A must read on what’s really going on with Ontario power generation
This is the article that Josie was writing about in the previous posts.
http://www.thestar.com/article/260940
Parties unplug debate on privatized power system
September 27, 2007
Paul Kahnert
There has been no debate about public ownership and control of Ontario’s electricity system during the current election campaign. There should be. The 20-year, $60-billion Liberal power plan announced Aug. 30 costs more than all the new spending on health care and education combined.
The Ontario Electricity Coalition, the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union and CUPE National stopped the sale of Hydro One in court in 2002. Then opposition leader Dalton McGuinty went on the record on Sept. 5, 2003, promising public power and an end to deregulation. Most Ontarians thought the issue of electricity privatization had gone away.
Far from it.
Throughout most of Ontario’s history, the electricity system has been almost entirely publicly owned, controlled and regulated. But cost overruns at Ontario Hydro’s nuclear power stations – actually no worse than on privately-owned nuclear power elsewhere – opened the door for the Harris Conservatives to ram through a plan to deregulate and privatize Ontario’s power system.
When the Conservatives introduced legislation for a “competitive electricity market” in November 1998, there was a huge public relations campaign promising lower rates. At the time, the Ontario Electricity Coalition asked: “How can private, deregulated electricity be cheaper when you add in profits to generators, profits to distributors, profits to retailers, dividends to investors and commissions to commodities brokers?” The answer, of course, is that it’s impossible.
The promise of lower rates in a deregulated electricity market proved to be a fraud all around the world. Electricity markets tripled rates in Alberta; in Montana they went up five times; in California, 10 times, and here in Ontario the retail market had to be closed by Ernie Eves in just six months because of outrage over skyrocketing rates.
After the 2003 election, the Liberals created the Ontario Power Authority and put Jan Carr in as CEO, a well-known proponent of electricity deregulation. Carr is on record as saying, “The OPA is only a transitional entity until a mature, competitive, electricity market can be installed.”
In a speech to the Empire Club on Aug. 9, 2004, Energy Minister Dwight Duncan declared, “All new generation will be private.”
Duncan’s declaration is significant because most of the public generating system has to be replaced over the next 20 years. That means creeping privatization as public generation is replaced with private. Legislation also forbids publicly owned Ontario Power Generation Corp. from generating green power such as wind and solar, which means that private green power will end up helping to dismantle the public power system.
Tucked inside the 4,000-page Integrated Power System Plan unveiled Aug. 30 are proposals that will increase private electricity generation and continue Ontario’s experiment with electricity deregulation.
The plan calls for the “evolution of Ontario’s electricity sector towards a workably competitive market …” that “will lead to increased competition among suppliers and lower costs.”
This is exactly the same promise made by the Harris Conservatives, that a competitive electricity market will lead to lower prices.
The Ontario Electricity Coalition has good reason to call the Liberal power plan privatization and deregulation by “stealth.”
Private producers are building new natural gas plants. So-called “smart meters” have been installed but not yet turned on. Small and medium businesses are going to get creamed when they are activated: Power will go from 5.5 cents a kw/h to 9.3 cents a kw/h, a 70 per cent increase during the 10 hours a day when they need it most.
How many people know that, after the election, electricity market rate protection for cash-strapped universities, schools, hospitals and municipalities will be eliminated?
How many people know that the Liberals have failed to protect our municipal electrical utilities from the impact of Conservative legislation to force them into debt and eventual privatization?
Ontario with its industrial base has much to fear from electricity deregulation. A volatile, deregulated electricity market is the last thing industry needs.
The debate on deregulated electricity markets in the U.S. is over. Twenty-five states are in the process of closing electricity markets and re-regulating rates.
Most of the pressure to close U.S. electricity markets came from the business community after rates skyrocketed. Manitoba and Quebec don’t have deregulated electricity markets, why do we?
Given the worldwide failures of electricity deregulation and privatization, it’s amazing that the Liberals and Conservatives haven’t changed their electricity policy one bit. Their policies commit us to a deregulated electricity market and a very expensive private power future. Public ownership, control and regulation of electricity are very important both to the economy and now more than ever to the environment. We can’t leave these critical decisions to a profit driven market.
The public needs real debate on this issue during the election.
A $10,000-a-plate fundraising dinner with 14 developers at Greg Sorbara’s brother’s house?
http://www.thestar.com/article/261491
Greenbelt nemesis ordered to pay $702,000
September 28, 2007
Phinjo Gombu
Staff Reporter
The Superior Court has ordered two companies associated with developer Silvio DeGasperis to pay the province $702,000 in legal costs, saying they used the false cloak of environmental concern to try to bully the province into allowing development on their own Greenbelt-designated land.
In a stiff rebuke to what it called “a vexatious and egregious example of abuse of the process,” the court ruled the companies must pay nearly all of the $761,000 the province claimed in costs.
