Scarborough Guildwood Women's Provincial Liberal Association

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Ontario won’t adopt new federal riding boundaries
Ford confirms split from past practices for election maps

Toronto Star2 Aug 2024ROBERT BENZIE QUEEN’S PARK BUREAU CHIEF
Premier Doug Ford says Ontario is breaking with tradition and not adopting federal electoral boundary changes for the next provincial election, meaning there will be 124 ridings contested.
“No,” said Ford on Thursday when asked whether Queen’s Park would follow Ottawa’s lead and increase the number of constituencies in the province.
His surprise move also means Toronto city council boundaries won’t be redrawn either, so there will remain 25 councillors — instead of being cut to 24 — after the 2026 municipal election.
“Why change something that works? Just because the feds want to do it, jerry-rig the ridings,” said Ford, alleging, without providing evidence, that the independent federal boundary commission gerrymanders electoral districts.
“It’s no secret people do that, governments do that, I’m not doing that,” he told reporters at an unrelated press conference at Lakeridge Health Oshawa.
“The less politicians, the better it is,” said the premier, whose cabinet has 36 ministers, by far the largest in Ontario history. “I’m going to leave the boundaries alone and people will decide if they want to move forward with our government on prosperity and health care and on the economy — or if they want to go backwards and look for the other guys. They’ll have that choice.”
Ford’s unexpected comments followed a Star report this week that Elections Ontario was awaiting instructions from the legislature on how to proceed on redistribution.
The uncertainty came against the backdrop of Ford considering an early election call next spring, which would cost taxpayers $150 million, one year ahead of the scheduled June 2026 vote.
With the exception of Northern Ontario, the province’s current electoral ridings are based on the Elections Canada map.
Federal boundaries will change for an election expected in October 2025, jumping from 338 electoral districts to 343 across Canada.
That includes boosting Ontario’s 121 federal ridings to 122 with the addition of three seats in Brampton, Durham and Milton and the elimination of one in Toronto and another in the north due to demographic changes.
Polls suggest that provincial redistribution would have favoured Ford’s Tories, who won 83 of 124 seats in the 2022 election.
The premier’s decree clears the air for Elections Ontario, which had warned “Ontario does not have legislation in place for a scheduled review of electoral districts and boundaries.”
“Provincial electoral district boundaries in Ontario will therefore remain unchanged until new legislation has passed,” the independent arm’s length agency told the Star last week.
“The legislature has a choice in how to respond to the new federal electoral boundaries. It could, for example, establish its own commission to determine what the new electoral boundaries would be, it could adopt the new federal electoral boundaries in part or in their entirety, or it could choose to retain the existing 124 electoral boundaries.”
Under Ontario’s 2017 Representation Act, passed by former premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals, there are now “111 southern electoral districts whose names and boundaries are identical to those of the federal electoral districts.”
Wynne — after a report from the non-partisan Far North Electoral Boundaries Commission — kept 13 Northern Ontario ridings instead of the 10 federal constituencies at the time in order to improve Indigenous and northern representation.
Ford’s intervention ensures that Toronto will not lose the constituency of Don Valley East at Queen’s Park. Federally, it’s being absorbed into Don Valley West and Don Valley North, with the rest merged with Scarborough Centre to create a renamed Scarborough CentreDon Valley East.
It also means that city council boundaries won’t be amended for the 2026 municipal election, sparing Ward 16 (Don Valley East) represented by Coun. Jon Burnside.
But fast-growing Brampton, Durham and Milton won’t get the additional provincial representation they will receive federally.
The federal riding of Brampton North has been divided into Brampton North-Caledon, including portions of Dufferin Caledon, and Brampton-Chinguacousy Park, which takes part of Brampton Centre.
And the federal constituency of Durham has been split into two new ridings called York-Durham and Bowmanville-Oshawa North, while Milton has been divvied up into Burlington North-Milton West and Milton East-Halton Hills South, including a piece of Wellington-Halton Hills.

