Nov 10
18
McGuinty Gaia-worship bribe to placate Ontario ratepayers
Financial Post – November 17, 2010
Ontario to bribe its power-shocked voters
By Terence Corcoran
This cannot be true. News reports say the Ontario government is going to bring in a new Clean Air Benefit, a payment to electricity consumers to help reduce their soaring electricity bills. In an economic statement Thursday, Finance Minister Dwight Duncan is apparently going to announce the Clean Air Benefit as a bold response to the growing realization across the province that Ontario’s electricity sector is a fiscal runaway train.
Ontario electricity prices, already up 30% since 2003, are set to rocket over the next few years, propelled by some of the world’s most hare-brained green-energy policies. Under direct government diktat, motivated by activists and industry rent-seekers, the Ontario electricity system faces new expenditures in the tens of billions of dollars – costs that will have to be passed on to consumers. One forecast said the new policies mean price increases that will leave consumers paying 135% more for power in 2015 than in 2003.
So now the government, having launched an industrial policy disaster, is going to try to con consumer/voters by launching a tax policy disaster. The government will pay consumers a small amount of money to offset some of the large sums of money the government is forcing consumers to pay for its green-energy regime.
To make these payments, reportedly worth $1-billion a year, the province will have to borrow. Essentially, the government will be running up the mortgage – already soaring for other reasons – to make payments on the electricity credit card. Problem solved! Politicians always deny they are buying off voters with voters’ money, but it should be impossible for Mr. Duncan and Premier Dalton McGuinty to avoid embarrassment over the Clean Air Benefit – or whatever it is called.