The time has come for a serious conversation about Manitoba's electricity needs

Not content to stand pat as Canada's largest producer of electricity, Hydro-Québec is working on a plan to produce even more energy at the same it weans itself off fossil fuels.

On Nov. 2, the public power utility in Canada's second-most-populous province unveiled a $185-billion plan to build at least one more hydroelectric dam, hook up its power grid to new wind and solar farms and build 5,000 kilometres of new transmission lines to ensure this new electricity can actually reach consumers and storage facilities.

The conversation in Quebec does not just involve whether the Crown corporation — and Quebeckers, by extension — can afford this.

Hydro-Québec has effectively put forth a "pay me now or pay me later" argument, where further dawdling on the painful process of greening both power production and power consumption will result in higher costs down the road.

Not everyone buys the argument. Some opposition politicians in Quebec have called the plan too vague. 

Still, a serious conversation about the genuine cost of the energy transition is taking place in a province where up until recently, decision-makers didn't have to contemplate the need to generate an additional kilowatt.

This discussion is not taking place yet here in Manitoba. A serious conversation about electricity production and consumption would come with a sharp warning the coming energy transition will neither be cheap nor easy.

For example, Manitoba's former PC government put forward an energy framework over the summer that called for Manitoba to double or even triple its generating capacity over the next 20 years.

Unlike in Quebec, the Manitoba plan did not arrive with any dollar figures attached, let alone specific targets for the wind turbines, solar farms, energy storage facilities and transmission lines required to make it all work.

Then, the same week Hydro-Québec unveiled its plan, Manitoba elected a new government that expressed more concerns about the rates its hydro utility will charge consumers in the coming year than the absence of a plan to produce more electricity, save more energy and reduce consumer reliance on fossil fuels for the coming decades.

During the election campaign, the NDP promised a rate freeze at the same time Hydro contends with considerable debt as well as an imminent need to spend billions on capital construction.

Now in power, Wab Kinew's government has decided to postpone that rate freeze — and is showing signs it's starting to grapple with the reality Hydro is not just a piggy bank to be emptied.

For one thing, Kinew says he's paying attention to Hydro-Québec.

"They've made the decision that actually investing in energy-efficiency initiatives make sense as long as it's cheaper per killowatt hour or cheaper per incremental unit of investment than creating a new dam or a new wind farm," the premier said in an interview this week.