Yesterday was the occasion for debate on the Green Energy Act, as the government is now scrambling to correct its domestic input policy—illegal as determined by the World economic regulatory body.

Nepean-Carleton MPP and PC Energy Critic Lisa MacLeod covered the gamut of problems with the Green Energy Act in her speech. You may read the full account here (recommended). An excerpt follows:

…But if they want to talk about children’s health, I’ll talk about a child’s health. I’ll talk about Madi Vanstone, who every day we’ve brought up in the assembly here. I can’t help but think that the Ontario that I live in, the Ontario that I’m raising my daughter in, is spending $22 billion for 1% of energy to make Liberal friends rich when little girls in this province who need life-saving drugs can’t get them. And why can’t she get them? Because this Premier said it costs too much. She said that it costs too much; we couldn’t afford it. We could afford to make Mike Crawley a rich man, we can afford to make NextEra a rich company and we can ensure that Samsung basically has a seat at the cabinet table here, but apparently our government cannot and will not choose to support a child who needs help. That’s the reality that we’re in in Ontario today. People can’t understand it. It was well documented, I thought, by Christina Blizzard. I thought she laid out the case on that quite clearly, and I thought that she pointed out what most people in Ontario are saying.

You look at the cost of power now—and I had the opportunity to speak to the supply motion, I guess it was a week ago. I talked about the opportunity I had to visit many of my colleagues’ ridings and talk to many people who are in their communities, and we talked about the high cost of energy and how that is hurting the people of this province and hurting manufacturers, and we talked about what our plan would be.

We’ve written a number of white papers. Some of them were just, effectively, ideas that we put forward that we’ll run on; others were ideas for discussion that we’ve talked about. But, very clearly, people are looking for a rational solution to the mismanagement by the government.

We’ve put forward a number of, I think, very thoughtful ideas and very sensible ideas to review not only the existing Green Energy Act—I think we’ve been very clear that we would repeal it—but we also talked about looking at some of the entities that we have in Ontario, like the OPG and Hydro One, monetizing them to bring more accountability. We know that there are some very serious and straightforward concerns there. We know, for example, that we’re exporting about $1 billion worth of power. …

You think about this: He has just acknowledged in this House that to create 1.1% of power is $22 billion. They had to acknowledge, albeit it was the Auditor General who forced them, that it was $1.1 billion for them to save five seats. With that amount of waste and that amount of mismanagement, we could not only eradicate our deficit, but we could make significant investments into our communities in health care and education, and we would still have power that we wouldn’t have to export. A novel idea, Speaker, but that is the reality; it is the truth, and it is something that we have said consistently—and the only party to do so since 2009.

That’s why we stand here day in and day out. We stand for the people in Strathroy and Stratford. We talk to the people in Cobourg, the people in Oxford and the people in Barry’s Bay. We talk about the people who are opposing these high subsidies and who are opposing these invasions on their land. We talk to them. We ask them to stay in Ontario and make sure that they continue to support us so that we can change this.

…

Let me be abundantly clear, Speaker: This is a government who is too concerned with its own ideology, and too concerned with its buddies that they could make a little bit more rich, that they had no concern whatsoever about the people paying the bill; that they have no concern whatsoever of the broader implications in an international trade war that they have now thrust us into. They don’t care, Speaker. They didn’t do their job at the beginning.

They’re not doing their job now, they didn’t do their job then, and everybody in Ontario is paying for it.