Energy

Someone Put His Foot In His Mouth

Mulder

I have to say that my daughter Cookie is the most amazing, loving, caring, precious, wonderful young lady on the planet.  Bar none.  She is better than your daughter because she is MY daughter.  And as her father, I would do anything to keep her happy….Anything.

OOLCI believe the above statement is probably true for anyone with a daughter, including our Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin, whose daughter just happens to be dating the grand nephew of long time Liberal Cabinet Minister Bob Chiarelli.

BobChiarelliUnder normal circumstances this would be just peachy.  But we have a problem here.  Marin is charged with investigating thousands of complaints against HydroOne. HydroOne is under the auspice of the Minister of Energy, who happens to be……you guessed it….Bob Chiarelli.

This begs the question….Where in the world would this type of conflict of interest be acceptable?  The answer is clear.  In Liberal run Ontario, Canada, that’s where.

Mister Marin may indeed be impartial on this but this certainly does not pass the sniff test.  My prediction is that Marin will delete the tweet and break up the lovebirds.

OfficiallyScrewed in my opinion.

 

Tim Hudak Starts Barking Up The Right Tree

Mulder

Today the Ontario PC Party finally announced a game changer. They will be eliminating the HST off Hydro Bills.

As we have announced here at OfficiallyScrewed.com before, the debt retirement charge that never gets repaid is subject to HST and we have argued that never paying off the debt (a la Dalton McGuinty) is a way the province will keep collecting tax dollars as the debt retirement is subject to HST.

Well Hudak has come through for Ontarians with this announcement.

An Ontario PC government will provide Ontario families with real, permanent household relief by:
Removing the HST from residential hydro bills. The HST has made life unaffordable for many families. Combine that with expensive energy experiments and hydro bills are soaring.
Removing the HST from residential home heating bills (natural gas and other fuels). We live in Canada where heating our homes isn’t a luxury. Increasing the cost with a tax increase is unfair.
Removing the Debt Retirement Charge from residential hydro bills. We will remove the so-called “Debt Retirement Charge” from your hydro bills. The full amount had been collected as of 2010 – yet the McGuinty government extended it to 2018.
Taken together, these three steps will give a typical Ontario household $275 in immediate relief from rising energy bills.

Thank you Mr. Hudak. We needed something to hit the masses with and this is a the perfect shot in the arm to stimulate interest in putting the PC party in charge of Ontario.

Tim Hudak Vows to Cancel Samsung Deal…But Won’t

Mulder

Fact: Samsung is not GETTING $7B. They are INVESTING $7B in Ontario in exchange for tax breaks. (some believe to be in the neighbourhood of $500M).

Fact: Tim Hudak has said he will cancel the contract.

Prediction: Tim Hudak’s first speech as Premiere about the Samsung deal will go like this:

“After throughly analyzing the contract that the previous Liberal government signed with Samsung, we have discovered that the contract is so far along that to cancel it now would be an undue burden on the tax payers and would not be prudent. We sincerely believe to sign the contract was a travesty but at this point there is not much we can do but to honour it in the best interest of Ontarians.”

I’m just sayin….

Ontario Electricity Bills Should Indicate How Long It Will Take To Repay The Stranded Debt

Mulder

Just like the new rules for credit cards, each electricity bill should tell us when our last payment will be on the debt.

I say this because originally we were supposed to have paid off the stranded debt by 2012. Then it got extended to 2014. Then it got pushed to 2018. And now this from the National Post.

Why is OEFC financing this capital project when OPG supposedly has the ability to raise funds from private sources and the “stranded debt” was placed in OFEC to ensure that OPG would be self-financing in the future? Why is the “debt retirement” money being paid by ratepayers into OEFC now being used to provide new financing to OPG? The historical rate of repayment of the old “stranded debt” indicates it will take another 49 years to retire! Why hasn’t the Auditor General raised some alarms on this? Why doesn’t OEFC publish quarterly reports so the public can properly follow its activities?

So should our bills not say “At current payment rates, you will make your last payment on February 29th, 2060?

If this 49 year extension is accurate, then it is safe to say that this debt has been severely mismanaged by the OEFC. The OEFC was created to hold the old debt and pay it off. And now it is being used as a bank which is funding new projects. This is clearly not good for your electricity bill because what few people pay attention to is the fact that you pay HST on top of that debt retirement charge.

If the infrastructure money for new electricity projects was simply to come from the government and not the OEFC, then you would not have to pay that charge and the HST on it directly. It would simply be rolled in to the provincial deficit/debt. But by shuffling it into the OEFC, McGuinty get’s a nice HST boost and you and get…. you guessed it…

OfficiallyScrewed!!