A Commentary from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper
What I am about to report on is just one more reason why I fear the Ontario’s NDP has lost its voice of moral conscience and is moving so close to the positions and posturing of the province’s governing Liberal and opposition Conservative parties.
Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath has a $100 hydro rebate for you.
It is one more reason why there is less and less of a reason to vote for the NDP in hope that it may be a refreshing, progressive alternative to so much of the crap we are already putting up with and paying far too much for under two decades of Conservative and Liberal governance in this province.
If you wonder what I mean, look no further than the latest promise Ontario’s NDP leader, Andrea Horwath, has made to relieve those of us paying soaring hydro bills in this province of some of that pain.Horwath, in a March 5th media release this site will provide a link at the bottom of this post, is promising a plan (if she is elected premier in an Ontario general election that could be called as soon as this spring) to offer a $100 rebate to all the province’s electricity users.
“Ontario families are paying the highest electricity prices in Canada and it’s time to get prices under control,” says Horwath, as she more or less rips a page out of Ontario Conservative leader Tim Hudak’s playbook. “It’s time to help families and business getting squeezed by wasteful hydro policies.”
How? With a $100 rebate! That will hardly buy most of us a toaster and maybe a few loaves of bread to go with it. And what is going to be done about the fiscal mess that is causing out-of-sight hydro rates in Ontario in the long term? Another $100 cheque before another election somewhere three or four years down the line?
What kind of lame shit is this from a leader of a party in Ontario who hopes to be a premier? Is this the best Horwath can reach down and grab on the energy from her bag of tricks?
This is all too reminiscent of the $100 rebate cheques the former Ontario Conservative government of Mike Harris used to circulate to us back in the late 1990s and just before an election, by the way. It was found out later by newspapers that did freedom of information searches on the costs of sending out those cheques that the cost of sending the checques out equaled or exceeded the cost they were worth.
So now we have Ontario’s NDP leader promises to pull a similar stunt, as if we are so stupid that we will vote for her party if they promise to throw us a loaf of bread.
Hey Andrea. Why don’t you replace this cheap stunt with a real detailed plan for how your party would run Ontario’s energy services more efficiently and in a more environmentally sustainable way for the future. I would gladly forgo the $100 rebate for any party that would roll out a real plan to do that.
Now here, before you consider adding your comment below, is Andrea Horwath’s March 5th media release on this issue.
By the way, you may notice in the release that Horwath joins Hudak, Justin Trudeau and others at the provincial and federal level in worrying about the impact of hydro rates on “the middle class.” Apparently it is also lost on Horwath that underneath the teachers, police and others that have public sector unions strong enough to keep them in something resembling a middle class, many of the rest of us are at or below the poverty line.
Horwath unveils plan to cut hydro waste and pass on savings via $100 rebate
QUEEN’S PARK, March 5, 2014 – New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath today unveiled a plan to cut waste in Ontario’s electricity system with three simple steps, and pass the savings on to families through a $100 hydro rebate.
“Ontario families are paying the highest electricity prices in Canada and it’s time to get prices under control,” said Horwath. “It’s time to help families and businesses getting squeezed by wasteful hydro policies.”
The New Democrat Leader laid out three immediate practical steps to get job-killing electricity rates under control that would save ratepayers at least $100-a-year once fully implemented:
• Stop the $1 billion annual subsidy of electricity exports to jurisdictions like New York and Michigan by taking Ontario hydro sales out of the hands of speculative energy traders
• Cap executive pay and cut down on waste and duplication by merging Ontario’s hydro agencies
• Stop private power giveaways and have Ontario’s Auditor conduct an immediate review of all private power contracts in the wake of the $1-billion gas plant scandal
Horwath says families have been footing the bill for the sale of discount electricity to the US, as Ontario has handed out $1-billion to private companies and Wall Street energy traders to produce excess electricity and ship it to America at a loss.
“Middle class families have been paying to light up the Manhattan skyline, we need to put an end to that waste and put the savings back in people’s pockets,” she said.
(Niagara At Large invites you to share your views on this post. A reminder that we only post comments by individuals who share their first and last name with them.)
Niagara At Large 
Les Misérables
Not since the great Victor Hugo has anyone had the courage to write such a precise article pointing out the miserable situation facing the citizens of Ontario and even more misery for the citizens of Niagara.