Andrea Hazell is your Member of Provincial Parliament for Scarborough—Guildwood and a champion for small business.

We’re excited to announce that Andrea has officially been nominated as a candidate for the next provincial election!

Ford adds more to list of things we never asked for
Toronto Star3 Jul 2024SHELLENE DRAKES-TULL SHELLENE DRAKES-TULL IS A TORONTO-BASED STORYTELLER, EDUCATOR, AND THE FOUNDER OF SWEET LIME COMMUNICATIONS. SHE IS A FREELANCE CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST FOR THE STAR.
R.J. JOHNSTON TORONTO STAR
Of all the things that Ontarians need, our provincial government decided that shutting the Science Centre was top of the list, Shellene Drakes-Tull writes.
In the newest edition of “who asked for this?” the Ontario Science Centre has been closed.
Of all the things that Ontarians need, our provincial government decided that shutting the Science Centre was top of the list.
The last of a long list of things no one asked for like new license plates that we can’t see in the dark or last year’s Greenbelt fiasco. I don’t know about you, but I am tired of these half-baked, ill-thought decisions that leave us scratching our heads saying, “who asked for this?”
There are more important things we can focus on like ensuring kids and young people receive a wellrounded, comprehensive education. More family doctors to support a growing and aging population. Rent control so that Ontarians can find decent, affordable places to live instead of people choosing between paying rent or buying groceries. Ensuring that our elderly in long-term care homes are safe and well taken care of.
These are the things we are asking this government for.
So, here we are, at the very start of summer break, with the Science Centre suddenly shut down and people scrambling for alternatives because planned camps and events were cancelled at the very last minute. Who asked for this?
Like most people who live in and around Toronto, I have fond memories of taking my children to the Science Centre. We would head down the Don Valley Parkway to spend cold winter afternoons going from exhibit to exhibit, learning about the world around us and the sky above us.
The Ford government had plans to move the Science Centre south to Ontario Place ever since we heard about the Ontario Line (who asked for this line? Hasn’t Scarborough been pleading for transit for decades? Since the Scarborough RT ran off its tracks and was decommissioned, folks in the very east of Toronto have been using shuttle buses, with a new transit busway not scheduled to be completed until at least 2027).
The government’s reason for closing the Science Centre was shut down was an imminent roof collapse as early as this winter. We learned that engineering reports showed no more than six per cent of roof panels were at high risk of collapse. There is disagreement on how long the repairs would take and how much they would cost.
So, the Ford government decided to shut down the landmark and go ahead with their plans to move the Science Centre away from Thorncliffe Park to the waterfront, just west of downtown.
Let’s close a Toronto cultural landmark and park it in the middle of construction and traffic chaos.
While we wait for our new science centre to be completed in 2028, what happens to the practical learning and opportunities for Ontario students? What of the job opportunities for the folks in the area? What about the community around the Science Centre?
I’d proffer another question: how did the Science Centre get to this point? There are significant repairs that need to be done, but how many governments — municipal and provincial — ignored this? Pushed it off to for another government to deal with? Although the centre may not be in as dire condition as the Ford government says, there is still a significant amount of work to be done.
We can’t simply blame the Ford government for letting the Science Centre go into disrepair. Responsibility can’t just be pushed from one government to the next without the city’s residents suffering.
Governments at all levels ignore issues until things are falling apart. From Toronto Community Housing buildings that are teeming with bugs and broken elevators, to roadways that are holding on with asphalt, hopes and prayers.
Nothing gets done until we can’t ignore it any longer because the concrete is raining down on us.

