‘You’re sticking to $40 million …’
Auditor general’s report fuels Opposition queries about Oakville plant
TORONTO Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne needs to stop hiding the truth and tell people how much it will cost for the Liberal government’s decision to scrap a planned power plant in Oakville, the opposition parties demanded Tuesday.
Monday’s auditor general’s report showing the Liberals l owballed the $275-million cost of cancelling a gas plant in Mississauga by $85 million gave the Opposition new ammunition to attack the government’s claim that cancelling the Oakville plant cost $40 million.
“The auditor told us that he will be using the same criteria in telling us how much your Oakville cancellation really costs,” Progressive Conservative energy critic Vic Fedeli said during question period.
“You’re sticking to $40 million, but the OPA (Ontario Power Authority) shows that those same extra costs the auditor will look at using, will bring this to $991 million.”
The New Democrats said the Liberals should never have turned to the private sector to build electricity projects in the first place, and called on the government to update the $40 million figure.
“This government signed private power deals, defended those deals and insisted that they were absolutely necessary, (but) when it looked like it would cost them political power, they cancelled the deals,” said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath. “And not only did they stick the public with the bills, they’ve gone out of their way to hide the details and the real costs.”
Wynne and Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli refused repeated opposition demands to apologize for the soaring costs of cancelling the Mississauga gas plant, and also declined to update the $40 million figure for the Oakville project.
“It was a political decision that in the implementation had business costs associated with it,” Wynne told the legislature.
Earlier Tuesday, the former secretary of cabinet testified at the justice committee that the Liberals knew there would be extra charges for cancelling Oakville on top of the $40 million in “sunk costs,” money spent that cannot be recovered.
“There are buckets of costs, and depending on the structure of the final deal there’s different buckets,” said Shelly Jamieson, the former head of the Ontario public service.
“You will learn from this (Mississauga) report on what those different buckets are, and it doesn’t surprise me at all that you’ll see an analysis with the same buckets in the future report.”
Kristen Jenkins, a vice-president of the OPA, testified Tuesday afternoon that the Liberals would have known there were many more items that would add to the total bill for cancelling a gas plant in addition to the sunk costs.