For Immediate Release:
May 10, 2011
Queens Park – MPP Toby Barrett and Opposition Leader Tim Hudak have pledged to bring an end to out-of-control skyrocketing electricity bills in Ontario.
Hudak today committed to provide relief on hydro bills while restoring transparency and competition to Ontario’s energy sector by ending Dalton McGuinty’s expensive and unsustainable Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) program, as well as his sweetheart Samsung deal.
“Ontario families are already stretching to pay McGuinty’s electricity increases on today’s bills – they simply can’t afford hydro bills that are forecast to skyrocket by $732 a year within the next four years,” Barrett later pointed out. “While Dalton McGuinty admits the majority of these skyrocketing electricity costs will come from his FIT and Samsung projects, he refuses to lift a finger to stop it – it’s time to clamp on the binders and restore transparency, competition and common sense to what we pay for electricity generation.”
Subsidies in Dalton McGuinty’s FIT program pay as much as 80.2 cents per kilowatt-hour, about 20 times the going rate for power. Much like the secret Samsung deal, there was never any transparency in how these FIT prices were set in the first place.
Barrett went on to explain that those who have invested in the FIT projects under the current rules can count on an Ontario PC government to honour those contracts.
Today’s announcement follows commitments to restore municipal decision making powers and local input on renewable energy projects that were taken away under McGuinty’s Green Energy Act.
At last count 75 municipalities – including Norfolk and Haldimand – have passed resolutions objecting to industrial wind turbines and/or Dalton McGuinty’s Green Energy Act.
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For more information, please contact MPP Toby Barrett at: (416) 325-8404,
(519) 428-0446 or 1-800-903-8629