Practical ways to ease hydro burden

Re Politicians can’t make electricity cheap again,

Feb. 23 With all due respect to Bruce Lourie, perhaps politicians can’t make Ontario’s electricity cheap again, but they can do a couple of things to ease the burden.

One is to let every home and business owner in the province mount solar panels and sell electricity back. Not at inflated prices as in the microfit program, but on a straight one-for-one basis. In other words, let the meter spin backward when the homeowner is making excess electricity with their solar panels. This would create jobs galore across the province installing solar panels on every roof. Who wouldn’t want to participate?

The second thing is to let western Ontario buy cheaper hydro from Manitoba and eastern Ontario from Quebec, a little free trade between provinces for a change.

The electricity consumers of Ontario will benefit and Hydro One and Ontario Power Generation will see a decrease in profit, but that is the chance they take when they run a monopoly for profit and not for the benefit of the consumers. Kurt Crist, Consecon, Ont. Nowhere in his article does Bruce Lourie mention that the ongoing privatization of electricity in Ontario could be a possible contributing factor for rate increases. As a member of the Harris transition committee, he should understand that introducing private profit is a significant contributor for rate increases. Sir Adam “public power at cost” Beck warned us about the threat of privatization decades ago. Ted Turner, Toronto