The Star’s view Hold the politicking,

There was some good news and some good old-fashioned politicking in the throne speech that Ontario’s Liberal government hopes will carry it through to the next election scheduled for 2018.

The good news comes in the form of an announcement that the province will create 100,000 new licensed child-care spaces over the next five years, a badly needed initiative that will have longterm benefits for children and families.

The government estimates the operating costs for expanding child care at between $600 million and $750 million, plus considerably more for start-up costs. It’s a big number, but it’s a big need, as well.

Ontario has licensed care spaces for only a fifth of its young children. Families are forced to join long wait-lists to get their kids into decent care and pay a big chunk of their income once they find it. The lack of affordable, reliable child care has even been identified as one of the principal causes of the stubborn pay gap between men and women.

The government expanded child care by 56,000 spaces over the past three years, so the new goal indicates it is significantly stepping up its efforts in this vital area. That’s all to the good, and it should have a big payoff down the line in well-being for children, young families and society as a whole.

Politics being politics, though, this important initiative is being overshadowed by another, less-welcome move. Faced with anger about rising electricity bills, the government is throwing a billion dollars at consumers to ease their pain.

It will do that starting next Jan. 1 by rebating the provincial portion of the HST on electricity bills for homes and small businesses. In effect, it will cut bills by 8 per cent.

Consumers, no doubt, will cheer. On average, says the government, it will save households $130 a year — more for rural homeowners who can’t use cheap natural gas and whose bills have been rising even more than most. They stand to gain about another $540 a year.

There’s no doubt some power users have been hurting. But it’s worth remembering the province already has a program to help low-income people with their electricity bills. The new measures are a straight giveaway designed to make everyone feel a bit better — or at least a little less bad — about what they’re spending to heat and cool their home. And, presumably, a little less ticked off at the government that oversees the province’s energy system.

The government insists it can afford to do this and still meet its long-standing target of balancing the provincial budget by 2017-18. It’s already done the financial “heavy lifting” needed to meet both goals, it says.

But beyond the obvious political calculations, the question that must be asked is this: If the government has an extra billion dollars to spend, is this really the best use for it?

No one likes to pay electricity bills, especially when they keep rising faster than inflation. But as the Liberals themselves have explained repeatedly over the years, there are very good reasons why we’re paying more for power.

Previous governments, of all political parties, ran down the province’s energy system for years. They refused to invest in the grid and kept energy prices artificially low. Now, we’re paying more realistic prices and we’re benefiting from the Liberals’ gutsy decision to do away with cheap, but dirty coal-generated power.

That alone, as the government noted in Monday’s throne speech, has brought huge savings in health and environmental benefits. For one, summer “smog days” are now a thing of the past.

And even with the considerable rise in Ontario’s home energy costs, we’re still pretty much middle-of-the-pack when it comes to how much we pay. Bills are lower in Quebec and Manitoba, which have a lot of cheap hydro power, but considerably higher in the Atlantic region and Alberta. Higher prices for power are a reality all over — and any political party that says different isn’t levelling with consumers.

In that light, spending a cool billion to trim home energy costs by 8 per cent for a lot of consumers who don’t actually need the savings is hard to justify. It won’t make the system better in the long run; it won’t encourage conservation; and it won’t target the money to those who are hurting the most.

It’s understandable why the government has chosen the path of assuaging consumers. But the truth is that higher energy bills are with us for a long time to come — regardless of who is writing the throne speech.

Previous governments ran down the province’s energy system for years