Where are our hydro debt retirement payments going? Barrett joins call for forensic audit to solve $7.8 billion McGuinty mystery

For Immediate Release:
January 26, 2011

Thunder Bay – MPP Toby Barrett is joining Opposition Leader Tim Hudak in calling for a forensic audit to explain why Ontario families continue to be charged for a debt that should be paid next year.

“We need an explanation as to why McGuinty plans to charge Ontario ratepayers $1 billion a year for an extra six years for an Ontario debt that should have been paid in full,” Barrett demanded . “Do the math; Ontario families have paid $7.8 billion in debt retirement charges – the Ontario Hydro residual stranded debt was $7.8 billion.

“Why are we still paying and where is the money going?”

The Debt Retirement Charge is a dedicated revenue stream to pay off the $7.8 billion residual stranded Ontario Hydro debt – a debt stretching back to the Peterson era. The amount the Ontario Electricity Financial Corporation has collected since May 1, 2002, is $7.8 billion, and the debt was scheduled to be paid off by 2012.

“It’s a real McGuinty mystery as to why, at a time of historically low interest rates , this government maintains t he debt wi ll not be paid as late as 2018,” intoned Barrett. “Time to bring in forensics and get to the bottom of what McGuinty has treated as a bottomless pit.”

– 30 –

For more information, please contact MPP Toby Barrett at
(519) 428-0446 or (905)-765-8413, 1-800-903-8629

 

QUICK FACTS

The Debt Retirement Charge was created in May 2002 as a dedicated revenue stream to pay off a residual stranded debt of $7.8 billion by 2012.

The McGuinty Government first pushed back the repayment date from 2012 to 2014, and then until 2018, with no explanation why.

On Friday, a C.D. Howe Report found the McGuinty government has subsidized power exports $1 billion since 2006, allowing energy traders to sell provincially-generated power in other jurisdictions for less than Ontario families pay.