. Here’s a quote from the TED talk:

Barack wants to create two and a half million jobs. The infrastructure is a huge deal. This war on work, that I suppose exists, has casualties like any other war. The infrastructure’s the first one Declining trade school enrolments are the second one. Every single year, fewer electricians, fewer carpenters, fewer plumbers, fewer welders, fewer pipefitters, fewer steamfitters. The infrastructure jobs that everybody is talking about creating are those guys. The ones that have been in decline, over and over. In the meanwhile, we got two trillion dollars, at a minimum, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, that we need to expend to even make a dent in the infrastructure which is currently rated at a D minus.

Our situation in Canada is no different. We’re spending money on infrastructure right now but our capacity to supply the labour needed to do the work is diminishing rapidly and, as I am suggesting, will be almost non-existent by 2015. All of these issues gave me pause to think about why I left the trades at a young age and turned to “creative class” work (to borrow the Richard Florida term). Here’s my background:

I come from a large, mostly blue collar family that has given me a healthy respect for the trades. My father is a welder. Several of my uncles work in the wood finishing business. Another uncle owns a landscaping business. Many of my cousins, my brother-in-law and my sister are in the trades. It should come as no surprise that I did my stint in the trades as well. Between the ages of 13 (yes, 13) and 21, I worked as a signmaker. If you’re not familiar with this trade, I’ll forgive you but it’s essentially people who manufacture, maintain and install signs. Those real estate development signs? We did those. Restaurant signs? We did those. We even made signs for The X Files to turn local libraries and college buildings into “FBI Headquarters”.

The work I did was mostly with metal, plastic and wood. I used fairly simple tools like band saws, drills, nail guns and table saws to make these signs. We painted them, we finished them, we applied vinyl lettering to them. Every sign was a unique work of art in its own right. Later, as the company I worked with grew, I learned how to weld to help them expand the business into display cases. By the time I was 20, I was the de facto foreman. In the end, I left the business because they went through a rough financial period and were having trouble making payroll.

That was my last blue collar job and I never really looked back. I didn’t think that the work I did was beneath me. Far from it – I enjoyed the work and was often whistling while I worked. What changed was that I went to university to study social science instead of going to trades school. Why? Because at the time, I wanted to be a cop and knew that I needed a university degree under my belt if I was going to get that job. That’s the only reason. I thought law enforcement would be a better job for me. In the end, I was wrong but I never went back to the trades.

Everything that Mike Rowe said is true. There are forces that conspire to make the trades seem undesirable. I took a lot of heat from my classmates during my undergrad when I would come to school after working at the sign company and I was “dirty”. I smelled like sawdust and welding flux. Nobody wanted to sit anywhere near me. I had a few people ask me if I was in some kind of government program for “the disadvantaged”. What they didn’t realize was that I was paying for my university degree with cash and they were accumulating huge student loans.

So why didn’t I go back to the trades? I think it was a few things:

1. At that time, pay for tradespeople was far below what I could make as a creative class individual. My job at the sign company paid $12/hr in 1996. By 1998, I was making $18/hr working in PR.
2. As someone with a newly minted university degree, it didn’t seem to make much sense to go back into the trades – why had I just spent five years at school if I was going back to a job where I didn’t need any training?
3. I was told by many people that my skills would be put to best use in creative class jobs – not in the trades.

It was only in the last few years that I’ve started to partially regret not sticking with the trades. Pre-2010 Olympic fever in Vancouver saw tradespeople making amazing money – more than me and usually with less experience. I think some effective PR here has also alleviated some of the stigma attached to the trades. In BC at least, we’ve returned to a time when students can choose to specialize in a trade in grades 11 and 12 and fast track their career. The kid next door is doing it and he’s doing great. At the end of the day, I have settled into the role of the entrepreneur but my roots in the trades will always be there.

I agree with Mike Rowe that there is a “civil war” in North America between tradespeople and everyone else. As someone who has walked in both worlds, the tension in palpable to me. Just some food for thought.

Taken from an article entitled “The Great American Bubble Machine” from Rolling Stone magazine:

The basic scam in the Internet Age is pretty easy even for the financially illiterate to grasp. Companies that weren’t much more than potfueled ideas scrawled on napkins by uptoolate bongsmokers were taken public via IPOs, hyped in the media and sold to the public for mega-millions. It was as if banks like Goldman were wrapping ribbons around watermelons, tossing them out 50-story windows and opening the phones for bids. In this game you were a winner only if you took your money out before the melon hit the pavement.

Source: [LINK]

I lived through this kind of insanity in Vancouver and Ottawa during the late 1990s and this description made me laugh heartily. I have some friends and colleagues that are building solid web-based businesses but it bears remembering how far off the rails we can go when we suspend disbelief.