As Toronto City Council turns its attention to “personnel matters” at Toronto Hydro, new information has emerged on executive pensions at the government-owned utility. Continue reading ‘Ontario Electricity Regulation Crisis Report Part 83: Public Sector CEO Pension Gravy, Toronto Hydro Style’ »
Jeffrey Simpson, an editorialist with the Globe and Mail, is the latest in a long series of commentators promoting an east-west power transmission system for Canada. Simpson dresses up his column with a claim that he is breaking new ground, that nobody is “thinking about” this.
Continue reading ‘East-West Grid for Canada?’ »
Congrats to Karen Howlett and Adrian Morrow of the Globe & Mail for breaking an important story on Prichard’s connection to the gas scandal. I have been pursuing Prichard’s connection through FOI since last November, but getting stonewalled at every turn.
Continue reading ‘Gas Busters Part 49: Robert Prichard Connection’ »
One of piece of collateral damage caused by the DOS attack on this site last year, and the associated move off the disappointing hosting service ExpertHost to HostMonsters, was the loss of the site’s traffic stats database. A full year of data has now been accumulated.
Here is a page documenting audience numbers and main service providers accessing the site. A couple of observations: the number of page views was 95,642, traffic peaks focused on Gas Busters and Toronto Hydro’s many problems, more than half of the site visits are from returning readers, and the Ontario Energy Board’s server accessed my site 10 times per work day over the last year.
Continue reading ‘Traffic Report: One Year Reviewed’ »
This afternoon Toronto City Council was to have considered this agenda item accepting Toronto Hydro’s financial results for 2012.
Part of that agenda item was a recommendation to Council from the Executive Committee that:
City Council request the City Manager to include in his upcoming report on compensation for agencies and corporations, all Toronto Hydro senior executive compensation since amalgamation along with the annual dividend received.
Instead of completing that agenda item, Council instead passed the following motion moved by Councillor Joe Mihevc:
Continue reading ‘Ontario Electricity Regulation Crisis Report Part 82: Toronto City Council Finally Focused on Toronto Hydro Personnel Issues’ »
As noted in Part 43 and earlier parts of this series, I have been pursuing through Freedom of Information an investigation of information on the gas plants issues known to the Premier’s Office during the period January 1 through October 1, 2012. I appealed the original release of information, that appeal proceeded through mediation without resolution, and has now proceeded to adjudication.
The adjudicator within the Information and Privacy Commissioner’s office had issued a deadline of June 12th for a response from Cabinet Office to my appeal. That deadline has now been moved to June 26th.
The reason I started the Gas Busters series was because the government’s initial document dump in response to motions passed by the legislature requiring disclosure appeared to be an intentional attempt to conceal the truth about what happened with the gas plants. Turning thousands of pages of information into image-only scans looked like the type of engineered snowstorm regulated utilities often use to cover their tracks.
Continue reading ‘Gas Busters Part 47: Transparency Changes for Ontario’s Deficient Laws and Gov’t IT’ »
Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner’s reported yesterday on illegal destruction of documents by senior Ontario Liberal political staff working on the relocated gas plants once contracted for Oakville and Mississauga. The report details deleted emails, scrubbed hard drives, and policies of conducting meetings without documentation to avoid detection in document searches. The Commissioner focused much of her attention on David Livingston and Craig MacLennan, then chiefs of staff in the Premier’s office and the Energy Minister’s office respectively.
Here are four additional individuals worth investigating — Chris Morley, Jamison Steeve, Sean Mullin, and former Energy Minister Chris Bentley.
Continue reading ‘Gas Buster Part 46: More Document Scorchers’ »
As mentioned in Part 44, one of my Freedom of Information requests, which focuses on gas plant documents from the Premier’s Office during a time period in 2012 and is now involved in formal Information and Privacy Commissioner’s (IPC) adjudication, is discussed several times in the report.
Although my FOI is not directly identified, the government’s failure to respond to the request is referenced as a key piece of evidence in supporting the conclusions of the IPC report.
One of those references is identified in Part 44. Here are three additional examples.
Continue reading ‘Gas Buster Part 45: More Excerpts from Info and Privacy Commissioner’s Report’ »
The Centre of Excellence in Responsible Business (COERB) is holding an alumni networking event and panel discussion on June 10 at 6:30 – 8:30 pm. The event has been organized with the Natural Resources Opportunity Club and the Schulich Sustainability Alumni group. I will participate in a panel discussion on “Renewable Energy: Status, Opportunities and Future in Ontario”.