Electricity rates and supply are much in the news these days. Every chance Ford gets he blames the previous Liberal government for high hydro rates. Well, he is right about one thing: it was a previous government.
It was the previous Conservative government of Mike Harris who brought in hydro deregulation and turned every hydro utility in the province from a non-profit commission into a for-profit corporation.
Ford also claims he has lowered and stabilized rates; he has not lowered rates by one cent. According to the Financial Accountability Office last February Ford has been spending $6.9 billion a year subsidizing hydro rates and looks to spend $118 billion more in the coming years, which might lower hydro bills a bit but not rates! It’s a complete sham. Pretending to lower hydro rates by taking money out of taxpayer’s pockets then putting it back into ratepayers’ pockets is just a shell game!
Premier Harris went fishing with Kenneth Lay, chairman of ENRON. Promising lower rates, Harris then had Enron, who was convicted of one of the biggest corporate frauds in history, design our electricity market. Now called the Independent Electricity System Operator the IESO.
READ MORE: We must get on the conservation pathway
It is this market and hydro deregulation that is still, 20 years later, continuously driving up electricity rates. Electricity markets do one thing: they maximize profits and are notoriously easy to manipulate. Electricity is very much like water, a necessity of life, and should never have been turned into a for-profit commodity.
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.
Just like Ford’s developer friends, we must not let Ford’s private profit friends dictate public policy, but that is exactly what’s happening now in the Ford Government.
Why did Ford break his election promise for conservation? Legislating real conservation measures would greatly anger the for-profit companies that support Ford. Real conservation measures reduce demand, lower electricity prices, hurts profits and the electricity market.
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 with his billions in subsidies. 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.
In order to end Ford’s Multi billion-dollar shell game, we must close the Enron designed IESO electricity market and regulate rates. Hydro utilities must also be returned to public ownership and control. If not, it will always be a struggle to hold private owners to account. Public ownership and control are critical levers of control both for the economy and the environment.
Think hydro bills are high now? Talk about inflation! Ford’s plan to build more for- profit gas and nuclear plants to feed into the electricity market will only do one thing to rates, make them spike. We did not elect owners of developer companies or CEOs of private power corporations to government, so why are they being allowed to dictate public policy?
The People and businesses of Ontario cannot afford Ford’s electricity plan.
Neither can the environment or our climate.
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Nick Seebruch, editor
