As we motor along through autumn, everything around us seems to be doing just what it always does. Trees are resplendent in their new colours; migrating critters are well under way; kids are in the early stages of their Christmas lists; the NIMBY crowd maintains their vigilance against offshore wind; winterizing projects are moving along; the Ontario government continues to upset the people; hockey season has started; vacations to sunny climes are on people’s minds; and so on.

I happen to be one of the people the Ontario government is ‘taking for a ride’ because of the announced closure of the province’s last coal-burning power plants by the end of this year. Don’t get me wrong, I applaud the removal of coal from our system and the muck it leaves behind. What really burns me is the fact that the powers-that-be have turned the entire episode into a soap opera-esque fiasco with little regard for the truth about costs to the taxpayers.

Originally, the closures formed part of the platform on which the Liberal Party came into power in 2003. The deal for Ontarians was to replace the plants with better alternatives. “We’ll replace our dirty, outdated coal-fired electricity plants – the biggest source of air pollution in Canada – with cleaner burning natural gas, and renewable energy such as wind and solar,” stated Dalton McGuinty during his campaign to become Premier.

Once in power, he discovered his promised 2007 deadline was a pipedream. As time went by, people continued to gasp as the demand for energy grew and Ontario struggled to keep the lights on. The closure/refurbish deadline was then pushed to 2009 and finally to 2014. Missed deadlines notwithstanding, the government still passed the Green Energy Act to take the province in a new direction of finding and using clean, renewable energy sources.

All of this gave rise to the Ontario power plant scandal, the characterization given by members of Ontario’s opposition parties to separate decision by the governing Liberals to cancel an 800-megawatt gas-fired power plant near Toronto prior to the Ontario general election of October 6, 2011. The review and cancellation of the gas plant came eight months after the government gave the boot to a similar project.

In 2009 the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) made plans for a gas-fired power plant just outside of Toronto citing again a rising demand for power in the area as well as the removal of 1,150 megawatts of supply from the grid due to the closing of one coal plant in 2005. The OPA mandated that the new power plant meet or exceed emissions standards that were 70 percent stricter than what the Ontario Ministry of the Environment required. On the plus side, a Public Health centre and Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health concluded there was no evidence that the addition of a natural gas-fired generation facility in the region would have a negative impact on the health of southwest Greater Toronto Area (GTA) residents.1

But opposition to the plant continued to grow. Local opponents rallied at the Ontario legislature and brought in American environmentalist Erin Brockovich to help generate publicity for their fight to keep the new building out of their neighbourhood. In October 2010, giving in to increasing opposition, Liberal energy minister Brad Duguid announced the cancellation of the new gas plant proposing instead to offset increased power demand through improvements to transmission lines.

In June 2011 the Liberal government decided to review the building of a promised second gas plant. One opposition critic charged that, “This has got nothing to do with the environment this is Liberal cabinet ministers and former Liberal cabinet ministers who are worried about losing their seats.” The Environment Minister at that time, John Wilkinson, fired back saying the review has, “Nothing to do with politics. It has to do with ensuring that my ministry does what it’s supposed to do, which is to protect human health.”2

On September 28, 2011, the Ontario Liberals announced that if re-elected, they would relocate the now controversial natural gas-fired power generating station already under construction. This motion would again bring into question the role politics should play in controlling electricity policy to say nothing for the escalation of costs associated with moving the entire project.

It appeared I wasn’t the only one in the province who was pissed off. On October 6, 2011, the Ontario General Election returned only a minority Liberal government – a win to be sure but by only the slimmest margin – a far cry from the landslide victory they enjoyed a few years earlier.

The following summer, opposition members of the Legislative expense committee asked the new Energy minister Chris Bentley to produce all documents related to the gas plant cancellations. The Minister complied and on September 24, 2012, Bentley handed over thousands of documents. The problem was that some 2,000 pages had been redacted. As a result, Bentley faced ‘extraordinary punishment’ – possibly jail time – after opposition MPPs used their majority in the legislature to ram through a motion to probe the power plant cancellation.

On October 15, 2012, Dalton McGuinty announced his resignation as Liberal Party leader and Premier of Ontario as soon as the party could hold a leadership convention. The new party leader and Premier is now Kathleen Wynne who is trying her best to distance herself from her predecessor and insists her office will follow the rules. She is ensuring the public that this kind of abuse will not happen again. But by association as an MPP under Mr. McGuinty, Ms. Wynne will have to wear part of this mess for some time to come whether she runs a ‘clean’ office or not.

Further digging into this can of worms revealed that top Liberal staffers – even in former McGuinty’s office – illegally deleted emails tied to the power plant closures before the 2011 election. The emails were the only trail linking the chief of staff to the Minister of Energy and when questioned about his reasoning, the chief of staff simply stated that he likes “to keep a clean box… I don’t know how to archive anything.” The reaction from Ontario’s Privacy Commissioner was unequivocal, “It’s clear they didn’t want anything left behind in terms of a record on these issues.” Despite breaking the Archives and Recordkeeping Act and scoffing at freedom-of-information legislation, the perpetrators will not face any disciplinary actions because there are none. The McGuinty Liberals failed to pass adequate legislation that would have given the power to penalize such activities.

In the spring of this year, the government was mantling a $900 million cost to scrap the power plants yet told the public that only $230 million would have to be found. At the time of this writing the taxpayers of Ontario – me included – are looking at nearly $1.3 billion in ‘scrapping’ charges. I still cringe when I see the ‘Debt Retirement Charge’ on my Hydro bill knowing the payment is for overrun costs to build a Nuclear Power Plant east of Toronto during the seventies and eighties. I likely won’t live long enough to see this bill paid off. At least those added costs were primarily due to inflation and increased borrowing, costs that would have been tough to predict and therefore mitigate. Current problems are a totally man made breach of trust that could have, should have never happened let alone be played out in our Parliament.

I guess it really is true – the more things change, the more they stay the same.
 

¹ Ontario Power Generation – Southwest GTA Replacement Power Plant Backgrounder

² Global News – A timeline of the cancelled Mississauga and Oakville power plants