Building abandoned, not condemned
Ford won’t pay $7M for roof repairs, but is willing to pay $1B to get liquor in corner stores early

Toronto Star30 Jun 2024EDWARD KEENAN
ANDREW FRANCIS WALLACE TORONTO STAR
The Science Centre wasn’t suddenly forced out by physical circumstances, Edward Keenan writes. The provincial government chose to move it out because they wanted to. Only the timing is a surprise.
Imagine that you notice a leak in the roof of your home.
Do you: A) put a bucket under the drip; 😎 patch or replace the roof; or C) scramble to immediately abandon the house, fence off the entire property, and seek temporary accommodations until you can build a new place to live somewhere else in a few years.
In the case of the Ontario Science Centre, Doug Ford’s government has chosen option C.
The analogy was suggested to Star reporters by Elsa Lam, the editor of Canadian Architect magazine, looking into the roof assessment the provincial government said justified the immediate closure of the Ontario Science Centre last week. The opinion Lam and others, including both the architecture firm that built the place and the consultants the province is relying on, are a far cry from the Ford government’s claims of an emergency threatening life and limb.
The report did not recommend immediate closure. It said a small percentage of the roof should be replaced immediately, the rest monitored and replaced eventually.
The cost (between $500,000 and $7 million this year, and something like $25 million total over the next decade) is peanuts compared to the possible $1 billion this same provincial government is planning to spend in order to sell booze in corner stores a year ahead of schedule, or the tens of billions they’re spending on a subway line originally pitched as delivering riders to the Science Centre, or the maybe $500 million they may spend to build a parking lot at the Science Centre’s planned new site.
The roof is in disrepair, but it is not some five-alarm emergency on the verge of imminent collapse.
The building was not condemned — it was abandoned.
That is, the Science Centre was not suddenly forced by physical circumstances to move out. The provincial government chose to move it out because they wanted to. And only the timing is a surprise: the move to a dramatically smaller facility at Ontario Place to open by 2028 was announced long ago.
The frenzied shuttering of the current home only makes sense, I think, if the Ford government started with the conclusion that they wanted to get the heck out. And thus see no value in spending even a single penny to maintain the building. And in the face of a public outcry, they’ve decided to get out sooner rather than later (cementing the impression there’s no going back).
Here’s the thing: if the building is going to be put to any future use, these repairs are going to need to be done. There are no savings in moving out now, unless the building is going to be torn down.
Perhaps more so than Ford and his gang anticipated, a lot of people in Ontario love that building. It is massive (more than twice the square footage of the Royal Ontario Museum, for instance), situated in a location of natural beauty, and serves as an attraction that anchors a neighbourhood. Tastes in building styles vary, but it is a significant and globally influential example of mid-century institutional architecture built by one of Canada’s foremost architects.
Moreover, many of us have deep attachments to it. A friend I was speaking to had lived across the street after his family moved here from Poland when he was a child, and he’d go often after school during hours when admission was free. “For a time, it was my favourite place in the whole world,” he said. I have heard similar sentiments from a lot of people. Mayor Olivia Chow reported this week the city had heard from 35,000 Torontonians upset about the sudden closure.
So can the building so many people love be saved? Maybe put to a new purpose?
Toronto city council took up that question Thursday. The complication is the city doesn’t want to be on the hook for paying for repairs resulting from provincial neglect. The mayor and city council are hoping there’s a contractual way to force the province to pay for it — and have asked for a report on options for the site. Chow told me in a podcast appearance Friday that the “new deal for Toronto” she struck with Ford last year included negotiations over keeping science programming at the site, and she’ll continue to pursue that — expecting that the province would need to fund such a project.
But spending money on it is one thing it seems Ford’s government won’t consider. I mean, they wouldn’t even put a bucket under a leak, so to speak, keeping the building in service long enough to move out properly. What are the chances they’re going to spend that money (and more) just to give the building away?
This beloved place has been abandoned by choice. It would be a shame if it is now condemned by budget restraints.

This could affect us all:

Poilievre quietly courting corporate crowd
Toronto Star27 Jun 2024LINDA MCQUAIG LINDA MCQUAIG IS AN AUTHOR, JOURNALIST AND A FREELANCE CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST FOR THE STAR.

