Only by returning the utility to its public roots will the issue be solved
To the Expositor:
Re. Enough is Enough petition gains Island support across Manitoulin, The Manitoulin Expositor, April 8, 2015.
The people of Ontario have forgotten the history of Ontario Hydro, yes, I did mean to say, “Ontario Hydro.” The utility was created over a hundred years ago as a publicly owned corporation to provide electricity to the citizens of Ontario. It provided Ontarians with some of the cheapest, most reliable electricity in the world. It was so effective there was talk that the Americans threatened not to ratify the Can US Free Trade Agreement unless it was privatized.
The problem of escalating costs for electricity began when the provincial Conservative government of 1995-2003 first allowed the private sector into Ontario Hydro. The current provincial government did nothing to change that when they came to power, in fact they exacerbated the situation by allowing more private involvement and incorporating the phony economics of “green energy.” The addition of so-called “green energy” is compounding the cost problem as it only exists due to the massive subsidies provide by the taxpayer. The cure for escalating electricity cost is to elect a competent, honest government that will eliminate all private involvement in Ontario Hydro and return the utility to the state it belongs, the state that made it one of the greatest utilities in the world—a fully public property.
Our politicians are misguided in thinking that they, personally, own public assets, but that is not the case. Public assets belong to the citizens of Ontario. Politicians do not have the authority to sell public property—that was not the mandate they were elected on. With billions of dollars at stake, our politicians and upper level bureaucrats, past and present, should be subject to a forensic audit of their national and world wide bank accounts and property holdings.
Dan Palmateer
Toronto
