If you have heard of paying it forward, you should have no problem with the concept of billing something forward. It is the reverse of paying it forward. It is when you take a bill, you had put off for tomorrow and you stick it in a drawer to pay next year. It is the same as remortgaging your home for a longer period. You make smaller payments and pay for another ten years.
The Ontario Liberals under Kathleen Wynne have taken this desperation route to solving the province’s current mess in electricity billing. It might be the equivalent of doing business with payday-loan shysters but the Liberals are counting on it to save their bacon in next year’s provincial election. They might be whistling past the graveyard.
While long term, no Ontario political party has ever solved the problems with financing Ontario’s electricity generation and distribution. None of them are that smart. Between contracting to pay what clean energy really costs, canceling half built gas generation plants and trying to sell off the electricity distribution system, the Ontario Liberals have had entirely too much time to really screw things up.
But, let’s face facts, this leaderless Liberal party with its foolish sense of entitlement has really run its course. It is only the fact that the opposition parties are in worse shape as far leadership and ideas that gives the Liberals the nerve to say “Vote for us. They are losers too!”
It is not that Ontario voters do not deserve this problem. The facts are that any idiot politician can promise cheaper electricity and none can deliver. Ontario long ago ran out of places to build hydro dams. Instead of making sweetheart power deals with neighbouring Manitoba and Quebec, Ontario went nuclear—to the dismay of many of its citizens. And who said that clean energy was cheap?
The hard news to swallow is that with the continued loss of manufacturing in Ontario is freeing up electrical capacity. There are many times now when we do not need the power we are producing. We should be building the infrastructure needed today to electrify the rail lines across Ontario as well as the commuter lines.
What Ontario so desperately needs are leaders who can lead and politicians with vision. Oh, how we would if we could!
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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry
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