Ontario citizens angry with Hydro need to get organized and behave professionally.

If citizens are ever going to be successful with efforts to bring accountability to the hydro crisis in Ontario, they need to improve their organization and coherence.  Last week I discovered three facebook groups focused on issues surrounding Hydro One customer rates.  I subscribed to all of them on Wednesday, and as of today, I’ve unsubscribed.  The comments being left on the pages and the way in which they are presented are mostly ineffective because they are poorly written, uninformed and disrespectful. 

All three groups come across as places for the angry people of the internet to make uneducated comments.  I am not supportive of Premier Kathleen Wynne, but using an online forum about power rates and billing errors to make disrespectful comments about her is not going to gain any degree of professionalism or respect for the cause.  The same argument applies to disrespectful remarks about Hydro One employees.  Linemen are not the people who increase the rates or make bad policies.  Those responsibilities are the role of executives, bureaucrats, and politicians.  I’ve read too many comments about power linemen who are on the list of public employees in Ontario who make $100,000 or more per year—the so-called “Sunshine List.”  The base salary of the average Hydro One employee is less than $100,000 per year.  The only reason there are employees making over $100,000 is because of the overtime they put in repairing damage and getting the power back on whenever it fails because of bad weather or accident.  It’s a small price to pay for reliability.  There are employees of private sector industries who make just as much money or more but their earnings are not published for public view.  The Sunshine List needs to go or at least have its income amount threshold raised to better reflect increases in the cost of living and wages that have taken place in the 20 years since it was established.  It’s disrespectful to continually shame people—most of whom are professionals and in skilled trades for earning a living.  There are tradespeople and professionals in the private sector making equal or higher amounts. 

The problems at Hydro One started long before Kathleen Wynne became Premier of Ontario, although her government has not done anything positive to address them.  I have said it before, but the sharp decline towards the present situation began during the 1990’s with outright bungling and reckless policy making by the Rae and Harris governments.  These bad policies were enabled by serious financial mismanagement in developing nuclear power beginning in the 1960’s, and then with the corporatization of Ontario Hydro by the Davis government in the 1970’s.  The people who are angry about the present situation need to do some historical homework.  They need to decide which issues they want to focus on and become better organized with a coherent message.  Angry, disrespectful, and often profane rants on Facebook will solve nothing.  The lack of coherence and unity will simply allow bad practices, policies, and decisions involving electricity in Ontario to continue.