Canada has a tradition of provincial residents loathing their premiers following fairly short honeymoons. In fact, only two premiers feel the love from a majority of respondents in a recent poll and one of them – Brad Wall – is beginning to see the bloom come off his rose too. I have no idea why we so dislike/distrust provincial leaders so vehemently, but we do.
She wasn’t the most hated until recently but Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne will remain the least popular premier in Canada well into 2017, according to an Angus Reid Institute poll.
And even the fact that Ontario’s economy is getting stronger as Canada’s is weakening hasn’t helped Wynne or her government. The main reason is the cost of electricity. Talking about the high cost of ‘hydro’ as we call it, has almost eclipsed talking about the weather in this province.
Even for the premier: “People have told me that they’ve had to choose between paying the electricity bill and buying food or paying rent,” the Ontario premier told a Liberal gathering in the fall. “That is unacceptable to me. It is unacceptable that people in Ontario are facing that choice. Our government made a mistake. It was my mistake.”
It’s always nice to see an elected official fall on his/her sword but in this case I think this mea culpa is mostly undeserved.
Ontarians are riled up about their electrical bills and while we do pay some of the highest rates in Canada, it’s still a bargain in the larger, global context. Only Quebec and Manitoba have dirt cheap power and that’s due to their geography which allows them to generate almost all of their electricity from a water source. Ontario only generates a quarter of our requirement from water, which fails to explain why we call it ‘hydro’ at all. Alberta and Saskatchewan haven’t had to build nuclear power plants, which are incredibly expensive. Alberta and Saskatchewan get much of their power from coal. I have no idea if it’s clean coal (if there is such a thing) or dirty coal but either way it’s cheap.
On a personal level we have no complaints. Our hydro bill is modest. We have an modern in-town house and heat with gas. We employ small conservation measures like operating the laundry and dishwasher machines at night and using LED bulbs exclusively. But….I use A/C 24/7 in the summer and I like lots of lights on so I won’t be getting any green awards anytime soon.
There is no doubt that in homes with poor insulation or that have electric baseboard heaters and in rural and other low density areas people are paying a bundle. In ten years, off-peak power has gone up 149 per cent and on peak power has increased 71 per cent while inflation over the same period has risen 18 per cent. The poor suffer disproportionately and that is unacceptable. The rest of us are just whiny.
The Liberals have been accused of blowing billions of dollars on smart meters that haven’t saved us energy, haven’t saved us money, and are presenting a threat to public safety. Much of that is true but even where the smart meters were actually smart, the move has had little effect on peak demand, according to an analysis commissioned by the government’s Independent Electricity System Operator. It means that we’re still consuming plenty of electricity during those peak periods, and paying a lot more for it than before smart meters arrived. In other words, if we can afford it, we use it.
Climate activists praise Ontario’s green energy program as the first jurisdiction in North America to eliminate coal-fired power plants — a move credited in part with nearly eliminating the province’s smog days. We’ve gone from double-digit smog days with coal and to zero smog days in 2015. But there is a cost associated with that gain. Some call the “Liberal blunder into green energy” the thing which most fueled price increases. The question is whether we think it’s worth it and whether it was a blunder at all. Certainly various auditor general’s have accused the Liberals of repeatedly making the same mistakes in failing to do basic due diligence and ignoring or sweeping aside regulatory safeguards in promoting green energy. If accurate, that is on Premier Wynne and her government.
But it’s not all Wynne’s fault, even if in the interest of (maybe) getting re-elected she’s willing to accept the blame.
Today’s prices are mostly the result of policy decisions made in the early 2000s, which were a result of poor planning and mismanagement over 50 years and various governments. In 2003 when the Liberals came to power Ontario’s electricity grid was on its last legs and power had to be imported to meet provincial needs. The Liberals had been elected in part on a promise to close the province’s coal-fired plants and Ontario Hydro nuclear construction projects had gone massively over budget. It was a mess. (Let’s face it…with everything, we pay as we go along or we pay later but make no mistake…we will pay. )
So, the Liberals started spending madly on upgrading the aging infrastructure and building new natural gas, wind and solar plants in place of coal. Scared by the budget woes surrounding the nuclear debacle over at Ontario Hydro, the Grits outsourced to the private sector and promised that the companies taking the risk would receive guaranteed revenues that were not dependent on how much they actually sold if it were less but paying them more if the province did use their electric power. In hindsight not such a good idea but at the time it was somewhat of a ‘rock and a hard place’ scenario.
A Globe and Mail report by Adrian Morrow and Tom Cardosa explains, “The first major wave of private power plants was fuelled with natural gas. Later plants were tied to the Green Energy Act, which provided lucrative terms for wind and solar plants in a bid to build a renewable-power industry in the province. One of the most famous deals was a sole-source contract with a Samsung-led consortium, which included locating factories building green-energy equipment in the province.
