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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Even for the premier: \u201cPeople have told me that they\u2019ve had to choose between paying the electricity bill and buying food or paying rent,\u201d the Ontario premier told a Liberal gathering in the fall. \u201cThat is unacceptable to me. It is unacceptable that people in Ontario are facing that choice. Our government made a mistake. It was my mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The Liberals have been accused of blowing billions of dollars on smart meters that haven\u2019t saved us energy, haven\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
Climate activists praise Ontario\u2019s green energy program as the first jurisdiction in North America to eliminate coal-fired power plants \u2014 a move credited in part with nearly eliminating the province\u2019s 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 \u201cLiberal blunder into green energy\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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. )<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
A Globe and Mail report by Adrian Morrow and Tom Cardosa explains, \u201cThe 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.<\/p>\n
The cost of all this is passed on to ratepayers in the form of higher electricity bills. Auditor-General Bonnie Lysyk estimates that the \u201cglobal adjustment charge\u201d \u2013 the government\u2019s term for the costs in the system above the market rate for electricity \u2013 accounts for some 70 per cent of the average electricity bill.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Ontario Hydro was divvied up, the residual stranded debt stemming from the 1999 breakup of the province\u2019s giant utility was a $38.1 billion, mostly from building nuclear plants in the 1970s and \u201980s. 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.<\/p>\n
Prices over time are going to continue to go up. The plants that were refurbished in 2003 will need refurbishing again.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 but not a cheap one: it cost $1 billion to cancel those infamous gas-fired power plants in Mississauga and Oakville.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
So, what can the government do to lessen the pain for ratepayers across province? One option is giving significant rebates to some \u2013 especially the poor and rural \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
The research and opinions on the subject of the high cost of electricity are many. Every environmentalist and engineer \u2013 and Conservative \u2013 will certainly be able to poke huge holes in my feeble attempt to explain it.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s electricity system for half a century, with multiple drivers \u2013 all of them complicated.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
![\"Dale](\"https:\/\/media-doppleronline-ca.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com\/2016\/09\/Screen-Shot-2016-09-28-at-3.42.59-PM-282x300.png\")
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\u2019t 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\u2019s at home. <\/em><\/p>\n