The Globe and Mail’s Matthew McClearn continues his coverage of the conflict between Ontario’s Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk and the Wynne government over how the province should report the financial impacts of its electricity mess. His new report is here. I commented on his previous article in this series, published a month ago here.
McClearn’s latest captures an understatement from Lysyk, “If you get away with doing something that’s inappropriate accounting, the next time you’ll do it again and you’ll do it again. Pretty soon they won’t have any numbers that will have any integrity behind them.” Ontario’s financial reports are already tainted.
I am very glad this issue is getting attention finally and very impressed with the McClearn’s FOI efforts. The disgusting behaviours of KPMG and the IESO are especially shame-worthy. It is also obvious that the Ontario Public Service is an accessory to a giant financial and accounting fraud.
I have been posting to this blog details on the building conflict between the Auditor General and the government a long time ago.
General conflict between the AG and the Wynne Libs has been building since 2014. Here is an example: https://www.tomadamsenergy.com/2014/12/10/provincial-auditor-solid-on-smart-meters-chiarelli-lame/
Since the passage of the Fair Hydro Plan Act in June 2017, conflict over the exact issues discussed in this article were unavoidable:https://www.tomadamsenergy.com/2017/10/05/ontarios-fair-hydro-plan-clown-show/
It also seems relevant to note that neither the Globe and Mail coverage nor the AG have yet to recognize the illegal rates charged to residential customers throughout May and June 2017, under the Regulated Price Plan, prior to the enactment of the Fair Hydro Plan legislation.
I continue to expect that eventually, the Auditor General will finally stop signing off on phoney books at OEFC too.
Falling electricity demand in Ontario is a fundamental threat to the notion that ratepayers of the future will necessarily repay every deferred expense — whether the Fair Hydro Plan or the next nuclear refurb flop. Grid demand in Ontario, which peaked in 2005, dropped again in 2017 3.6% over 2016. The current level of demand has dropped to the level of the mid-1980s.
Patrick Brown’s People’s Guarantee platform agreed with Wynne’s deficit calculation and also supported her Fair Hydro Plan (flip-flopping on previous PC opposition to the FHP).
The big question in my mind is whether Doug Ford will follow in Brown’s footsteps, leading Ontario ever closer to the downgrades and misery of New Zealand of the early 1980s? Alternatively, will Ford reverse the Fair Hydro Scam and move to clean up the dirty books?
Here is the BC Auditor General addressing the misapplication of rate-regulated accounting.
Final comment for today: If there is anything that pisses me off it is a major newspaper finding fault with a woman who, years ago, expressed her views regarding certain things important to her (and to me) and as a result are dragging up the same old lefty bullshit Ontario has been fed for years in a vain effort to disparage her. It completely escapes me how the Toronto Star can continue to defend Wynne and McGuinty in the sordid financial and political mess they have created as they walk in lockstep while driving Canada”s largest province into a debtor jail. Do they hate our country and this province that much? I suspect so as I read garbage like this . Truth be told (and to answer Heather”s question) they avoid the snarling Ontario media simply because they have no need of the heavily biased bullshit emanating from said source regarding everything they do or say. The short story for them from me is “go f**k yourself and that is all which needs to be said. Ontario has heard quite enough from the “Red Star in my view. I have one final question. Are all the subscribers and advertisers so “stoopid they continue to support a news organization which have no saving grace with which to defend themselves? I suspect so because the Star reminds me of CNN and the Washington Post. A lost cause and the sooner they go bankrupt the better. I wouldn”t spend a single penny buying their product. They aren”t worth it.