Report on OPUC merger delayed until March
Final decision not expected to be made until the summer
Originally expected to be completed by the end of 2016, a report on the possible merger between the Oshawa Power and Utilities Corporation, Whitby Hydro and Veridian is not delayed until next month. A decision on whether the merger will go ahead is now not expected until this summer.
By Joel Wittnebel/The Oshawa Express
The process is nearing completion, but Oshawa residents will be waiting at least a month to get their first glimpse at what a merged local utility would look like.
The Oshawa Express has learned that a draft report regarding the Oshawa Power and Utilities Corporation’s (OPUC) proposed merger with Whitby Hydro and Veridian will not be made public until March. According to Ivanno Labricciosa, OPUC’s president and CEO, the three companies are currently working on coordinating with local councils in an attempt to deliver the report at the same time.
The draft report that will eventually be presented to Oshawa city council will lay out the results of the eight-month-plus investigation into the possible merger. Labricciosa previously told The Express that the majority of the time has been spent on risk assessments and trying to forecast potential issues in the future.
The process has been ongoing since April 2016, when it was announced that the trio of organizations were entering into a memorandum of understanding to investigate the possibilities of joining together. After the announcement, Mayor John Henry and council noted that the first time they’d heard of the merger was in a meeting prior to the announcement. However, an Ontario Ombudsman report surrounding a closed education and training session with the OPUC in December 2015 showed that, in fact, council was aware and asking questions about the merger months prior to the April announcement.
The omudsman’s report created a backlash from members of the public, who turned out at a Unifor town hall meeting this past December to talk about hydro rates, but discussion more often then not turned back to the OPUC’s potential merger and its impact on rates.
The dissatisfaction was also noted in an OPUC phone survey, the results of which were shared with council at their final meeting of 2016 attached with the power company’s third quarter report.
Of the 10,000 calls across the six municipalities affected by the merger, 2,300 were completed. Three hundred and twenty of these surveys were in Oshawa and nearly half of them (46 per cent) were in opposition to the merger. It was also noted that 30 per cent of respondents were not even aware of the merger.
For Labricciosa, he isn’t surprised by the reaction.
“To be fair to everybody, it’s change, and people are generally not going to be up for change right off the bat,” he says, pointing to already negative attitudes surrounding hydro due to the issues at the provincial level.
And while nothing has been set in stone financially, Labricciosa says that Oshawa residents deserve proper answers to their questions around what would happen to their rates.
“Oshawa is scared and I don’t blame them,” he said.
“We have the lowest rates when it comes to the other three and this can’t not be one of these, ‘oh well, don’t worry it’ll get taken care of’ or, ‘don’t worry that’ll be 10 years down the road and nothing is predicable.’ That’s not good enough for me….We’ve done some pretty good stuff here and as long as they get the same or better services, as long as they get the same or better rates, this thing should be a good thing for everybody.”
The new March date for the draft report, which is set to be followed by further rounds of public consultation, is well off the original timeline set out in the MOU, which states a decision was to be made prior to the end of 2016.
Now, with the new timeline, Labricciosa expects a final decision could come in June or July of this year. However, if further delays stretch that timeline into the summer, during which many councils are on recess, a final decision may not be made until the fall.