Hydro One and Wynne’s trustworthiness

A lawsuit challenging the privatization of Hydro One is wending its way slowly through the courts. It may not succeed. Judges are hard to predict. But politically, it hits Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government where it hurts — its trustworthiness.

Filed last fall by the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the lawsuit alleges that the government orchestrated the sale of 60 per cent of the provincial electricity utility in order to benefit the ruling Liberal Party.

It points to a December 2015 Liberal “appreciation” fundraiser that financiers who had profited from the privatization were invited to attend. Some 24 of the invitees demonstrated their appreciation by donating $7,500 each to Wynne’s party.

The government has countered by arguing that neither CUPE nor the courts have any business poking their noses into a lawful decision to sell a public asset.

Anyway, it says, the 2015 fundraiser was ruled legitimate by the province’s integrity commissioner.

This week, government lawyers appeared before Superior Court Justice P.J. Cavanagh in an effort to have the suit dismissed as frivolous. They argued that even if Wynne’s cabinet had privatized Hydro One merely to solicit campaign contributions, it was well within its rights to do so and was not acting in bad faith.

CUPE lawyer Steven Shrybman aptly referred to this claim as astounding.

At some level, all of this is moot. The government has already sold off 60 per cent of the shares of Hydro One.

But at another level it is telling. Wynne has no plausible explanation for privatizing the Crown’s lucrative electrical transmission monopoly. As the province’s financial accountability officer has noted, the sale of Hydro One will ultimately cost taxpayers more in the form of lost dividends than they gain from the share offering.

By contrast, CUPE’s lawsuit does provide an explanation for the utility’s privatization. And that explanation — Liberal misfeasance expressed in a policy designed to reward useful cronies — currently resonates in Ontario.

Those outside Ontario may find Wynne’s low popularity ratings puzzling. She is well-spoken and open. She presides over an economy in recovery.

She straddles the classic Liberal divide, providing on the one hand a balanced budget and on the other a willingness to engage in activist social policy.

She has cut electricity bills, made promises to raise the minimum wage and committed herself to introducing a limited form of pharmacare. She is critical of Donald Trump. And yet, so far at least, none of this has worked. She and her government remain singularly unpopular. An Angus Reid poll from the end of March put her approval rating at 12 per cent.

The reason? Many Ontarians find something dodgy about Wynne’s provincial Liberal government.

As evidenced in both health care and long-term care, it promises much but skimps on delivery. From electricity generation to hospital construction, Liberal so-called public-private partnerships seem to be skewed in favour of the private partner.

Even Wynne’s recent rediscovery of so-called progressive causes, such as child care, carries the whiff of deathbed repentance.

More to the point, the provincial Liberal government is viewed by far too many as untrustworthy. And nothing points to this more than Hydro One.

The decision to privatize Hydro One appeared to come from nowhere. Wynne didn’t promise it during the last election campaign. She rarely even mentioned the utility.

A blue-ribbon panel first advised Wynne not to sell Hydro One. Then, mysteriously, it reversed itself.

The government claimed it would use the proceeds from the sale to build infrastructure. But after the obligatory debt payments were made, the provincial treasury was left with only $4 billion — a relative pittance for a government that spends almost $150 billion annually.

For the province, which ultimately is destined to lose money from the sale, it was disastrous. The only unambiguous winners were the financiers who stickhandled the deal.

The CUPE lawsuit calls this government misfeasance, a legal term meaning the wrongful exercise of lawful authority.

I don’t know what the courts will eventually decide. But I’ll bet a good many in the public agree with CUPE. Thomas Walkom appears every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

An Angus Reid poll put Wynne’s approval rating at 12 per cent. The reason? Many Ontarians find something dodgy about her provincial Liberal government