While inflation, especially food, is still wreaking havoc, now the Hydro-Quebec bill is regarding to swell too, starting tomorrow. All Quebecers will taste it, residential customers and businesses alike.
• Read also: Hydro-Québec has doubled its profits in just two years
From 1is April, all residents will experience a 3% increase in their monthly bill. We’re talking regarding $5 to $6 more every month or so, which is on top of other rising expenses.
“The people most affected are those who have the least leeway in their budget,” says Sylvie De Bellefeuille, lawyer at Option consommateurs.
“Low-income households often don’t always have control over their electricity bills. When you are housed in accommodation that ‘heats the outside’, these people pay for electricity even though they have no control over the quality of the accommodation or the insulation,” she explains.
But it would be wrong to believe that only the less fortunate will have to adjust to the new Hydro rates.
A buildup that hurts
Retirees, especially those receiving fixed pensions, are losing their purchasing power, she adds.
“Middle-class people are also being impacted. The accumulation, each year, of these increases is starting to hurt. And as the price for businesses increases a lot, these same people, as consumers, risk paying higher prices for their goods and services, ”she continues.
SMEs eat a whole lot
Indeed, small businesses are the turkeys of the stuffing. They will have to manage a 6.5% increase in their bill each month, in a context where many of them are already having to deal with rising bills of all kinds.
Sophie Apreo manages, with her husband, the Atelier Mécanique Desro garage in Repentigny. To run her garage, she uses a combination of natural gas and electricity. The electricity portion of his bill is $500 per month. How will she manage a 6.5% increase in her bill?
“That’s on top of the rent and all the other costs, and it’s going to end up driving up the hourly labor rate that we charge customers. I do not have a choice. It has to be partly reflected in the invoice, we can’t always cash in on that, ”she says.
“This is the biggest increase ever recorded since 1998 for SMEs,” says François Vincent, vice-president for Quebec of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
“And this, at the same time as Hydro-Quebec is going all out and declaring historic profits,” he says, in a bitter tone.
Large factories also pay
The thousands of workers who get up in the morning to earn a living in Quebec’s aluminum smelters and mines will also bear the brunt of this increase.
The largest factories in Quebec pay up to $100 million a year for electricity.
“So when we say it’s just 4.2% more, I apologize, but it’s still several million dollars more to pay in some cases,” said Jocelyn B. Allard, president of the Quebec Association of Industrial Electricity Consumers.
“And the factory gets nothing in return. She didn’t hire more people or expand her production. These are net losses, and unfortunately the employees also suffer the consequences through hiring or lower wages”.
the Régie must return to the scene
For Sylvie De Bellefeuille, the Régie de l’énergie should always oversee the increase in Hydro-Québec’s rates.
“Hydro-Quebec is recording record profits right now, it shows that it doesn’t need such a high rate increase,” she said.
UP 1is AVRIL
- 3 % | Residential customers
- 6,5 % | Shops and small businesses
- 4,2 % | Large companies
For residential customers, the monthly impact of the 3% increase in the electricity bill as of 1is April 2023 will average…
- $2.28 per month for a five-and-a-half-room apartment
- $4.27 per month for a small house of 111 m2
- $5.65 per month for an average house of 158 m2
- $6.97 per month for a large house of 207 m2