A Lanaudière citizen paid $36,000 to connect his home to Hydro-Québec a year ago, but so far not a meter of cable has been laid by the government company.
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“I just ask her for a start date for work. When will they assign a team? They are not even able to answer me,” laments Isaac Roy, who has been waiting for Hydro to connect his residence since January 2022.
In the summer of 2022, Isaac Roy built his first house in the commune of Saint-Damien, in Lanaudière. He has now lived there for more than six months. Its power comes from a generator and two solar panels, which costs more than if it were powered by Hydro-Québec.
“I use the panels to power my lights and charge my computer. This should help me in the meantime. But the generator is costing me a small fortune. In the summer, the minimum price is $100 per week. I roll as little as possible, I limit myself to the essentials,” he says.
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Fees of $36,000
Shortly after Mr Roy sent his request, Hydro asked him to cover all the costs of extending the network (500m of piping to be installed). The 24-year-old therefore paid them the required $ 36,000. “It’s been a year. I could have earned interest on that amount, but they’re the ones paying interest on it,” he said. To date, Hydro-Québec hasn’t laid any wire. “Nothing’s done, not a single meter .I saw trucks coming but no one was working.
The connection work should be completed on October 4, 2022. But 18 months after opening the case, Isaac Roy is still waiting. “Since then, Hydro has given me five different appointments. The last was on July 7th, but no one came. Now the new official date is August 18, but that no longer matters…”
Like many Hydro customers, Mr Roy was told by Crown Corporation that this was an “extraordinary” situation and that others like him were in the same boat. “A girl at Hydro told me we were within the normal timeframe of 18-24 months for connections,” he points out.
Hydro-Québec defends itself
“This is a major network construction site that has nothing to do with a simple connection to our network if it runs close to the residence,” specifies Hydro-Quebec’s Maxence Huard-Lefebvre.
In addition, the client’s home is in a stilt park owned not by Hydro but by Bell, Mr Huard-Lefebvre points out. It was Bell who did the planting work (more than a dozen stakes had to be planted) which was completed in May 2023.
“In conclusion, I have to say that the workload we are currently having is 50% higher than normal, not to mention the extreme weather events that our teams have mobilized on several occasions over the past few months. In these situations, restoring power becomes our priority,” added the Hydro-Québec spokesman.
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