Ontario Budget and how The Hydro could have been saved.

It's no longer snowing.  The sun is actually appearing through the clouds sometimes.

It's budget day in Ontario.  Finance Minister Charles Sousa says the plan is "a forward thinking document."  Forward thinking is just another one of those cliché buzzwords that politicians and businesspeople like to use to make something sound positive.  Could he really be expected to say the budget is backwards?  I do happen to think it is backwards, especially because of the planned privatisation of Hydro One.  I'll fully disclose ahead of time that I have a place in my heart for Ontario Hydro and its remnants.  My father worked there for over 30 years.  It gave him a good career and quality life for his family.  It also inspired me to study what I am studying now.  I loved the Hydro people too.  Even those who had more pronounced flaws than others have provided some amusing memories and direction for how not to do a job or treat others.

The Ontario Liberals say that the revenue from the sale of Hydro One will go to infrastructure.  So far, the emphasis seems to be largely upon infrastructure for the Toronto region.  What about other cities?  What about small towns and rural areas?  Municipalities across the province are having considerable difficulty in maintaining or expanding their roads, sewer and water systems, and public buildings.  It is not much comfort to residents of a small town who cannot afford street repairs while Toronto and its suburbs get new commuter trains.

There was a plan at one time that could have saved Ontario Hydro, but it was never implemented.  In the late 1960's, the provincial government created the Committee on Government Productivity.  It reviewed every agency and department of the government and recommended how they could better function and be restructured.  This is how Ontario ended up with having various "Ministries" to oversee various government responsibilities.  Previously, there were many "Departments," that often had a much more inefficient scope.  The committee created a group called Task Force Hydro in 1969 to examine Ontario Hydro, which was then officially known as the Hydro Electric Power Commission of Ontario.  It recommended that Hydro be converted from a commission composed of members of the government and senior Hydro staff to a crown corporation with a board of directors composed of not just government and senior staff, but also representatives from outside.  This part of the recommendation was implemented and became official in 1974.  Task Force Hydro also recommended that Ontario Hydro divest its distribution systems but keep the transmission and generation systems.  Local distribution would become the responsibility of new regional utility commissions that the government would create to coincide with the new regional municipalities the province was planning to establish to replace all of the counties in southern Ontario.  Regional government was never completely implemented, aside from the Toronto Region, Niagara, and Waterloo.  Others were established in Ottawa, Haldimand-Norfolk, and Sudbury, but have since been disbanded.  Regional utility commissions were only established in a small handful of places.  I believe that if the Task Force Hydro recommendations had been fully implemented, Ontario Hydro might still exist today.  Local distribution and customer service would be in the communities where customers lived and worked.  Costs would still be low because the local Hydro would still be getting its power at cost from Hydro.  Like all of the former municipal utility commissions in Ontario, members would be elected by municipal ballot and therefore accountable to citizens.  Ontario Hydro would be able to focus on generation and transmission.  If Hydro had been able to focus on this more during the 1970's, it may not have become as financially burdened by its nuclear projects as it became.  More creative generation options could have been explored, such as the now shelved plans for a pumped storage generating station in the Blue Mountain area.  The Wesleyville white elephant near Port Hope could have been more effectively used for other purposes too.  It remains half-finished and semi derelict ever since oil prices shot up in 1973.

Ontario residents and business owners should be very concerned about power rates increasing after Hydro One is sold off.  There is not an example of electrical utility privatisation anywhere that led to a rate decrease for customers.  The prices always go up because the motivation is profit and satisfying shareholders.  Electrical infrastructure, something that is already in poor shape in many parts of Ontario could also suffer at the expense of profit over capital investment.