Ontario has lots of advantages. We have a skilled workforce and hungry entrepreneurs. People who think, invent, forge, grow, build and mine resources, products, services and ideas in demand around the world. And a prime trading location in the heart of North America.
Ontarians know this. We've got a lot going for us. But as I've learned through the town hall meetings I've been traveling to over the last few weeks -- to talk to the people who pay the bills -- people are feeling pretty discouraged right now.
Ontarians haven't completely given up their optimism, though. I know this because, when I remind people at these events that we've come back before, because we've dared to think in new and different ways, I see heads start to nod.
They also nod when I say that now is the time for action in Ontario -- in particular where our economy and energy policy are concerned. Because they know that affordable energy is a fundamental element of Ontario's future economic success.
To get our economy moving again, we need energy policies that will keep prices under control for entrepreneurs, industry, and households alike, while ensuring that the system is reliable and sustainable.
When you look around Canada, you see the provinces that have taken the right steps to assure a steady supply of power at fair rates are well positioned. Those like Ontario, where power rates are being driven up by expensive energy subsidies, are not.
The good news is that Ontarians have a lot of expertise and ideas to offer that can help put our power sector on the right path. That's why the Ontario PC Caucus has produced a new white paper, "Paths to Prosperity: Affordable Energy" -- the first in a series on Ontario's economic fundamentals -- to pull together some of the best ideas we've heard so far and to focus the discussion on finding real solutions to the problem of rapidly escalating electricity prices.
In the paper, we suggest significant changes as to who owns the electricity sector, a return to competitive bidding for power-generation and ideas to save consumers money.
What Ontario needs is an affordable energy act to treat electricity as a job-creation tool for the whole economy, keep power rates under control for consumers, and sustain our renewable energy industry through consumer choice, not subsidies. After all, power prices affect virtually everything we do. In order to grow our economy we must take a new approach to managing our energy sector.
I see hope for Ontario. But we need to start making some tough choices now, bring new ideas to bear, build on our advantages and seize on the natural optimism of the people of our province to fix this problem and make power prices a job creator -- not a job barrier.
Sen. Elaine McCoy: Canada Needs to Take a Sober Second Look at Our Energy Policies and Practices
If they actually turned lights off when they left the house during the DAY!
As long as people aren't going to conserve or attempt to conserve, let people pay the high electricity costs.
What I really have a problem is that little Timmy, the child of teachers, talks of Ontario having "lots of advantages". Uhhh, Timmy, hate to point this out, but "lots" AIN'T A WORD!!! (Just like "ain't" ain't a word).
Go back to school. One of Ontario's excellent publically-funded schools.
What your white paper proposes, which you briefly cover in this article, is extreme short-term thinking to reduce prices of power.
The natural result of this, like any short term focus on power prices, will be lower prices in the short run but an over reliance on non sustainable sources that will eventually lead to higher prices and push these higher prices on to future generations.
The reality is that without the subsidies you propose to abolish, renewable energy, wind power, solar power and electric cars are not financially feasible in the short run. Subsidies remedy this by helping to grow the market gradually so that it can stand on it's own two feet in future. Pulling the plug on these subsidies is essentially pulling the plug on these markets.
Lowering power costs through your measures makes for great sounding political headlines. But thinking short term like you are is not the right answer. Oil and gas are finite resources. Fact. No debate. This means that at some point they will be in short supply, which basic economics dictates that short supply = high prices. We have to reduce our reliance on these - starting ASAP - and the way to do this is to spread the future higher prices gradually over time by fully supporting (thus subsidising) all sustainable energy initiatives.