Ontario was a bastion of self sufficiency in its power generation for decades. A mix of hydro, Nuclear and Coal gave us a stable power supply and allowed us to sell off excess energy for decades to the US and other Provinces.
Left leaning politicians for decades have chipped away at that sufficiency by purposely choking out both Nuclear and Coal to create a demand for their much hoped for green energy projects. They envisioned a Province running on Wind and Solar and would let nothing get in the way of that including huge costs and power shortages to citizens.
The
Green Energy Act was brought into Ontario in 2009 by the Liberal McGuinty gov't. It forcibly committed the citizens and gov't to buy any and ALL green energy produced (wind, solar, etc) first to feed the Ontario grid before the gov't could purchase or use any other forms of power. This meant guaranteed demand for the Green Energy producers regardless of cost to produce this green energy.
What this has resulted in is Ontario citizens having to buy their power for 8.55 cents a kilowatt hour while selling off the cheaper produced energy to neighbouring jurisdictions — Michigan. New York, Minnesota, Manitoba and Quebec — for 2.65 cents/kwh.
A debacle that is costing citizens upwards of $1B per year some years so basically give away the cheap energy while forcing citizens to buy the more expensive. Its a bizarre situation where Ontario now has overall the lowest cost energy it has ever had but the citizens of Ontario pay the most they ever had and far more than market costs. In fact
the more the wind blows and sun shines and the more Green Energy that is produced the worse off Ontario citizens are, cost wise.
In a rare move the Ontario Liberal Premier, in near tears admitted the debacle has had a real and profound impact on Ontarion's particular those who live with little discretionary income where "“
People have told (her) that they’ve had to choose between paying their electricity bill and buying food or paying the rent."
This is a true case of Gov't and Leftist hubris where they see something they think is 'the right thing to do' and that it will be a boon to the citizens and simply believe they can force it into the market and effectively pick winners in losers within a free market economy and end up distorting the market and hurting the very citizens they purport to be helping.
This is what happens when leftist, liberal ideology is given too storing a mandate (majority) by citizens (voters) where they can force these measures in without checks and balances.
. Conservatives would counter that they do support initiatives for the environment but not this over arching, costly and poorly thought out one. They would then be demonized as 'not supporting the environment'.
