Ford’s electricity plan will cost us a fortune

The Ontario government is being pressured about the future supply of electricity. Ford has gone to his favourite private for-profit solution pushing for new private gas and nuclear generation. Ford has also broken his election promise for conservation.

We must not let Ford’s private profit friends dictate public policy, which is exactly what’s happening here. If we want to save our planet, we must get on a conservation pathway as well as generating electricity from renewables like green wind and solar.

Conservation is the cheapest, fastest and cleanest way to solve our electricity and climate change problems. Conservation measures can be immediately implemented and are one-tenth the cost of building new power plants.

Building more private gas and nuclear power plants to deal with a possible shortage of supply is just going to cost everyone a fortune. Here’s why.

The Harris government turned every hydro utility in the province from a non-profit commission into a for-profit corporation and introduced an Enron designed electricity market. It’s even more apparent with every passing year that this decision was an epic mistake. Electricity is very much like water, a necessity of life, and should never have been turned into a forprofit commodity.

This sent our rates through the roof and continues to do so. Building more private gas and nuclear plants to feed into this market will only do one thing to rates — make them spike.

The Harris government spent more than $1 billion to set up the Enron designed market and spent more than $1.5 billion on the price cap to keep this failed experiment going. Ford has also been clinging to this failure.

Last February, the Financial Accountability Office showed Ford had been spending $6.9 billion a year on rate subsidies and plans to spend another $118 billion in rate subsidies in the future. Why not spend the $6.9 billion a year on conservation measures and green power, solar and wind farms? That would eliminate the need to build more CO2 emitting gas generators.

Ford repeatedly says he is, “open for business.” Ford’s electricity plan is going to dramatically increase rates for business, driving businesses’ away to lower cost public power jurisdictions like Manitoba and Quebec.

The wind blows and the sun shines for free. There is a massive amount of private capital looking to invest in green power. Allowing private green power generation to feed into the electricity market would be a terrible mistake, greatly inflating rates.

We imported our electricity problems from the U.S. Maybe we should import some of California’s solutions. Institute the 20/20 plan. Cut your demand by 20 per cent and we will cut your hydro bill by another 20 per cent for 40 per cent savings. Give out fluorescent light bulbs and real rebates on energy efficient refrigerators. These are just a few of the many measures available.

It is long past time that the IESO electricity market was closed and rates regulated. In order to stop Ford’s multi-billion-dollar subsidies to private power, hydro utilities must be returned to public ownership and control. If not, it will always be a struggle to hold private owners to account.

Think hydro bills are high now? The people and businesses of Ontario cannot afford Fords electricity plan. Neither can the environment or our climate.