Shelling out to pay someone else's utility tab

Recouping deferred payment on energy bills now a problem for all taxpayers

It's not even the cost of a cup of coffee, we're told. You'll hardly notice it and anyway it'll only be for a short while, we're reliably informed.

Oh, but we notice all right. We notice so very well. Because we see how, yet again, most of us are made to pay up while others milk the system one more time in one more way.

Fortunately, most Canadians still retain some degree of responsibility. But that majority isn't as large as it once was. How could it be? After all, when you start feeling like a mug for paying your own way, then the lure of abandoning that cohort of citizens who do exactly that becomes increasingly tempting.

For, as Ernest Hemingway once suggested, we go bankrupt a little at a time, then all of a sudden. And bankruptcy comes in many forms, the moral and the financial.

OK, so let's go back to that almost-cup-of-coffee cost for which we're now on the hook.

Homeowners throughout Alberta now must pay back money on behalf of those who took advantage of a provincial program launched last year to defer payment of utility bills because of the pandemic, but have subsequently backed out on that agreement.

More than 245,000 electricity customers and 181,000 natural gas customers — that's about one in six of Alberta households — took advantage by deferring about $92 million in payments.

Then, when it was time to repay that money, some simply refused; so many, in fact, that as much as $16 million is outstanding. So, who is going to repay it? You guessed it — the rest of us homeowners.

Yes, we're getting yet another rider placed on our utility bills to cover that cost. (There seems to be more riders on those regular monthly statements these days than ever rode in the Kentucky Derby.)

This one won't be much, we're told. A few cents over a few months: not even enough for that mythical cup of coffee.

Of course, there have always been those who don't pay their bills. But now those of us who do are being asked directly to shell out for those who don't. OK, maybe we pay extra for groceries to indirectly cover losses from shoplifting, but it's a bit rich when we're dinged directly by the cashier for the steak that the fellow in front of us just stuffed under his jacket.

Even mentioning this will no doubt stir the self-righteous into action. Oh how heartless, they'll wail. What about those poor people who couldn't pay their bills? Should they be thrown on the street?

Hold on though; we have no clue about their financial situation. Perhaps they're sitting quite pretty — we'd all be in a better financial position if our bills were suddenly the neighbour's problem.

This deferred utility issue is hardly a one-off. Increasingly, people look for someone else to bail them out, no matter what mess they've got themselves into. The idea of living less high on the hog instead never occurs because someone — usually the government — is expected to come along and play Santa Claus.

So go ahead, build on a flood plain because such stupidity won't be punished; don't insure your house properly because you can weep tears of victimhood when nature comes calling; file for benefits you aren't entitled to because, if discovered, the government will forgive the money anyhow; and hold your church service during a pandemic because your God is more important than others. Oh, and feel free to keep every light blazing because the nice folks across the street will eventually pick up the tab.

Human nature, being what it is, gnaws away at those of us retaining some self-respect and degree of personal responsibility. We begin to feel like suckers. So maybe when the next deferral program for something or other is launched we'll grab a slice of it for ourselves. Why not? Everyone else is doing so.

This is how society erodes. Little by little: then all of a sudden.