The cost of all this is passed on to ratepayers in the form of higher electricity bills. Auditor-General Bonnie Lysyk estimates that the “global adjustment charge” – the government’s term for the costs in the system above the market rate for electricity – accounts for some 70 per cent of the average electricity bill.”
When Ontario Hydro was divvied up, the residual stranded debt stemming from the 1999 breakup of the province’s giant utility was a $38.1 billion, mostly from building nuclear plants in the 1970s and ’80s. Kathleen Wynne was 30 years old in 1983 and likely not responsible for any of that regardless of how much we’d like to assign blame to her.
Prices over time are going to continue to go up. The plants that were refurbished in 2003 will need refurbishing again.
Can anything be done? We could just let our infrastructure rot and buy from Quebec but then the transmission infrastructure would need some upgrading and that’s not free either. In 2013 the province decided to stop building pricey nuclear plants but that may fall into the category of good optics now leading to disaster in the future. Cancelling power contracts seems an easy solution — but not a cheap one: it cost $1 billion to cancel those infamous gas-fired power plants in Mississauga and Oakville.
Patrick Brown has said that if elected he would see if any deals can be re-negotiated but that sounds a bit like Trump dumping the Affordable Care Act and replacing it with something h-u-uge and as yet to be revealed.
So, what can the government do to lessen the pain for ratepayers across province? One option is giving significant rebates to some – especially the poor and rural – consumers that will come out of the provincial treasury. Another option is creating a taxpayer-funded subsidy similar to the old Ontario Clean Energy Benefit, which provided a discount on hydro bills to compensate for the cost of wind and solar power subsidies. I think the rest of us will just have to suck it up. But it all comes out of the same pot.
The research and opinions on the subject of the high cost of electricity are many. Every environmentalist and engineer – and Conservative – will certainly be able to poke huge holes in my feeble attempt to explain it.
But what I really found in my hours of poking around in what the experts say about the reasons for the high cost of electricity is this: everyone knows exactly how we got into this mess but nobody has a real solution for getting out of it. Every report I read concludes with summing up ‘the problem’ but no solid plan to get out of it. Price increases have been a feature of Ontario’s electricity system for half a century, with multiple drivers – all of them complicated.
Maybe it’s time for the Captain Obvious’ of the province to stop looking for someone easy to blame and start looking for a long term solution to a very long term problem. We may have good reason for throwing the provincial Liberals out on its ear in 2018 ….but this isn’t it.
Following a career in the hospitality sector and the acquisition of a law and justice degree in her 50s, Dale embarked on a writing career armed with the fanciful idea that a living could be made as a freelancer. To her own great surprise she was right. The proof lies in hundreds of published works on almost any topic but favourites include travel, humour & satire, feature writing, environment, politics and entrepreneurship. Having re-invented herself half a dozen times, Dale doesn’t rule anything out. Her time is divided equally between Muskoka and Tampa Bay with Jim, her husband of 7 years and partner of 32 years. Two grown ‘kids’ and their spouses receive double doses of love and attention when she’s at home.
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My Hydro Bill this month before HST was $197.44
HST (FST 5% + PST 8% =13%) $ 25.67
I got a Provincial Rebate of $5.83. Shouldn’t it be $197.44 x 8% = $15.80
Dear Mz. Wynne Where’s the other 10 Bucks??
So we have much larger bills. For most of us what is the solution? Since we all have a limited amount of $$ we have to cut back somewhere. For me I’m going to get rid of cable plus looking at other items.
I understand power costs are cheap in Florida.No whining there.
Miz Wynne does one thing well and that is apologize for the absolute incompetence of the former premier Dalts gov’t and this present group of failures.Apologies are cheap and meaningless unlike my hydro bills.
I really hope the article is written as satire, if it was to be taken seriously that the liberals both provincially and federally have any compassion for the taxpayers it is certainly a long stretch of the imagination.
Blaming out of control hydro rates on every Ontario Government since the light bulb was invented, (except for the liberal governments of course) is rather laughable.
McGuinty / Wynne’s disregard for the taxpayers is very, very hard to defend. Try explaining to a poor old senior why their bills are now so high and yet they live in a cold house, why they can’t afford to stay in their homes any longer. Homes where they lived and had children grow up in and grandchildren and great grand children came to visit them in. Other seniors in a few years will be faced with a 10% + H.S.T on their oil bills (Carbon Tax)+ H.S.T. so Tax on Tax, thanks to Mr. Trudeau and his wonderful fiscal management, rather awesome for a part time drama teacher isn’t he.