Justin Trudeau’s fall from grace probably has a lot to do with the perception of him as a patrician close to the heart of the Canadian establishment, who fraternizes with corporate lobbyists and vacations at the Caribbean retreats of billionaires.
Meanwhile, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, a scrappy guy with modest Alberta roots, has been traversing the country describing Canada as a “living hell” for working-class people, and promising that “when I’m prime minister my obsession — my daily obsession — will be about what is good for the working-class people of this country.”
The contrast between the images of the blue-blood patrician and the hard-scrabble populist has been powerful, and likely a key factor in helping Poilievre vault far ahead of Trudeau in the polls.
But Poilievre has managed to pass himself off as anti-elitist and populist largely because Canadians have heard little about all the time he spends — when the cameras aren’t rolling — courting the country’s business elite.
Even as Poilievre has attacked corporate lobbyists — vowing they won’t be able to shape policy under his Conservative government as they have under the Liberals — he’s been consorting with a wide range of corporate lobbyists at about 50 extravagant private fundraising events across the country since being chosen party leader almost two years ago.
Details of these interactions have come to light due to investigative work by the online outlet The Breach, which has documented the presence of more than a hundred active or recent corporate lobbyists at Poilievre fundraising galas held at private mansions and swanky clubs, by carefully combing through the records in Elections Canada’s registry.
For instance, Poilievre was the central attraction at a lavish Regina fundraiser last November hosted by Saskatchewan’s wealthiest family, the Semples, owners of the Brandt Group of Companies, with major holdings in real estate, mining, construction, agriculture and pipeline equipment.
It didn’t seem to bother Poilievre that the Semples have a reputation for being anti-worker. In addition to serious health and safety violations, one of their companies was reprimanded by a labour tribunal for trying to impose its own collective agreement, which eliminated more than 50 pages from the existing agreement and added “unreasonable clauses” that gave the company extra powers.
The Semple fundraiser, held at the family’s private venue featuring their vintage car collection, was attended by the Saskatchewan business elite, including a number of construction and real estate developers who have profited handsomely as Saskatchewan has recorded the largest rent increases in the country.
Poilievre has publicly railed against the rising rents faced by working people but was apparently happy to consort with and accept donations (up to $1,725 per person) from some key players in an industry that has pushed up annual rents in the province by 12 to 16 per cent.
Of course, the Liberals too hold fundraising galas and collect money from wealthy corporate interests.
But Poilievre has constructed a whole political persona for himself around the notion that he’s different, claiming recently that he’s visited 110 shop floors and five union halls while largely avoiding speaking to business groups.
Indeed, he’s warned business that they shouldn’t expect a warm welcome from government under his watch, that he plans to revamp the cosy relationship the Liberals have had with business.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Poilievre seems receptive to the corporate crowd.
As The Breach noted in an earlier investigation, the corporate set is heavily represented on the Conservative national council, which includes lobbyists representing major oil, pharmaceutical and real estate companies, as well as retail giants and others opposed to unions and minimum wage hikes.
None of the members of this 20-member Conservative council appears to represent workers.
So, if he’s elected prime minister, should we expect Poilievre to govern as someone whose “daily obsession” is helping the working class, or as someone who never forgets that the corporate class paid for his winning campaign?
Pierre Poilievre has managed to pass himself off as anti-elitist and populist largely because Canadians have heard little about all the time he spends — when the cameras aren’t rolling — courting the country’s business elite

Please join us on Sunday, June 23rd at noon in Wells Hill Park for a rally to save

The Ford government closed the Child Advocate Office right after they took power, putting it inside the Ombudsman's office which is more of a reactive than proactive office.

Now the former Ontario Child Advocate is speaking out about how the tragedy in Kingston was allowed to happen.

Go to the link in my bio for the full article.

10 years ago today, Ontario made history by electing Canada's first openly gay Premier.

Thank you, Kathleen, for blazing the trail toward a more inclusive and prosperous Ontario.

June is Senior’s Month

Ontario Place challenge rejected
Court deals setback to group fighting province’s redevelopment
Toronto Star12 Jun 2024CALVI LEON
An Ontario court has rejected a legal challenge by a citizens group fighting the development of a private spa at Ontario Place.

