Horwath demands legislation soon for hydro rate cuts
NDP leader fears Liberal plan excludes hospitals, businesses
New Democrats are raising questions about Premier Kathleen Wynne’s plan to cut hydro rates 25 per cent and are demanding legislation to put it in place this summer be introduced next week.
“People deserve to see it in black and white,” NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said Wednesday on the heels of an internal government poll suggesting the plan, which will cost $25 billion in interest charges over 30 years, is popular.
While the government says the rate cuts will apply to families and 500,000 farms and small businesses, Horwath said it appears hospitals and organizations struggling with high electricity costs will be left out.
That leaves people in the dark on how far the price break will go and how the interest will affect Ontarians over the long haul, she said.
The Liberals “have more questions right now than they do answers,” Horwath told a news conference after returning to Toronto from a road trip touting her own plan to cut rates by 17 to 30 per cent for all if the NDP forms the government after the June 2018 provincial election.
“Will it apply to medium-sized Ontario businesses? Will it help municipalities struggling to pay hydro bills at arenas and community centres? And who’s going to pay for all that interest that Premier Wynne is racking up?” Horwath asked of the Liberal proposal.
“Will a hospital that sees virtually no savings still be expected to help pick up the $40-billion tab?” she added, claiming the government is underestimating the $25 billion in interest costs.
Officials in Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault’s office said the rate cut, aside from residential customers, applies to retirement homes, nursing homes, housing co-ops, community agencies and small offices as well as small businesses.
Thibeault did not set a date for legislation, but said it will be introduced in time for public hearings and debate so rate cuts can take effect this summer.
He took aim at Horwath’s plan, released two weeks ago, to persuade the federal government to scrap its 5-per-cent HST on electricity and to buy back shares from the partially privatized Hydro One.
“These offer little to Ontarians in the short term, compared to the real and meaningful relief our government’s fair hydro plan will provide to everyone,” Thibeault said in a statement, calling the federal HST push “pie-in-the-sky.”
“The NDP’s most expensive idea — buying back more than $4 billion in shares of Hydro One — will not take one cent off electricity bills. What it will do is send billions to the stock market, instead of making muchneeded infrastructure investments in communities across Ontario.”
Wynne’s government is selling up to 60 per cent of Hydro One to raise an estimated $9 billion toward new transit lines and other infrastructure and pay down hydro system debt.
Internal government polling, obtained by the Star, suggests 82 per cent of Ontarians support the Wynne rate cut, while a Mainstreet poll for Postmedia found 47 per cent support it and 35 per cent disapprove.
Horwath also took aim at Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown, whose party has not yet released a plan to deal with hydro rates, which have doubled in the past decade.
“It’s kind of worrisome. He’s got no plan at all. Nobody knows who Patrick Brown is, what he believes, what his vision is for hydro, because he hasn’t put a plan forward,” she told reporters.
Brown said last week that Wynne’s plan sets a “low bar” for fixing the electricity system, because it doesn’t address “structural issues,” such as the surplus of power and expensive renewable energy contracts still coming on line.
He did not set a target for how much a Tory plan could save ratepayers, but promised to reveal details in the “near future.”