It is possibly the largest such judgment ever awarded to a government in Canada.
“The conduct of the applicants in bringing this lengthy, complex and expensive application before this court as a tactic in the ongoing war (with the province) … falls well within (the meaning of) reprehensible, scandalous or outrageous conduct,” the judges said, repeating observations made at the close of the legal battle in June.
The issue revolved around a controversial land swap between developers and the province that would preserve environmentally sensitive lands on the Oak Ridges Moraine in exchange for the Seaton lands in North Pickering.
But when the Dalton McGuinty government introduced the Greenbelt – a protected strip of land stretching around the Golden Horseshoe – 400 hectares of DeGasperis’s own land in Pickering went from prime real estate to a no-build zone.
DeGasperis launched a series of costly legal challenges against the provincial plan for Seaton, which envisions a unique community of 15 compact neighbourhoods bordering forests and streams.
He tried to argue that his lands were better suited for development than Seaton, in a legal battle he has said cost him almost $5 million.
The judges said the DeGasperis-related companies, which tried to argue their lands were less environmentally sensitive than those the province chose for development, in fact had “no interest in the environmental assessment of the Seaton Lands.”
“Their sole motive for bringing the application was to frustrate, disrupt and delay the Land Exchange as a further step in their ongoing war with the Province and their attempts to harass and intimidate the province into permitting development on their lands adjoining the Seaton Lands,” the judges wrote.
DeGasperis’s TAAC Construction is one of the GTA’s top construction servicing companies, with its housing arm, Arista Homes, among the top 10 homebuilders.
He employs 850 and has told industry insiders his companies gross about $650 million a year.
Among DeGasperis’s tactics in what the court called his “war” with the government was his decision to leak a damning letter detailing an intimate $10,000-a-plate fundraising dinner McGuinty had with 14 developers at the home of Finance Minister Greg Sorbara’s brother before the Greenbelt boundaries were drawn.
Hmmm, I wonder what was discussed at this dinner? 14 developers, paying $10,000 each to attend. I wonder what they got for their money? Wait a second…you don’t suppose the developers were able to have any influence on the actual Greenbelt boundaries, do you? Nah, I don’t think that would have come up. They probably just talked about sports and the weather.
Infrastructure Minister David Caplan, a prime mover behind the province’s master-plan Places To Grow Act, said he believed yesterday’s award is the largest given to a government in Canadian legal history.
“What the judge said was that Dalton McGuinty did the right thing and acted in the public interest to preserve this critical green space called the Greenbelt,” Caplan said. “The court action was brought in bad faith.”
The government, he added, plans to reinvest the award money in the Greenbelt, perhaps in the form of a trust fund to buy lands for protection or through the Greenbelt Foundation.
DeGasperis was unavailable for comment yesterday.
Great article from the Star on McGuinty’s Bad Day
http://www.thestar.com/article/261068
McGuinty has a rough day
Ottawa cancer patient refuses to shake his hand, two Liberals oppose party policies
September 27, 2007
Richard Brennan
Staff Reporter
OTTAWA–Premier Dalton McGuinty had one of those days.
Yesterday, the Liberal leader had to face a cancer patient who wouldn’t shake his hand, and two of his own caucus members who have broken ranks with him over funding religious schools and raising the minimum wage to $10.
As well, a report surfaced blaming the Liberal government for crumbling water and sewage pipes across the province.
On a feel-good visit yesterday to Ottawa Hospital, McGuinty was strolling through the cancer wing when he ran into Mike Brady, 63, and offered the man his hand.
“How are you doing, sir?” McGuinty asked.
Refusing his offer, the Ottawa man said, “I’ve got cancer and you are not helping any.”
“That’s not true,” McGuinty said, before heading off for an announcement about reducing hospital wait times. The exchange was caught on videotape.
Brady explained that his beef with McGuinty was that the province was not funding certain cancer drugs that could prolong his life.
“I’m running out of time. … I don’t have the money to spend $60,000 on drugs in the United States that I need. I am not very happy with the kind of service we are getting,” Brady told reporters.
Asked later why he didn’t ask Brady about his concerns, McGuinty searched for an answer. “From that gentleman’s perspective, more needs to be done,” he said.
A McGuinty aide scrambled to tell reporters covering the Liberal campaign that funding for cancer drugs has jumped to $176 million from $62 million and that since October 2006, 12 new cancer drugs have been approved for funding.
Meanwhile, senior cabinet minister Monte Kwinter, who is Jewish, told the North York Mirror he would not be a “hypocrite” and publicly oppose Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory’s proposal to fund faith-based schools.
Kwinter, whose six grandchildren are in faith-based schools, was the only member of the Liberal caucus to vote with the former Conservative government for a tax credit for faith-based schools. “Constituents in my riding supported it, and I’m their representative so I supported it,” he told the Mirror.