A panel of the Divisional Court ruled Tuesday that Ontario Place for All’s request that the Ford government conduct an environmental assessment of the West Island, where the spa is being built, “cannot succeed” due to new legislation.

The government introduced the Rebuilding Ontario Place Act in the legislature in November 2023, one week after Ontario Place for All (OP4A) applied for a judicial review of the decision to exempt the redevelopment of the West Island at Ontario Place from the Environmental Assessment Act. The new legislation received royal assent in December.

The Rebuilding Ontario Place Act exempts the West Island from the Environmental Assessment Act “and therefore nullifies the remedies sought in the application,” the court’s decision said.

Norm Di Pasquale, co-chair of Ontario Place for All Inc., a not-forprofit organization with 30,000 supporters, argues the legislation aims to strip Ontario Place of all rights and protections, including the Environmental Bill of Rights and the Heritage Act.

“It sets a very terrible precedent for the future of our Ontario public institutions,” he said.

“If they’ve done this here, what is going to stop them from doing this elsewhere?” Di Pasquale said.

The Austria-based company Therme plans to create a $350-million water park and spa on the West Island. Provincial taxpayers would fund the construction of a 2,100space underground parking garage as part of the project. The plan involves relocating the Ontario Science Centre and expanding Live Nation’s concert theatre.

In its application submitted late last year, OP4A argued the plan would involve destroying 840 trees and vegetation in an internationally recognized landscape.

The move, the group claimed, would also contour and fill the lagoons and small waterways, destroying 36,000 square metres of aquatic habitat.

The Ford government responded to the application with a motion to quash the action, but that effort was dismissed in April by a different judge, who argued the extent of the Environmental Assessment Act’s application to a public redevelopment project is “an important question of public interest.” The decision was lauded as a win by OP4A.

A request to Ontario’s Ministry of Infrastructure for comment on Tuesday’s decision was deferred to Jack Fazzari, press secretary for Attorney General Doug Downey.

“As this matter is in the appeal period, it would be inappropriate to comment,” Fazzari wrote in an email.

A spokesperson for Premier Doug Ford’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tuesday’s decision was a massive blow to his group’s efforts, said Di Pasquale. He said the group is reviewing the decision with its legal team to determine its next steps.

“We are obviously really disappointed. We were hoping for a different result today.”

Chris Glover, MPP for Spadina— Fort York, whose electoral district includes Ontario Place, echoed that sentiment in a statement Tuesday, saying it was “appalling” the government used its majority to “retroactively change the law and push through this corrupt deal.”

Vowing to continue the fight, the NDP critic for democratic reform said other action is being taken over the controversial redevelopment, including an auditor general’s review, a separate legal court case and the “immense people power” against the project.

