Selling the province’s hydro plan
Energy minister sells hydro deal
Provincial energy minister Glenn Thibeault was in Oshawa Monday in an effort to make the case for the Ontario Liberals plan to reduce the cost of hydro. The plan will see $28 billion in project costs refinanced over a longer term.
By Graeme McNaughton/The Oshawa Express
The province’s energy minister was in Oshawa, looking to help make the case for the province’s new electricity plans.
Glenn Thibeault, flanked by Mayor John Henry and Ivano Labricciosa, the president and CEO of the Oshawa Power and Utilities Corporation (OPUC), was in the city to promote the recently announced plans by the provincial Liberals that will see hydro prices go down by 25 per cent, starting this summer.
“People from right across the province in every community, we’ve been hearing have had some concerns when it’s related to their rates. We’ve been trying for a very long time to bring forward rate mitigation for ratepayers in the province,” he says.
“We’ve been doing that, and we’ve seen some reductions over the last year or so, but they’ve been very targeted in specific and source, and were not necessarily bringing the relief that families were looking for and businesses were looking for.”
Announced in March, the initiative will see $28 billion in project costs refinanced over the next decade, stretching out payments and thereby giving the province enough wiggle room to reduce the cost of power – in this case, an average of 17 per cent.
Another eight per cent in savings came into effect at the start of 2017, when the province announced that it would be getting rid of its portion of the HST from hydro bills.
Also up for discussion during Thibeault’s visit was the prospect of merging the province’s hydro company.
Hydro company mergers is a hot topic of discussion in Oshawa, given the OPUC’s announcement last month that it was backing out of a possible joining of forces with Veridian Corporation and Whitby Hydro.
Thibeault says that while the province won’t be forcing any mergers on hydro companies, it will be making the process easier for those that wish to do so.
“One of the things we are not doing, as the province, is making mergers mandatory. We’re making all mergers within the province voluntary. Now, we’ve put incentives in place to actually help local utilities look at ways that they can merge,” he says.
“There are some incentives to it, but every utility needs to make its own decisions and the government won’t be moving forward with any mandatory requirements for mergers.”