NL Hydro CEO Jennifer Williams is addressing questions surrounding a bump in Hydro Quebec’s export electricity rates, and whether that affects a fair return for Labrador hydro power as a result of the MOU currently being finalized.

Hydro Quebec’s financial results for the first six months of 2025 show the price the utility is charging for export power has increased from 9 cents to 16 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Williams says what Hydro Quebec is doing is “very smart” with the small amount of power they export.

“The price that they’re getting for a very small amount of electricity, their profits are down 18 per cent, you probably saw that too” she told reporters earlier this week, “is because they have such a small amount to export. So what they’re doing…is exporting it at very, very high prices.  Like if you take an Uber, search pricing at suppertime, that’s what’s happening, that’s not the price all the time, so I just want to be really, really clear about that.”

Williams is confident that the current MOU will capture any increases in electricity over time.

“We’re latching ourselves onto several of these indices, that is very clearly laid out in the MOU. This value that is quoted in the MOU of $33.8 billion is not a fixed value. I will say it a hundred times” says Williams, “it is not a fixed value. We would not sign that contract” she asserts, if that wasn’t the case.