Expensive and inefficient wind turbines now dot the countryside in much of southern Ontario like these ones near Shelburne, Ontario. Photo: Bruce Forsyth.
March 2021
Ever since the McGuinty/Wynne Liberal governments foisted their failed Green Energy Act on us, Ontario have been saddled with shockingly high hydro rates. This has hit the average person very hard and had a detrimental effect on businesses, particularly the manufacturing industry, resulting in some leaving Ontario for jurisdictions with lower hydro rates.
The primary reason for the high hydro rates is the obnoxiously high rates paid to producers of green energy. Initial rates paid to producers ranged from $.060 per kilowatt hour to $.80 per kilowatt hour, guaranteed in contracts that for many were a 20-year period.
To add further insult, Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk reported in 2016 that because the Liberal government disregarded their own experts gave regarding the pricing of hydro, consumers paid $9.2 billion more for green energy than should have had to pay.
When the Conservative government of Doug Ford was elected in June 2018, they set about dismantling subsidy-laden industry that was spawned by the Green Energy Act. The Ford government cancelled 758 renewable energy contracts that hadn’t yet been completed and repealed the Green Energy Act as of 1 January 2019. However, they haven’t gone far enough.
To date, the Ford government has continued to subsidize the cost of hydro in an effort to keep the prices artificially low. This is a viable option in the short-term, but in the long-term, they need to get serious about cutting the cost of hydro generation.
One option that has been floated about is cancelling the sweetheart-deal 20-year energy contracts that were signed, many of which have at least 10 years left in their life-span. Some will say that canceling contracts will tell businesses that you can’t do business with the Ontario government.
I counter that what it will tell businesses that you can still do business in Ontario, but you aren’t going to get a sweetheart deal that screws the taxpayers of Ontario.
Sources: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ontario-government-moves-to-scrap-green-energy-act-2, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Energy_Act_2009, https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein-good-riddance-to-toxic-green-energy-act
