Ford is spending a massive amount pretending to lower hydro rates. For the second year in a row, on Tuesday, February 7, this year’s Financial Accountability Office (FAO) report showed that over the next five years Ford will spend a total of $33.7 billion, or, an average of over $6.75 billion per year, on hydro rate subsidies.
The February, 2022 FAO report showed that Ford had been spending $6.9 billion a year subsidizing hydro rates and was projected to spend another $118 billion on subsidies in the future. This year’s FAO report shows that Ford is on his way to that vast amount of spending.
The 2022 report also stated that Ford would not be able to keep his election promise to lower rates by 12 per cent and showed that rates continued to rise four per cent between 2018 and 2021 and continue to rise. Rate subsidies might lower bills but have not lowered hydro rates one tiny bit. Time to shine a light on how this situation was created. A big part of our high hydro rates are artificial.
Here is the origin of artificial hydro rates: In the 1990s, the Enron Corporation was wandering the world just like the con man who goes from town to town working his scam. Ford is not the first Conservative to privately hobnob with the corporate elite. According to Macleans magazine, in July of 1995, Harris went fishing in the Northwest territories with Kenneth Lay, chairman of Enron. Enron and Ken Lay went on to be convicted of one of the biggest corporate frauds in history.
Harris passed three pieces of legislation in 1998. Bill 35, the Energy Competition Act, the Electricity Act and the Ontario Energy Board Act. After endlessly promising “lower rates” and that “nothing will go wrong,” Harris then had Aleck Dadson of Enron and a who’s who of private interest’s design Ontario’s electricity market.
READ MORE: Time to end Ford’s Hydro rate shell game
As we saw in California and Montana, Alberta, India and elsewhere, Enron Electricity markets are notoriously easy to manipulate.
The Liberals voted unanimously for all three pieces of Conservative legislation.
There is a very strong case to be made that the Liberals were partners with the Conservatives on hydro deregulation. Here is just one example. An invitation to private energy companies to a Liberal fundraiser dated October 31, 2001 states, “Throughout Ontario’s restructuring process, Dalton and the Ontario Liberals have been consistent supporters of the move to an open electricity market in Ontario.”
Hydro deregulation is best described by one word, profitization. After changing all non-profit at-cost hydro commissions into for-profit corporations and the opening of the Enron designed electricity market in June of 2002, by 2007 rates had doubled, by 2010 rates had tripled, and by 2018 rates had quadrupled. It’s important to note that since the electricity market opened, every single government including Eves, McGuinty and Wynne have artificially lowered hydro rates with subsidies. Ford has taken rate subsidies to new stratospheric levels, indefinitely. Obviously, something has gone very wrong.
Climate change and a supply shortage are staring us right in the face. We simply must get on the pathway of conservation and generation from renewables like wind and solar as quickly as possible. The costs for building green power generation have dropped dramatically.
There are no legislated conservation measures because conservation hurts profits and Ford doesn’t want to anger his financial supporters.
Sadly, the Liberal’s Green Energy Act, was a complete failure because it was nothing more than a license for private green energy producers to print money.
Beyond ensuring a stable supply of electricity, an aggressive energy efficiency and conservation program will put us on the road to meeting our CO2 Kyoto and Paris accord targets. It will create jobs in Ontario and prevent private generators from taking advantage of scarce supply to manipulate the market.
It is Einstein’s definition of insanity. We now have a situation where artificially high hydro rates are artificially being lowered by a multi-billion dollar subsidy year after year, indefinitely, never dealing with the cause of high hydro rates.
The electricity market must be closed. Rates must be regulated. Real conservation measures and generation from renewables, under a non-profit publicly owned company, must be implemented.
Support rabble today!
We’re so glad you stopped by! Thanks for consuming rabble content this year.
rabble.ca is 100% reader and donor funded, so as an avid reader of our content, we hope you will consider gifting rabble with a donation during our summer fundraiser today.
Whether it be a one-time donation or a small monthly contribution, your support is critical to keep rabble writers producing the work you’ve come to rely on as a part of a healthy media diet.
Become a rabble rouser — donate to rabble.ca today.
Nick Seebruch, editor