“Certainly I would be a hypocrite to say that suddenly I don’t think it’s something that should be done,” Kwinter said.
When asked about the division in his party on the issue, McGuinty said: “Monte has been very consistent throughout … and I appreciate that and I respect that.”
The Bloor-West Villager, a west-end community weekly paper, reports that Liberal incumbent Tony Ruprecht (Davenport) told an all-candidates debate last Wednesday that he supports raising the minimum wage to $10 now. The Liberals have said they will increase it to $10.25 by 2010 up from the current rate of $8.
Asked about Ruprecht’s position, McGuinty said: “We’ve increased the minimum wage in Ontario four times now.”
And the Star obtained a report yesterday commissioned by the Ontario Sewer and Watermain Construction Association that directly blames the crumbling state of water and sewage pipes across the province on the Liberal government for not living up to the recommendations included in the Walkerton report.
Frank Zechner, executive director of the Ontario Sewer and Watermain Construction Association, said the Liberal government refuses to implement a law allowing municipalities to charge the real cost of providing these services.
“As a result, these aging systems continue to be grossly underfunded, and that presents a serious risk to the safety and reliability of our water,” Zechner said in a statement.
It would cost $18 billion to bring water and sewer infrastructure up to snuff, according to the report.
The Liberal campaign said the government has passed the toughest clean water law in Canada and “we’ll continue to make investments in the water pipes our families depend on through our $60 billion infrastructure fund.”
This is the liberals trying to be funny
Do you think they are trying to focus attention on one particular issue? Maybe it’s just my imagination.
Simply Brilliant
I was emailed this and I have no idea who the original source is, but it is written so well I have to share it:
Members of the Ontario Legislature routinely cite a constitutional “obligation” in excusing the wasteful anddiscriminatory practice of funding a separate school system for the members of a single Ontario faith group.
In reality, that constitutional “obligation” presents no real obstacle to reform. Section 43 of the Constitution Act, 1982 permits the Constitution Act, 1867 (BNA Act) to be amended through a simple bilateral agreement between the affected province(s) and the Federal Government alone when the amendment affects one or more, but not all provinces. Quebec and Newfoundland both sought and obtained section 43 amendments rescinding denominational school rights in the late 1990s. The Newfoundland amendment was proclaimed just four months after being requested by the provincial legislature. The Quebec amendment affected section 93 of the Constitution Act, 1867; the same section granting denominational school rights in Ontario.
In the process of authorizing the Quebec amendment, neither the Quebec nor the Federal Government could find a single constitutional expert who did not agree that section 43, the bilateral amendment mechanism, was appropriate in amending or eliminating section 93 rights. Ontario could easily follow the Quebec example.
Ontario Government Ministers have thus far been unable to put forward a compelling argument for the continuation of separate schools in Ontario. Quite frankly, there isn’t one. The constitutional “obligation” so often cited is largely illusory, as it is within the Government’s power to remove it very quickly. Some MPPs cite the precedent of history, which is to suggest that “since Ontario has a time-honoured tradition of discrimination and wastefulness in education, it should continue indefinitely.” More rubbish. Such thinking would have never abolished slavery or given women the vote. Ontario Catholics enjoy choices and opportunities unavailable to all other Ontarians because the Ontario Government chooses not to exercise its power to remedy those inequities.
This is classic
Sorbara says school setup must remain
http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/CityandRegion/2007/08/30/4457136-sun.html
Campaigning yesterday in London, Ontario Finance Minister Greg
Sorbara said some money for education is lost duplicating services
at public and Catholic boards — but his government wouldn’t
challenge that arrangement.
“It certainly is a duplication, but the commitment to a separate
Catholic system was part of the bargain in Confederation and that
bargain was made 140 years ago,” Sorbara told The Free Press.
I ask you…how can he possibly, in any way, justify what he ADMITS is a complete waste of precious taxpayers’ money – money that would otherwise have been spent actually improving our schools?
And then to hide behind the Separate School Clause in our Constitution like some kind of all-encompassing shield when he knows full well that the Constitution itself contains a process for provinces to opt out of these kinds of antiquated clauses is simply dishonest. In 1997, Quebec used this process to get a Constitutional Amendment that released them from these requirements and Newfoundland followed suit in 1998. There is absolutely no reason is the world that Ontario could not do the same. We are, after all, the last province in Canada to only fund one religious school. All other provinces and territories either fund all faith-based schools or fund none.
It truly boggles the mind. Greg Sorbara is telling you flat out that his discriminatory policy is full of waste and inefficiency, and part of the education budget is thrown out the window as a direct result of his discriminatory policy. Then he says that a document written 140 years ago, when the population of Canada was 1/5th what the population of Ontario is today, prevents him from being able to do anything about it – and that isn’t even the truth!
And that’s it. After that he says thank you very much for re-electing me, and have a nice day.
Simply amazing.
