If SaskPower had a theme song, it would be the music from the movie "The Sting." Like the "marks" in that movie, SaskPower customers have been victims of an elaborate sting.

For several years, SaskPower has repeatedly stated that it must prepare for competition by hiking power rates for residential and farm customers, so that it can offer more competitive rates for big industrial customers (an important market if competition were introduced).

Backed up by this rationale, SaskPower hiked rates by more than 26% since 1992, including a whopping 12% increase in early 1996. This allowed the Crown to make record profits of $139 million in 1996 and $132 million in 1997. Almost double the previous five-year average of $79 million per year.

But now the provincial government has postponed competition indefinitely, closing the trap on an apparent long-running ruse to bilk residential and farm power customers.

In 1997, SaskPower stated that competition would be here by the year 2000. But the acting president of SaskPower, Kelly Staudt, recently told the Crown Corporations Committee of the provincial legislature that the arrival of competition had been put off indefinitely. He said it was "a goal that is no longer relevant."

Similarly, the Minister responsible for the Crown utilities, Dwain Lingenfelter, recently told the NDP's annual convention that "our government will continue to resist any pressure for deregulated power in Saskatchewan."

Staudt and Lingenfelter are hardly Robert Redford and Paul Newman, but that was just a movie. The SaskPower Sting is real, and ratepayers are the victims.

With a monopoly in place, SaskPower and the government could jack up rates with impunity, justify the hikes by saying they're "preparing for competition," and delay competition by moving the timetable into the indefinite future. Without a regulatory watchdog to protect the interests of ratepayers, this kind of shakedown was easy money.

But now that their trickery has been exposed, SaskPower and the government should either introduce competition, as promised, or it should lower rates, and return to taxpayers all the millions of dollars it has collected under the "competition" pretense.

If we've been hoodwinked, we want our money back! And we want lower rates in the future that more closely reflects the cost of providing the service.

As for a watchdog, this state of affairs reinforces the need for a Crown Utility Review Board (CURB). This would be an independent, non-partisan, cost-effective commission of experts with the authority to examine the rates of each Crown utility, and protect the interests of ratepayers.

Simply put, Saskatchewan's Crowns need a system of checks and balances to ensure more meaningful scrutiny of the rates they charge and the revenue they generate.

It's time for the people of this province to stand up to SaskPower and their political masters. We will not be taken for suckers any more!