Instead of talking about a trivial increase of a couple of dollars, Ontarians should be paying attention to the $4.7 billion the provincial government is borrowing this year to keep power bills artificially low. Ontarians are getting a rebate of 33 per cent off their real power costs. Pretending that power rates are far lower than they really are is a trifecta of political stupidity that the Liberals started, the PCs continued, and the NDP promises to make worse.
Ford defended the increase this week by saying that’s it’s rising at the rate of inflation. It is, but the increase has little to do with inflation. Instead, as the OEB pointed out, prices are going up because of declining demand.
But wait, wouldn’t decreasing demand in a market that already has a large supply surplus tend to lower prices, not increase them? Unfortunately, not in Ontario.
During the 15-year Liberal reign, the supply of wind, solar and natural gas generation increased to well beyond what the province required. For example, gas-fired generation makes up 25 per cent of provincial capacity but produces only six per cent of power output. In a free market, that kind of surplus would have driven prices down and pushed inefficient competitors out, but the Liberals had a solution for that. They guaranteed to pay for that new power, even if it was not needed or generated.
That’s the root cause of this week’s power increase. Guaranteed contracts have left Ontario with huge fixed power costs. As the volume of power used declined steadily for more than a decade, fixed costs rose to 18 times what they were back in 2008. Just over one-quarter of fixed costs now are attributed to wind and solar power.
Related: The Liberals are becoming a climate cult
Typical government run enterprise. The private sector doesn’t have the luxury of increasing prices to make up for a lower demand. Another reason the government needs to get the hell out of business.
Gerald Butts and the Liberals have broken Ontario. Now Trudeau and Butts want to do the same to Canada
Wrecking Canada was his objective all along. Ontario was just for practice. In Prinz Dummkopf, he found someone just dumb and nasty enough to go along with it.
Why doesn’t the government spend the $4.7 billion annually on hydro projects to create new power sources and let competition drive down the price? Beats pissing it away on intermittent wind or solar which produces the most when it isn’t needed and cannot be stored for when it is needed.
Rising power costs and the ongoing madness to install subsidized (FIT of $0.82/kwhr initially), wind in Ontario was one of the main reasons we left in 2010…and came back to Alberta where we had left 3 yrs prior. TOU meters were coming and it was EASY to see the writing on the wall. I thank Parker Gallant of the NP for clearing up the waters at the time such as to make sense of the idiocy of what I suspected was happening.
We Can Thank GERALD BUTTS for that. The bastard “son” of the Rothschilds who installed that little NAZI as CEO of the WWF… justin’s Ideological BFF. I suspect he’s the author of the Internment KAMPFS RFQ as well..fits right in with his evil headspace.
And you can bet that those two LIberal SCUM made off with Millions in the “giving” of those power contracts to their friends.
The article is by Randall Denley in the National Post. For those that don’t know Denley, he was a long-time columnist in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper. For more than a decade he was the only effective opposition to the city of Ottawa’s left-wing city councilors. He is consistently excellent, and often a lone voice, in his analysis of current political issues.
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/randall-denley-doug-ford-is-making-the-ontario-liberals-green-power-disaster-worse
How is anything that has happened in Ontario, going to lead to a different outcome in Saskatchewan? Brad Wall first, and now Scott Moe are clearly dedicated to following the same path. The Buffalo Party has most of the same language about “we will be a world leader in carbon capture” that the NDP, the Greens, the Liberals, and the Saskatchewan party have.
I blame all of you. You keep voting for your team, and you keep ignoring the continual leftward drift of your team. Which means you are all OK with that. You keep voting for it, you are donating to it, you keep buying memberships in it, you are doing nothing to stop it.
Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Canada; we all have exactly the government that we deserve. Always have, always will.
Thanks Kevin. I’ll stop voting for my “team” and start voting for …?
I guess voting is just for suckers and elections do not matter.
One slight difference is that the NDP in Manitoba created a giant mega project to add yet another major power line to the south for carrying hydro electricity. (Lots of high slush jobs for the big union types too.) The plan was to sell it to the Americans for less than our cost of providing it and getting the Manitoba taxpayers to foot the bill to we could do our part saving the planet from climate change. (Okay originally it would have meant a profit for Manitoba but then Trump happened to American energy and suddenly we have to sell our excess hydro at a loss because the price we get was tied to gas prices by the morons in the NDP party who negotiated the deal.) Saskatchewan is getting a really good deal on Manitoba Hydro because of our vast over supply and because Sask will pay more than Americans. So the Sask green energy push will help make up for Manitoba’s NDP stupidity and keep Trudeau off their backs because it is “green” hydro. Just don’t talk to the indigenous people whose land is now underwater about it.
