Liberals weren’t cooking books with hydro plan, Wynne says
PC-led committee wants answers about methods used to cut electric bills
Six months after losing power, former Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne returned to centre stage at Queen’s Park.
Wynne testified for 21⁄ hours 2 Monday at a Progressive Conservative-dominated legislative committee probing her government’s controversial decision to borrow billions to cut hydro rates.
“There was no simple solution,” the Don Valley West MPP said of her administration’s “fair hydro plan,” which reduced electricity bills by 25 per cent through subsidies kept off the province’s books using Byzantine accounting. Tory MPP Robin Martin (Eglinton-Lawrence) chided Wynne for not doing something about soaring rates sooner.
Martin suggested the Liberals only acted last year because they were worried about the June 7 election, which they ended up losing to the Tories.
“It was increasingly clear that we needed to do more,” Wynne conceded.
“Did I recognize it as a political problem? Yes, I did, but at its base it was a human problem,” she said, noting many Ontarians had shared their alarm at rising electricity prices.
As she faced the music in committee, her successor, Premier Doug Ford, weighed in on the testimony.
“Looking forward to getting some answers from Kathleen Wynne today about how the Liberal government misled Ontarians by using accounting tricks to hide their $15-billion deficit. The people deserve to know the truth!” Ford tweeted.
His government is continuing the “fair hydro plan” rebates, though they will be on the province’s books instead of financed through government-owned Ontario Power Generation, which is one reason the budget shortfall has ballooned. Outside the committee, Wynne, who maintains the deficit should be $6.7 billion, said Ford’s previous claim that unnamed Liberals have gotten rich off of the hydro scheme is “ridiculous.”
“I think that that is outrageous hyperbole,” she said. “We weren’t trying to hide anything. We were trying to solve a problem.”
Auditor general Bonnie Lysyk has estimated that the accounting and financing for the hydro plan will result in up to $4 billion more in interest costs over 30 years.
Lysyk said the increased expense is because the Liberals were trying to keep $39.4 billion in borrowing off the province’s books.
The six Tory MPPs and three New Democrats on the committee are hoping to complete their work before year’s end. But NDP MPP Sandie Shaw (Hamilton West—Ancaster— Dundas) emphasized there’s “no smoking gun” that has emerged from days of hearings.
Shaw expressed concern that the Tories blocked former provincial controller Cindy Veinot from appearing at the committee.