Premier Doug Ford's Ontario

[jje1000]

This is untrue. The GEA was 2009. The Wynne's Liberals went from a minority to a majority in 2014.
Privatizing Hydro One in 2015 has far more to do with her loss than the GEA.

Keep in mind the GEA was only ended in 2019, after the fall of the Liberals. Wynne was brought down primarily by massive hikes in hydro prices, partially brought around by mismanagement in generating capacity/needs, and generous subsidies to solar and wind to the tune of $3 billion a year on ratepayers (which Ford finally folded into general taxes). The sale of Hydro One was the cherry on top that even the Liberals’ supporters could not defend!

Premier Kathleen Wynne grabbed some attention this weekend by admitting a mistake.

It's not something politicians do all that often. When they do, you can be assured there's a darned good reason. In Wynne's case, it looks like she's trying to neutralize — or at least lessen — the damage that skyrocketing hydro bills are doing to her popularity.

"I take responsibility as leader for not paying close enough attention to some of the daily stresses in Ontarians' lives," Wynne told the Ontario Liberal Party's annual general meeting, held in Ottawa. "Electricity prices are the prime example."

Wind, solar and bio-energy account for 6.3 per cent of total electricity generated in the province, but 16.3 per cent of the total generation cost, according to the auditor general's recent investigation into hydro prices. Auditor Bonnie Lysyk criticized the government for offering overly generous contracts when it launched its big green energy push in 2009. Despite shifting gears to a competitive bidding process, the auditor found that in 2014, Ontario was still paying "double the market price for wind and 3½ times the market price for solar energy."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-hydro-bills-1.3860314

A lot of these GEA decisions were made years before they had a real impact, too.

In fact, when it comes to the FIT and Micro-FIT programs, key components of the province’s Green Energy Act, documents suggest decisions made by the Liberal government in 2009 and 2010 – as well as design flaws with the programs themselves – may have put Ontario on a collision-course with rising electricity costs.

“Anger over the hydro file is very real,” said Brady Yauch, an economist and executive director at the Consumer Policy Institute.

In total, the OPA signed close to 13,500 contracts under Micro-FIT at the highest premium. And what amounts to a miniscule fraction of Ontario’s electricity capacity – roughly 0.3 per cent – could end up costing billions over the life of the 20-year contracts, according to estimates provided by the IESO.

Billion dollar ‘mistake’: Ontario Liberals ‘hijacked’ plans for sustainable green economy | Globalnews.ca

Engineer behind key components of Ontario's Green Energy Act says the government "didn't trust" his team to launch renewable energy plans for solar "aggressively" enough. More than 4,000 pages of documents reveal mistakes and indecision in green energy roll out.

globalnews.ca

As the sector grew, so did the fiscal liability of those contracts. Multi-billion-dollar government subsidies started in 2017 and will total $7.3 billion for the current fiscal year (Ontario 2024a), equivalent to 0.65 percent of provincial GDP (Ontario 2024b). No other government in Canada has subsidized its electricity sector by this much for so long. Unsurprisingly, the very German government that first introduced FITs is likewise under fiscal pressure due to ballooning subsidies (Sorge 2024).

Chasing the wind - The value of wind generation in a low-emission nuclear and hydro-dominant grid: the case of Ontario | Macdonald-Laurier Institute

By Edgardo Sepulveda September 10, 2024 PDF of paper Executive Summary In 2018, the newly elected Ontario government passed one of its first pieces of

macdonaldlaurier.ca

 

[kEiThZ]

There was the sale of Hydro One. There were the subsidies on six figure Teslas. There was all the targeted social programs that did squat for the middle class except send them the bill. There was the lackadaisical approach to building housing and transit (and even some flat out lying on projects like HSR). When will progressives learn that the middle class don't like programs that aren't universal? The federal Liberals are making the same mistake now (mostly because they are dominated by the ex-Wynne/McGuinty crew).

 

[kEiThZ]

Keep in mind the GEA was only ended in 2019, after the fall of the Liberals. Wynne was brought down primarily by massive hikes in hydro prices, partially brought around by mismanagement in generating capacity/needs, and generous subsidies to solar and wind to the tune of $3 billion a year on ratepayers (which Ford finally folded into general taxes). The sale of Hydro One was the cherry on top that even the Liberals’ supporters could not defend!

The flip side of this is that renewables are dirt cheap now and the Conservatives are so ideologically rigid, they can't bring themselves to deploy these technologies to help lower electricity costs. I am not sure ideologically rigidity in the other direction is helpful either.

 

[PinkLucy]

A well done video about Bill 212 ... covering the other 27 pages that don't address bike lanes:

 

[lenaitch]

Premier Ford and his klingons entourage travelled all the way to Greenstone north of Thunder Bay to announce that they are leading the charge to open up the Ring of Fire . . . by officially opening seven culverts on an existing 70 km highway (oh, and funding for a new truckstop). More magic to come; 26 more culverts!

Only 280 more kilometers to go.

This road to the Ring of Fire will have new culverts

No major announcement emanating from Premier Ford on funding plans for roads into the Far North

www.northernontariobusiness.com

These guys would show up to a letter opening.

 

[afransen]

A well done video about Bill 212 ... covering the other 27 pages that don't address bike lanes:

A bit sad that it is down to amateur Youtubers to conduct such investigative journalism.

In a way, with modern LLM tools, there is no reason why every piece of legislation can't be passed through AI to summarize what it actually does. It is well documented that even legislators often do not know or understand the contents of legislation they are voting on. It appears we were bamboozled by the attack on bike lanes. I suspect that distraction isn't even that sincere, maybe they will rip out the bike lanes, maybe they won't. I doubt the MoT will actually want to adjudicate every new bike lane. More likely, this was added to distract opponents of the 413 from what the legislation actually does. Once the bill is adopted, the provincial government may back down and remove or not enforce the requirement to assess traffic impacts of bike lanes.

My spideysense was tingling when Kory Teneycke (one of the strategic minds behind the Dofo government) was gleefully goading that the Liberals and NDP come to the defense of bike lanes.