Send a message to learn more

Cabinet shuffle is shameless — and revealing
Toronto Star8 Jun 2024MARTIN REGG COHN
COLE BURSTON THE CANADIAN PRESS FILE PHOTO
Premier Doug Ford listens to then-housing minister Steve Clark in 2023, shortly before Clark resigned from cabinet over the Greenbelt scandal. Clark is now back as house leader, overseeing a bloated cast of ministers that is just another sign of Ford’s hubris, Martin Regg Cohn writes.
Once upon a time, Tories believed in lean, clean government. Now, not so much.
Behold Doug Ford’s new-look cabinet, not merely rebranded but expanded — bigger than ever before: 36 ministers of the Crown, each with a salary premium.
And yet, while in opposition a decade ago, Progressive Conservatives promised to cut the Ontario cabinet from 27 down to 16 ministers if they ever won government. The premier has now exceeded that erstwhile, worthwhile target by 20 ministers.
Six years ago, when he first came to power, Ford made a point of slashing the size of Toronto city hall from 47 to 25 councillors in his quest for greater efficiency. Now, you can comfortably fit all of city council into the historic cabinet room at Queen’s Park, while Ford’s full parade of overpaid ministers might have the fire marshal worrying about overcrowding.
How did this happen? How did the Tories overshoot from 16 ministers to 36?
Hubris.
The old apoplectic Ford would be crying “hypocrisy” were he still in opposition. But six years in power does something to some people.
It makes them shameless. They drop all pretence.
Thursday’s cabinet shuffle is as revealing as it is irrelevant. The old journalistic cliché about shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic does not apply here, because Ford’s government shows no signs of sinking anytime soon (and the opposition is barely treading water).
But the barnacles creep up on you. They have a way of weighing you down.
Ford is padding his cabinet with pretenders — notably eight socalled “associate ministers” who gain a seat but sometimes bring little to the table. Do we need 26-yearold Sam Oosterhoff, who has been an MPP since age 19, as an “associate minister of energy” to help the real energy minister find his way, along with junior ministers in forestry, mines and small business? It’s not new blood, it’s bloat. Yes, Ford is riding high in public opinion polls. No, he does not imagine himself infallible — far from it, for his true talent is in setting the wrong course followed by a course correction and public apology.
The problem is that even after Ford expresses regret, he reverts. The best example of that is his rush to rehabilitate his disgraced former minister of housing, Steve Clark, by appointing him as house leader responsible for shepherding the government’s entire legislative agenda.
Late last summer, facing public pressure and a police probe, Clark belatedly quit his post as the minister of municipal affairs who recklessly presided over the Greenbelt fiasco. Clark, who made a name for himself in opposition by reflexively demanding the resignations of several Liberal cabinet ministers for offences real or imagined, had long resisted calls for his own resignation until his position became indefensible.
Now, bizarrely, he is back out of the penalty box. While not yet restored to the cabinet room (lacking ministerial rank), he will be leading the way in the legislative chamber.
What happens if the RCMP probe in the Greenbelt gets in the way? There is, of course, another way: Ford can call an early election before police weigh in, confident that Clark and others won’t sing from anything other than the same songbook crafted by the premier himself.
As Ford’s loyal house leader, Clark won’t be bringing MPPs back from their summer break — which began Thursday, just hours before the cabinet shuffle — until well into autumn. The legislature normally resumes shortly after Labour Day (the date of Clark’s resignation from cabinet), but will now be away through Thanksgiving.
That has sparked speculation over prorogation — that parliamentary ritual of renewal where the government delivers a new speech from the throne proclaiming a new agenda. Just in time for an early election in 2025 — one year ahead of the fixed election date codified in law.
What could possibly justify Ford’s premature pitch for a third term?
Surely not the premier’s old promise to deliver more housing for a hungry market. His controversial plan to bulldoze the Greenbelt amounted to an $8.3-billion boondoggle (in windfall profits to developers until the deal was called off ).
Presumably not Ford’s past pledge to deliver more beer in corner stores to a thirsty market. His convoluted plan to reopen a signed contract with the Beer Store led him to authorize an alleged $1-billion beer boondoggle (in subsidies and foregone licensing fees).
These two boondoggles are twin bookends to Ford’s leadership of the last year. And they are harbingers of the year(s) to come if he triggers an early and expedient election call.
“Buck-a-beer,” Ford’s 2018 campaign slogan, worked for a while — until it didn’t. Even if “beer in corner stores” falls flat, and the Greenbelt bogs down, Ford is already reaching back to another of his perennial campaign bumper stickers: “Axe the (carbon) tax.”
That may sound as stale as old beer, and as tired as those past promises of lean and clean government. But if it sells, Ford is all for it.

Who paid for these huge billboards that have popped up at ON Route rest stops along the 401? Us taxpayers??