Speaking of Carbon Tax, Mrs. Wynne will have to hire more civil servants to manage that tax, more voter base for her I am sure.
The liberal government has totally mismanaged something that USED to be very affordable, but was changed so liberal cronies could reap the profits of the green energy sector.
Last week a gas generation plant in North Bay was closed and yet the consumer will pay for one year for hydro NOT generated to an American company. That is totally upon the current government’s shoulders, it is called mismanagement. Business has started to move out of the province to Michigan where they can buy our surplus hydro at deep discounted rates, again thanks to Wynne’s total mismanagement . Today I read a small restaurant on Manitoulin Island had to close due to high Hydro bills, a butcher in Gravenhurst had to sell off product at half price to pay his Hydro bill, that’s too bad I suppose, the liberals surely had nothing to do with it I hope !
Wynne and her fellow liberals have bought elections in Ontario for the past 15 years, they dangle some nice shiny things at election time and the poorly informed voters go after all the freebees, little do they realize after the election they are stuck with the bill (increased taxes).
Our health care has become a joke under the liberals, 60% of the budget in health care goes to patient care, 40% goes to administration. Is it really necessary someone counts the bed pans in stock every day, and every band aid used per shift. But that 40% that receive a pay cheque I am sure they appreciate their jobs and the majority will vote liberal again come another election.
One million Ontario residents, myself included don’t have a family Doctor, again thanks to our liberal government, I actually did have a family Doctor under evil Mike Harris, maybe it’s our current government that’s the evil one, I pay $600.00 a year on my income tax for McGuinty’s Ontario Health Care Tax so we could preserve the quality of health care in this province, that worked well didn’t it !
The civil service has certainly bloomed under the liberal government, what Mike Harris cut they have increased 10 fold, again looking after their liberal voter base.
The Ontario liberal government has been plagued with scandals since they, the liberals took office, there can only be two reasons for this, they are either crooks or incredibly inept.
Perhaps you should read the book Liars: The McGuinty-Wynne Record, I would be happy to lend you my copy, it’s rather sad how they have shafted the taxpayer, but also makes you wonder why they can get away with the corruption and not serve jail time, but then again Wynne has control of O.P.P. raises.
Now with an election coming in 2018 Mrs. Wynne say’s she will magically lower the delivery cost of hydro, where will that money come from, where will Wynne The Great Fiscal Manager (Trudeau’s words) get it from, what will she sell next, or I would suspect it will miraculously appear in her hands directly from the taxpayers wallet.
Trudeau isn’t any better, our new Carbon Tax wasn’t part of his platform to my knowledge in the election campaign, but up it pops in no time flat, just like the 10 billion dollar deficit that turned into 29 billion. As far as listening to the taxpayers Trudeau seems very deaf, only special interest groups seem to be in his hearing perception range, just like Mrs. Wynne.
All of this in good old Ontario, the most indebted Sub Government in the world, even deeper in debt than California, mostly thanks to McGuinty / Wynne and their fantastic fiscal management for 15 years, electing them for another 4 years should just about put us in the same shape as a country called Greece, it’s not that far off.
Luckily Mrs. Wynne’s pension plan for Ontario only cost us 7 million $$ for promotional advertising before she cancelled it, plus some nice big fat severance cheques for more of that voter base she panders to.
Good luck trying to sell voters on either federal or provincial liberals, the stench of corruption is getting stronger every day both in Ottawa and Toronto, the deplorables are in a hurry to clear them from the trough, this time for a long time.
In the mean time I hope Mr. Trudeau regrets his free helicopter ride, if everyone was as dumb as him he would have gotten away with it.
I note that the author Dale Peacock likes to write “humour and satire” as her favourites! No doubt this is another good example…because no one in their right mind would subscribe to such a twisted perspective of the worst Premier this province has ever seen.
Dale your article has definitely inspired a few of your readers. Sadly you deliberately have left out the most critical part of the provinces energy policy. The privatization of the Hydro monopoly. We will all have to pay more for electricity when the provincial liberals sell or give our monopoly away. And let us not forget about the carbon tax and its overall effects on our pocket books. Or the 750 million /yr that the monopoly generated for the province. Or the list of industries that are receiving subsidies from the provincial government during this process, which they refuse to make public. I’m sure we the taxpayer will be shouldered with all these added costs moving forward. Being a liberal in Ontario means picking winners and losers ,sadly that means that every man woman and child in this province has to suffer for generations. Yes Kathleen is doing a marvellous job of destroying the Ontario economy,keep up the good work.
