Years from now, the Wynne government’s “handling” of its new vision for energy use in Ontario may be taught as a case study on how not to deliver public policy.
Like a volcano on the verge of erupting, word of the plan began spewing out here and there during the past few weeks.
When the Globe & Mail obtained details and reported on the full scope of the plan Monday, it was as if Mount St. Helens and Vesuvius both blew up at the same time.
It’s obvious that the “leak” came from someone in cabinet who wasn’t consulted (which appears to be almost all of them).
The plan is such a mess of impossible targets, unrealistic projects and questionable financial assumptions that it’s difficult to know where to begin.
The provision to virtually dismantle the natural gas industry and replace it with product from the most poorly managed, expensive electricity system in North America had many believing it was an April Fools’ joke.
The same government that couldn’t figure out high school physics for its smart metre program is going to develop a sufficient, safe, clean affordable electrical system?
The same people who spent billions on some 17 gas-fired generating plants to add to the billions they wasted on gold-plated subsidies for inefficient, unreliable wind energy?
Yes, those people.
The billions of dollars in subsidies it will take to make Wynne’s Ontario of the future will come from cap-and-trade funds (i.e. more taxes).
The Wynne plan is so distasteful it damages intelligent and meaningful efforts to move society away from fossil fuel energy.
We have a foot in both energy camps, having the head office of Union Gas here (with a new $17 million investment in its IT building) and as the home of more turbines than any other part of Ontario.
We understand the need to innovate. We don’t understand the need to do so by destroying something that is safe, reliable, efficient and cost effective to try to replace it with something that is not.
At this point on what should logically be the end of 13 unlucky years of corruption (cancelled gas plants and Ontario Provincial Police misconduct), scandal, (child sexual assault by a deputy education minister), police investigations (too numerous to count), mismanagement (eHealth, Ornge ambulances), one would think the Ontario Liberals would try to remain under the radar.
Not so much.
The only glimmer of hope in this issue is that many of the provisions are so far reaching that even the most ardent Wynne-ites won’t be able to put it in place before we head to the polls in 2018.
