Gas plant boondoggle to blame for energy price hikes

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) is blaming Ontario’s Liberal government and the cost of their gas plant cancellations for electricity rate increases that came into affect today. The price for off-peak power has increased by 7.5 per cent per kilowatt-hour, while peak hour rates have risen by 4 per cent. Both increases are significantly higher than the rate of inflation.

“This might as well be called the ‘Gas Plant Scandal Tax,’” said Candice Malcolm, Ontario Director of the CTF. “We now know that electricity ratepayers are on the hook to pay for the cancelled plants, so it was just a matter of time before rates were hiked once again.”

The recent Auditor General report on the cancelled gas plants shows that the cost for the political decisions made during the last provincial election add up to $1.1 billion. The remainder of this cost will be paid for by electricity ratepayers over the next 20 years.

“We’re paying for this government’s incompetence, vote-buying, and their utter mismanagement of the energy file in Ontario,” continued Malcolm.

“From their costly and ill-conceived Green Energy Act, which pays wind farms not to produce energy and offers a billion-dollar-a-year subsidy to hide green energy rate increases known as the Ontario Clean Energy Benefit, to paying TransCanada not to build a gas plant, this government is demonstrating sheer incompetency in energy,” concluded Malcolm.