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Tag Archives: Dwight Duncan

Liberal ex-Finance Minister warned of debt crisis

11 Sunday May 2014

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Charles Sousa, debt levels, Dwight Duncan, election Ontario 2014, Kathleen Wynne, Ontario budget, Ontario debt crisis, Ontario Finance Minister, Scott Stinson, Tim Hudak

This is a re-publish from The National Post.

Former Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan  went on an anti-debt crusade in his last months at the legislature.

by Scott Stinson, The National Post, May 10, 2014

ANALYSIS

The week before Charles Sousa tabled the Ontario budget that failed to pass, triggering a provincial election, the man who preceded him as Ontario Finance Minister came to Queen’s Park with a warning.

“Ontario is faced with a staggering debt,” Dwight Duncan said, and he called for public services to be contracted out. Government, he said, would have to “fundamentally re-evaluate its role.”

It didn’t escape notice that his warning was akin to a Kardashian tut-tutting someone about overexposure: Ontario’s debt rose from $154-billion to $281-billion during Mr. Duncan’s own time as Finance Minister. But he had warned about debt issues, he said, before he left office.

That much is true. Seemingly emboldened by the fact that it wasn’t his problem to solve anymore, Mr. Duncan went on an anti-debt crusade in his last months at the legislature. Given the province’s debt levels, he said in January, 2013, low interest rates were a “ticking time bomb.” He warned contenders for the Liberal leadership that spending cuts would have to be doubled if the government was still going to reach a balanced budget by 2017-18.

Kathleen Wynne won that race, of course. There is little indication she was listening.

The 2014 budget fattened the deficit, leaving Ontario with an annual hole of $12.5-billion this fiscal year. Total debt is now forecast to reach almost $338-billion by 2016-17.

It is a staggering number. But perhaps just as surprising has been the Liberals’ disinclination to do anything too rash in trying to reduce it.

Consider that the generally accepted blueprint for disastrous economic management was provided by the Bob Rae NDP government of the early 1990s. In 1993, a deficit that was anticipated to be around $10-billion came in closer to $12-billion.

…

 

Read the full story here.

Economist: Ontario’s actions on electricity bills possibly illegal

12 Saturday Apr 2014

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Renewable energy, Wind power

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Big Becky, Debt Retirement Charge, Dwight Duncan, electricity, Hydro One, Ontario, Ontario Electricity Act, Ontario electricity bills, Ontario government, Ontario Hydro, OPG, residual stranded debt Ontario, Robert Lyman

From Ottawa energy economist Robert Lyman:

THE $6.2 BILLION SLEIGHT-OF-HAND

 Parker Gallant is a retired banker who has done tremendous service to the people of Ontario by reporting publicly on the Ontario government’s mismanagement of the province’s electrical energy system. In an analysis he posted on April 11, 2014, Mr. Gallant applied his knowledge of financial management and accounting to reveal the damaging and possibly illegal actions of the Liberal government with respect to the Debt Retirement Charge included in the monthly electricity bills of Ontario residents. The analysis can be found online here:

http://ep.probeinternational.org/2014/04/11/parker-gallant-the-debt-retirement-charge-premier-wynnes-6-2-billion-revenue-tool-5/#more-12245

This note offers my explanation, in layperson’s terms, of what Mr. Gallant revealed.

Background

In 1998 the Ontario government launched a major restructuring of the province’s publicly-owned electricity industry. One aspect of this restructuring was the breakup of Ontario Hydro into five successor companies on April 1, 1999.

The Ontario Ministry of Finance determined that, on April 1, 1999, Ontario Hydro’s total debt and other liabilities stood at $38.1 billion, which greatly exceeded the estimated $17.2 billion market value of the assets being transferred to the new entities. The resulting shortfall of $20.9 billion was determined to be “stranded debt”, representing the total debt and other liabilities of Ontario Hydro that the Ministry judged could not be serviced in “a competitive electricity environment”. This total was subsequently reduced to $19.4 billion when it was adjusted for $1.5 billion of additional assets transferred to OEFC. Responsibility for servicing and managing the “legacy” debt of Ontario Hydro, which includes the stranded debt, was given to the Ontario Electricity Financial Corporation (OEFC), whose opening balance sheet reflected a stranded debt, or unfunded liability, of $19.4 billion. This was the difference between the $18.7 billion value of assets assumed by the OEFC and the $38.1 billion of Ontario Hydro legacy debt.

To retire the debt, the government established a long-term plan wherein the burden of debt repayment would be borne partly through dedicated revenues from the electricity sector companies – Ontario Power Generation (OPG), Hydro One, and Municipal Electrical Utilities – and partly by electricity consumers directly. (Bear in mind that all the revenues from the electricity sector companies come from electricity consumers, so electricity consumers pay all the costs, one way or the other.). The electricity companies would make “payments in lieu of taxes” to the OEFC (this is, in theory, the equivalent of corporate income taxes). It was projected that future revenues from OPG and Hydro One and municipal electricity distributors would generate $11.6 billion over the next eight to nine years.

To read the full article click here.THE $6.2 Billion Sleight-of-Hand

Email us at ottawawindconcerns@gmail.com

Prowind sells South Branch/E Ontario project to US wind giant EDP

25 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Health, Wind power

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Brinston, Chris Bentley, cost of electricity Ontario, Dwight Duncan, EDP, Prowind, Shanly, South Branch, South Branch Wind Opposition group, South Dundas, Tim Hudak, wind power

From this week’s Chesterville Record, news that Prowind sold its 14-turbine project to Houston-based EDP.

See the story here:

http://chestervillerecord.com/2012/10/wind-farm-pursued-in-n-stormont/

This is bad news for the community there–Prowind already has a Feed In Tariff or FIT contract for the project. Now, as owner, EDP will simply be able to add to it without additional environmental assessments or any other sort of oversight.

Not that there is any, anyway.

The subsidies given to wind power developers under FIT amount to about $500,000 per turbine, per year. Just a few kilometers away from Cornwall, which purchases cheap hydro power from Quebec for about 6 cents a kWh, the South Branch project will have a nameplate capacity of 30 megawatts. This is power that Ontario does NOT need.

In other news, in Ottawa at a Town Hall last evening, PC Leader Tim Hudak repeated his pledge to cancel the Feed In Tariff program if his party wins the next election.

Energy Minister Chris Bentley announced today that he is not seeking the Party leadership and is indeed leaving politics. Asked in Ottawa if he was surprised that Finance Minister Dwight Duncan was leaving politics, Mr Hudak said, “Who can blame him? Six budgets and he never once balanced the budget and now he’s leaving behind the worst financial mess.”

Email us at ottawawindconcerns@yahoo.ca and join our community of families concerned about the impacts of large-scale wind power generation projects on our communities, our health, the environment, and our economy.

For more news of our colleague group in South Dundas, go to http://www.stopbigwind.ca

Member: Wind Concerns Ontario http://www.windconcernsontario.ca

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