Thanks to Mr. Verbonac for presenting the facts. Hard to refute. I just wanted to point out that since the Progressive party was thrown out of government by the Liberal/ NDP coalition in 1985 Social Liberals have been in power, except for a short 7 years of Michael Harris/ Ernie Eve’s Progressive Conservatives. That means the Social Liberals have had 25 years of running Ontario into the ground. Katherine Wynne has been part of or leader of the Liberal Party for 14 of those years. This disdain for Premiere Wynne and the Liberal Party has been and continues to be earned. Hydro is just one of the Social Liberal’s deliberate attacks not to mention (the new cap and trade tax) on the working lower middle class and poor citizens of Ontario. Time go.
Right on Dianne. Your frustration is palpable and shared by many frustrated Ontarians. When will this be fixed properly, at the source of the problem? Ms Wynne has taken blame but not responsibility- at this point it doesn’t matter how we arrived here but, rather, where are we going?
As with all comments or opinions, there will always be thoughts not in line with the expressed assessment of the author and if my point of view on price increases that outpace inflation by over 8 times [149% vs 18%] put me in the “whiny” category. So be it but in all honesty, facts are facts.
Ontario Hydro has been a Provincial concern for many years and not all past decisions have been stellar but recent blunders and mismanagement by the Liberal government of the day from and including the Green Energy Act of 2009 have been flawed and expensive. My illustrations follow.
The Global Adjustment Charge represents, according to a Globe and Mail article, a cost of $0.079 per kw/hr for 2015 [the latest data available] and is included in all residential bills as part of the per kw/hr costs. This represents close to 77% of our monthly bill. So…just what is this Global Adjustment Charge? So glad you asked.
1 ] Pays off $1.2 billion to move gas plants in Toronto to save electoral seats.
2 ] Pays $25 million fine for delay in commencing wind farm in Lake Ontario.
3 ] Paying solar and wind power producers up to $0.80 per kw/hr on guaranteed contracts.
4 ] Paying $160 per cord of wood from Norway to run wood fired plant in Thunder Bay.
5 ] Selling excess power to New York and Michigan for $0.023 per kw/hr which generates a loss of $1.7 billion dollars.
6 ] Curtailing…Paying electrical producers for product even though plants are running on idle due to provincial overproduction. TransCanada gets $165 million/year for plant in Napanee.
7 ] All those freebees we enjoy…tax credits for high efficiency appliances, LED bulb incentives, removing old fridges, ewaste recycle are all included.
The most ironic aspect of this miscalculation is summed up in the following statement by Parker Gallant, former VP of TD Bank.
“The easiest way to explain it, said Gallant, is that when energy consumption drops due to conservation, the Global Adjustment fee must be increased to make up the difference. So the less power Ontarians use, the higher their electricity costs must be in order to cover the minimum revenues energy producers are guaranteed.”
Regardless of who is responsible initially for this travesty, the current leadership is responsible for getting it fixed and not with small carrots being dangled under our noses (removal of Debt Retirement charge, OESP credit, and tax removals). The writing was on the wall 5 years ago and I got rid of my washer and dryer, unplugged all small appliances until used, replaced light bulbs and shower heads with energy efficient brands, had Hydro come in and check the house for air leakage, insulation, appliance efficiency, and check the “Smart” Meter – two inefficiencies found (older fridge and one shower head) were corrected, yet my bill has increased drastically. I live like a pioneer, burn wood for heat with 3 small electric baseboards (in one closed room only) set at 12 degrees C as a backup, if needed. Smart meters were rammed down our throats, various solar programs promising energy rebates were a dud, and nowhere near enough testing was done on both of the above before contracts were signed and products produced. All of these bad decisions seem to now be OUR problem to pay for. When will Hydro One, the Ontario Energy Board and the Power Authority start to take responsibility for their own erroneous decisions just as we have to do in our own lives? I am sick of paying for the mistakes of others! Yes, cleaner air is an important issue, but how do you control the numerous volcanoes spewing ash pollution daily all over the planet, Ms. Wynne? A lot more balance and thorough testing in tasks taken on is obviously needed, when so many people are stressed and having to make drastic decisions about staying warm or eating, long time family businesses closing down, and companies leaving the province…. to say nothing about the strain being put on our health care system for those people totally beaten after everything they tried has failed. Most people followed the monthly suggestions of Hydro to put less pressure on the grid by conserving energy, and as a result, paid less for their hydro usage. With less money now flowing into Hydro, rate increases had to be continually asked for and received to run their current daily needs, and then passed back to us? Catch 22 situation??? Ludicrous and not rocket science! And don’t get me started on the upper management posted salaries and perks when nobody knows who they are and why they are there! Ms Wynne has her work cut out for her and the sooner she gets on it, the better – she has a lot of bad years to fix, but that is all part of the job she took on, so DO IT!