Just as the Ontario government passes Bills 112 and 135 giving total control over virtually all aspects of the province’s power system to the Energy Minister, currently Bob Chiarelli, we get this insight into Minister Chiarelli’s analysis.
This video includes about 8 minutes of Minister Chiarelli responding mostly to questions from the Star’s Rob Ferguson and Rob Benzie. Both of them are asking solid questions about the Auditor General’s damning report issued earlier in the day. Notice Benzie inviting the minister to attack the AG Bonnie Lysyk’s grasp of the complexities of Ontario’s power system as the minister has in the past after previous damning electricity findings from Lysyk.
Minister Chiarelli gets on a roll. He has obviously discovered from his astrologers that Global Adjustement (GA) was “introduced by Mike Harris” (it was actually originally introduced in 2005 and labelled as the “Provincial Benefit”), and the lack of the GA is what we pay for through the Debt Retirement Charge (since 2002 successive governments have claimed that the Debt Retirement Charge is paying the Residual Stranded Debt left by the old Ontario Hydro, which was dissolved in 1998), and that the “Hydro One” became virtually insolvent due to a lack of GA (Hydro One has never had an insolvency problem and has never received GA revenue).
Minister Chiarelli is hopelessly confused about the basic facts of Ontario’s recent power history under his own government and the power system’s current functioning, but he also now controls virtually everything about the electricity supply in the whole province.
How embarrassing that we have a Minister of Energy who doesn’t know who kick-started the Provincial Benefit sic GA, didn’t answer any question posed, (presumably because he couldn’t), blames his predecessor(s)-isn’t Brad Duguid still a minister and Liberal MPP and sits in caucus, and the former leader as if they were from a different planet. What in hell makes him actually believe he is as smart or smarter than any of them and why all the power (pun intended) via Bill 135 should reside in his hands. No wonder the electricity sector is in such a mess!
Did I hear Chiarelli claim the following as if justification for the outrageous cost of the TB Biomass peaking plant to Ontario’s electricity consumers?
– [built, among other reasons] “for the economic development leaders in that community”
– [chose biomass over gas] “because of the climate change issue”
If so… what project of any kind, anywhere, could not be justified at any cost to ratepayers/taxpayers on the same claims within quotation marks above?
Chiarelli’s performance at this news conference was truly pathetic. It was like watching a train wreck. His lack of a grasp of basic facts is astonishing. I love it when he refers to the Dalton Gang as the “former government”. The provincial Liberals have got themselves into a shocking mess with no one to blame for it but themselves. The sad thing is that most of this mess is attributable to all the overly rich, long-term contracts the OPA, now IESO, has entered into over the past 10 years. Given the Auditor General report findings, why doesn’t the province implement an immediate moratorium on new procurement and conservation programs? This would seem to me to make sense. To get out of a hole you need to stop digging.
They are of the same mind-set as those who think you can borrow your way out of debt.
Barbara, governments have been borrowing and inflating their way out of debt for centuries. It’s sort of how the world has worked since the times of kings, queens and lords. Just saying.