In Ontario, any rational act concerning electricity rates has to be carefully disguised, so as not to upset the fantasy that power bills are quite reasonable. That’s why this week’s change in power rates was billed as the “COVID-19 recovery rate,” and Premier Doug Ford’s talking points were about rate stability, consumer choice and help for those struggling to pay their bills.
The somewhat larger news, not explicitly mentioned, was that the PC government was raising the cost of electricity by 27 per cent. That’s just the kind of thing a politician doesn’t want in a headline, but the power increase was the right thing to do, a correction of an over-enthusiastic price cut.
In its rush to endorse every conceivable idea that might help pandemic-stricken Ontarians, the provincial government in late March suspended the province’s three-tiered time of use power system and made the cheapest of those three rates the standard.
The move saved the average household about $20 a month on its power bill, which doesn’t seem like a terrifically useful amount of aid. That’s the problem with government programs that benefit everyone, even those who continued to earn a full salary. Such programs don’t help anyone much, but they do cost a lot of money. For Ontario, the bill for just over two months was $175 million. Had the program stayed in place until the end of the year, the province’s Financial Accountability Office estimates it would have cost $849 million.
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See Also:
(1) Canadian Police Chief Kneels to Black Lives Matter Protesters
(2) Jane Philpott to the rescue in Ontario? Only if she can find all the fax machines
(3) City paying nearly $3M over 6 months to house, feed homeless