Ford’s hydro subsidy is counterproductive
Toronto Star11 Apr 2024MARTIN REGG COHN
JUSTIN TANG THE CANADIAN PRESS FILE PHOTO
Premier Doug Ford is spending billions on a vote-buying subsidy for Ontarians’ monthly electricity bill, Martin Regg Cohn writes, but there doesn’t seem to be any money for health care or education.
Doug Ford’s Tories are spending more money than ever before in Ontario history.
So why isn’t there ever enough money to invest in health care and education?
Answer: The Ford government spends billions upon billions of dollars on an indefensibly wasteful, vote-buying subsidy for your monthly electricity bill.
You can look it up in last month’s budget: $7.3 billion annually to make your hydro bill magically shrink.
Such a massive appropriation amounts to misappropriation. It would be scandalous if it weren’t so seductive.
It’s a sieve, but we’re all in on it. And we’re all cashing in on it.
My monthly bill from Toronto Hydro includes an indelible line announcing a gift from the premier to me personally: “Ontario Electricity Rebate.”
This month, there’s a $23.31 credit on that line, which reduces my total bill to $113.16 (after tax). Sweet. But bittersweet.
It’s an incentive for consumption that is counterproductive. The more electricity you burn, the more money you get back from the government as your reward for wasting energy.
Living the good life in a monster home? You’ve won the subsidy lottery from the Ontario government, month after month, no matter how wealthy and wasteful you are.
I never asked for this gift that keeps on giving. But many other Ontarians — and the politicians who wanted their votes — insisted on it.
Remember “heat or eat?” The opposition made a meal of that hydro hyperbole.
In Kathleen Wynne’s waning days as premier, with public opinion turning against a dying Liberal dynasty, the clamour for relief from rising electricity bills forced her hand to launch a multibillion-dollar rebate. In opposition, the Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats rode the wave of indignation until the government of the day acquiesced.
In fact, electricity rates weren’t especially high in Ontario compared to most other jurisdictions across North America — apart from those provinces blessed with abundant renewables we can’t compete with. But the perception of oppression could not be dialed down, the polarization of our politics could not be reversed, and the governing Liberals could not avoid the path of least resistance on electricity.
Voters took the money, but not the bait. In the 2018 election, Wynne’s Liberals were still humiliated and Ford’s Tories rode to power on the strength of that hydro hysteria — until people forgot about it.
But the subsidy will not be our salvation. It is an illusion within a delusion, for it is utterly unaffordable.
Two years ago, “Electricity CostRelief Programs” amounted to a $5.8 billion budgetary expenditure. In the current fiscal year, that subsidy has jumped to $7.3 billion — an increase of 25 per cent in two years and climbing.
If we had the political courage and cognition to stop subsidizing consumption, and start rewarding conservation, what could we do with that money?
We’ll spend more money reducing hydro bills this year than we do on the entire Ministry of Transportation ($7.1 billion).
We’ll spend roughly the same amount on electricity credits than we allocated last year to long-term care ($7.75 billion).
At a time when the government is slowly starving our post-secondary system — funding will be reduced from $12.6 billion to $12.2 billion next year — imagine the impact of transferring that $7.3-billion hydro subsidy to the 47 public colleges and universities across Ontario, many of which are now in deficit.
Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy, who styles himself a prudent steward of Ontario’s treasury, likes to talk about the wastefulness of interest payments on the rising provincial debt he inherited. And yet the annual hydro subsidy amounts to roughly half of the $14 billion he allocates for interest on our total debt of $439 billion.
In the six years since Ford took power, the price of power will have added a cumulative $41.2 billion to Ontario’s budgetary bill.
Why are we forcing taxpayers to subsidize ratepayers? Why are we rewarding consumption and penalizing conservation?
Because politicians think voters will buy what they’re selling — and subsidizing.
Except it didn’t work for Wynne. It won’t save Ford when his time is up. And it won’t help the rest of us when we ultimately have to pay up.
Yet the province has given up nearly $1 billion a year in foregone revenues for the licence plate giveaway. And it is throwing away another $1.2 billion annually by lowering the provincial gas tax.
Why do our politicians persist in subsidizing air conditioning, heating and driving? Why do voters and taxpayers willingly underwrite the uncontrolled energy habits of their neighbours?
Ask yourself that the next time your monthly bill arrives and you look up the line for your magical Ontario Electricity Rebate. It may look like a gift, but it’s grifting politicians regifting your money.