Parker Gallant | Wind Concerns Ontario - Part 10
Parker Gallant on Ontario electricity sector: you were warned
Auditor General Lysyk: Ontario ratepayers pay 3 times market price for electricity
Auditor General report confirms: the “guru” was right
The Auditor General of Ontario’s report, released December 9, 2014, confirmed what many of us have been saying for years: the electricity sector in Ontario is a mess and the Liberals created it! As this writer noted in an article, now four and a half years old, the Ontario Liberals were throwing ratepayer money around hoping some of it would actually create some value. About that time then Minister of Energy, Brad Duguid, referred to me as a “self-appointed guru” on television program. Well, sadly, the guru was right…about everything.
Perhaps I should ask for an apology, and here’s why: I called the mess correctly, from the perspective of both the energy portfolio to the mess in Infrastructure Ontario! The latter, according to the AG report, is an $8-billion mess and the former a $50- billion dollar mess, including the $2 billion wasted on those not so smart, “smart meters.” The following excerpt from the AG’s report verifies what I and several others have been saying:
“The total Global Adjustment charged to ratepay­ers has grown from $654 million in 2006 to $7.7 bil­lion in 2013, as shown in Figure 10. With more new contracted generators, especially of renewable energy, expected to begin producing energy at higher contract prices, the total Global Adjustment is expected to grow further, to $8.5 billion in 2014 and $9.4 billion in 2015. From 2006 to 2015, the 10-year cumulative actual and projected Global Adjustment is about $50 billion—an extra charge to ratepayers over and above the market price of elec­tricity.”
While deficit spending in Ontario was increasing our debt to as much as $325 billion (noted in the AG report) by 2017−18 the ruling Liberal government was also slamming ratepayers with additional billions, perhaps missing the obvious conclusion that ratepayers and taxpayers are one and the same!
The Christmas pudding delivered by the Wynne-led Liberal Government is full of lumps of coal!