Ontario's Debt Retirement Charge

What will be for sure a hot topic during the Provincial Election in Ontario, is the on-going battle surrounding the debt retirement charge that appears on our hydro bills each and every month.

The PC party claims that the debt should have been paid off by now as it was their party that introduced the debt retirement charge back in 1999 to cover the 20 billion debt from Ontario Hydro. The PC's, like the Liberals applied the 1 billion a year collected to reduce this debt. According to the Liberals the debt will be retired by 2018, but according to the PC's this debt should have been retired to a long time ago and they are now demanding an audit of the whole debt retirement process and how the charge is being applied.

To me the math is quite simple. If the debt was 20 billion, and the governments of the PC's and the Liberals were applying 1 billion a year to reduce this debt it would take until 2018 for this debt to be wiped out. Now I don't know if it was just a flat 1 billion a year, or if interest was also being charged on this debt, or if the debt did include interest.

Regardless of who's right or who's wrong on this issue, a more serious issue is at hand, and it's the demise of our entire energy sector in Ontario. Month after month, Ontario has a surplus of energy which we give away to Western New York, and Quebec. The kicker is that we sometimes actually pay for them to take our surplus energy. Now the Provincial Liberals want to invest more money into our energy sector, which means thart we will be paying more and more to pay off these new investments.

We need a real energy plan for Ontario, and with solar and wind power coming on line more and more each day we should focus on investing more money into these sectors of energy producing. Investing 1 billion a year in solar energy to retrofit homes and businesses with solar panels would make these homes and business their own energy producing, and revenue generating facilities that can also add clean energy back to the grid.

So when you go to the polls take the time to look at the energy platforms of the Liberals, PC's, Greens and NDP to see who has the right idea for the future of Ontario Energy Sector.

Until next time!