California is watching, and taking notes as they fine tune the remainder of their plan to swallow PG&E.
“their plan to swallow PG&E”
Anyone who would invest in the electricity business would have to be a moron. Make that, anyone who would invest in any business in California is a moron.
Or, just a connected Democrat … . I bet the Clinton, Bush, Biden, Pelosi, Trudeau, … , Foundations are all well positioned.
I’m old enough to remember that carbon taxes would reduce demand for electricity, reducing the cost of electricity, and thus be “revenue neutral.”
A squeaky voiced Greenpeace soiboi told Dave Rutherford that is how the price of gasoline would be lowered. Do they take stupid pills or are they just born mentally retarded?
In July 2020, the global adjustment was a mere $1,217,700,000.
that global adjustment pays for contracted power at above market rates, conservation programs, financing charges, and whatnot.
it could be reduced by $114.51M (Wind) and $238.83M (Solar) if someone had the will to removed the requirement that the most expensive power is bought first, and that above market rates are paid.
Currently, the cost per kw/h is about $0.02 and the global adjustment makes up the rest.
If you look at the ieso.ca website, there are times where we are paying the wind producers for their power, and then paying adjacent electricity operators to take that power (look at times early in the morning, and for negative prices)
We do not have a leader who is going to do that.
I just paid $250 for my last month’s PG&E bill. I am in the middle of a significant remodel. My furnace is disconnected. Nothing but minimal electricity and virtually no nat. gas is being used. $250 for the equivalent of an empty house. PG&E has made their bills very convoluted and inscrutible. They have “Electric Generation” charges and another “Electric Delivery” charge. WTH are those? Then … their rates are in TIERS of increasing unit costs … to PUNISH the consumer for using energy. When did we put the FAKE greenies in charge of our most essential, life-sustaining, utilities and policies? What a SAD, SAD, devolution of the BRILLIANT systems invented by my father’s generation. Sadly … my SPOILED generation is tearing it all down … ma’aaaaan.
Basically, you had 2 chances near the beginning. Should have listened to Senator Joseph McCarthy. Should have elected President Goldwater.
But, instead of listening to McCarthy, he has been vilified. Continuing to this day. Same with Goldwater. The Venona papers, my conservative estimate is that they named 3% of the active Soviet agents working in the US government and everywhere else to undermine everything.
You are boned. The USA is boned. Canada is boned. UK is boned. Germany is boned. Basically, the end of the world as we know it. You actually have an active crime family running for President of your country. We already have ours in place in Canada with Trudeau the second. And Mexico, has it even had a non criminal in charge this century?
Paying the cost of electricity in Ontario has been a shitshow since long before Mike Harris. Taxpayers in Ontario don’t want to pay taxes. Politicians don’t want to make them. I don’t know which of them makes me sicker.
Another treason by “convervative” politicians. Who wudda thunk?
If the one whom you consider the best of cons, Maxime Bernier-Singh, the leader of Indian People’s Party of Khanadistan, is hiring only turban-wearing candidates for the critical ridings in Ontario. Traitors, all of them!
Been tracking residential energy cost last 15 yrs, all in its gone from $0.13/kwh to $0.22 kwh. Those fixed fees keep rising !
Funny thing here.
Supreme Court ruled that Government is NOT bound to contracts entered into by previous governments..
Yet when it comes to politically motivated schemes that bankrupt the actual taxpayer..These contracts cannot be touched..Apparently.
Electricity is far too important to modern civilization to allow Government any say in its production nor usage.
For we are being robbed blind,due to the essential nature of electrical supply.
Government control,working for the entitled parasites once again.
I never realized that Ford was spelled a B and an R.
As of 2019, China had the highest installed capacity from its coal power plants, amounting to about 1,005 gigawatts in total. The United States came in a distant second with over 246 gigawatts of coal power plant capacity, followed by India at about 229 gigawatts. The Ontario Liberals shut down 6.6 gigawatts of coal generation during their 15-year-reign (0.65% of China’s coal generation)
Butts and Telford and the other former-Ontario Liberal minions now running the Federal Government are destroying our economy, while doing nothing to save the environment. Federal Liberals, and Trudeau in particular, are engaged in the biggest virtue-signalling campaign the world has ever known. They are creating about as much hot air as China’s coal plants are. Maybe we could find or invent some kind of machine to hook up to Liberals’ mouths to harness all this useless energy.
Still believing in false gods’
Teachers’ by the hour.
Or it’s all over.
187 days’ a year.
check your ego at the door.