Dear Members of the BC Utilities Commission, I make $906/month on CPP disability pension and income assistance combined. After paying for property taxes, garbage collection fees, house insurance, utilities and my frugal food and medicine purchases, I am left with virtually nothing each month; yet BC Hydro wants to somehow squeeze water out of a stone and force me to come up with an additional $35/month, and $65 for each time they choose to come out to my house and try to replace a perfectly functional analogue meter with a so-called “Smart” meter, despite the fact that they have been told numerous times in writing and with signs posted on my property that I refuse to have a smart meter due to my health conditions which are exacerbated by any electromagnetic-producing devices. My decision to “opt out” of the Smart Meter program is not based on whim, fancy or the desire to impede “progress” (if that’s what a smart meter claims to be, but progress for whom is a good question). It is based on a personal “life or death” situation. My health is extremely fragile and neither it, nor my meager income, can tolerate further burdens placed upon them. I cannot afford either BC Hydro’s severe financial or life-damaging proposals. How dare they try to extort money from an impoverished person who is merely trying to cling to the remnants of a life halfway worth living. Should BC Hydro succeed in its irresponsible and arrogant attempt to force a smart meter on me or charge me for not accepting one, they have basically signed my death warrant. Where can I move to that is smart meter-free? Where can I move to that is less expensive to live in than the 25-year-old house my father left me in his will? If utility companies continue to spread the smart meter across the country, the answer is NOWHERE. They will have succeeded in squashing me out of the ability to exist. That, in my books, is murder. And that is unconscionable and illegal in any society. A supposedly progressive country like Canada, which won’t even sanction the death penalty for convicted serial murderers, cannot allow BC Hydro to perpetrate this exact crime on innocent, law-abiding would-be victims of BC Hydro’s misguided and vindictive campaign, just because, “oops,” they hadn’t anticipated justifiable opposition to their plans. That’s their problem, and I can’t afford to suffer for their sloppy market research. And not just suffer, it would make my life not merely inconvenient, but unbearable and impossible. How much of a financial burden is it exactly to a big company like BC Hydro to allow me to keep my analogue meter? Will the Province receive even a half a cent less in the annual dividends that BC Hydro pays them because of it? Yet they want me to pay $420/year (plus $65 per attempted installation visit) for rejecting a mechanism that will cause me incredible pain and suffering. This whole David versus Goliath scenario would be laughable if the outcome were not so vital and potentially tragic. That the BC Utilities Commission is even considering allowing the proposed fees that BC Hydro wishes to impose on those of us who will not accept their smart meters, for whatever reason, is the mark of a society where Big Money supplants the rights of the individual; the right to protect himself from harmful inventions that invade his privacy and destroy his health. Where will this kind of policy end? What would you be opening the door to? And how will your decision affect the future of Canada and its citizens? This letter is not merely a plea to not allow BC Hydro to impose its unreasonable fees on those of us who cannot afford to pay them, it is a plea for my very life! If you have any conscience or regard for your fellow human being at all, you will deny BC Hydro the right to extort money from the most vulnerable in our society: the sick and the poor, for merely trying to stay alive. If you allow these fees, may it rest heavily on your conscience, for you will have forfeited my life, surely as if you had pulled a trigger yourself. - bcuc/ContactUs.aspx
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 08:04:52 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015