The things Mr. Davidoff is writing about has an eerie similarity with the life and times of Victor Hugo.
Even with all of the so–called safety nets the misery of government created poverty is an ever growing threat tearing at the very fabric of our society.
Non-government citizens driven into poverty by increased cost of living and stagnant incomes.
In the midst of extraordinary tax and spend, favouritism to friends, unions and corporations we are treated to a two-bit (twenty-five cents) increase in minimum pay.
And just what do we receive from sycophants, insiders and beneficiaries of our two-bit governments? We receive the same rhetoric that the people of Victor Hugo’s time; Machiavellian bullshit designed to extend the power of autocrats!
We get dismissed as irrelevant, nut jobs, liars and names that should never be repeated.
However the eventual outcome is revolting!
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Maybe the NDP means to give $100 rebate each month. That is the only way it would work…otherwise, it is just a drop in the bucket.
Why don’t they find a way to cut salarys over $100,000? The Hydro Gravy Train is out of control.
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Ontario s Liberal Government encouraged many to get into the “green electric” production. While charging Ontarians excessive rates, the Government pays them not to produce electricity and/or sells surplus electric power at greatly reduced rates to “out of province” purchasers.
Solution: rather than pay producers not to produce electrical power and/or sell surplus power at greatly reduced rates, the Government should pay us, the users, to use the surplus power _ thus reducing our cost. This proposal gives us the opportunity to receive electrical power at reasonable rates, pay the producers to produce the power rather than not produce it, and reduce surplus power being sold out of province.
If producers do not meet their required targets, the Government causes them to pay the cost of importing the necessary electrical power. This requirement will cause the producers to maintain and ensure production that they originally committed to.
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Well Andrea has some good points in her plan but does nothing to recognize and expose the underlying problem: Mike Harris killed Sr. Adam Beck’s dream of public power at cost. With that Ontario went from near lowest hydro costs in Canada to the highest. Anybody remember the private sector efficiency that was supposed to deliver even lower costs? I mean where were our elected representatives when they saw Enron Corp. helping plan Harris’ restructured Hydro?
That was the time Ontario voters should have done like they did in the Ukraine last month: Throw the bastards out. Waiting for election day was too late! Andrea’s plan just tinkers around the edge of the mess Harris created and McGuinty stirred around.
However, I recognize recreating Ontario Hydro by any government would invite a public relations attack that would make “Rae Days” look like a touch football game, plus an economic attack on Ontario’s precarious economy, not to mention compensating investors under NAFTA and other free trade agreements.
If the old Ontario Hydro still existed we could have been much farther along generating green power without subsidizing foreign corporations. All the government would have to is say “Do It”! There would have been no private sector gas plant scandal since Hydro is accountable to government. And if the plants did get built in the wrong neighbourhood a government shutdown order would have cost only single digit millions not triple digit.
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This makes it official. Ontario IS heading for Hell in a handcart!
Ontario needs to reduce wasteful spending … on phony crap like $100 rebate cheques.
Where the hell have the forward thinkers, the leaders, the people who really care about their fellow man/woman gone?
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Great Idea Bill! They can publish when electricity is in surplus via radio and all of us can perhaps enjoy not being so conscious on using electricity!
The bills are outrageous! I know many on fixed income avoid cooking because of it or keeping their homes cool or heated for that matter.
As of the $100 rebate. Stuff it Horvath!!!!
Just sayin…..
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Hi Doug,
The following are comments made by myself and my partner Jennifer White on re posting your article on our face book pages. Both Jennifer and myself are members of the (London West) Ontario NDP. Jennifer is also the South West representative on the ONDP executive (but maybe not after our postings become public).
This is my response to a response from my partner Jennifer White, after I sent her the article by long time political/environmental reporter Doug Draper (Niagara at Large). My feelings exactly, I’m a very involved member of the Ontario NDP and the federal NDP our local members and MPPs are working hard but it’s not being represented at the top by Andrea or the Toronto head office, the bureaucratic bull shit makes me feel that the party has been infiltrated by members of other parties to derail the one party that is working for all the people of Ontario, or maybe they’re just becoming comfortably numb, relying on what is being recommended by former staffers from Obama’s group of players. So… if you too are a member of the Ontario NDP and are not happy about the direction the party is now headed let if be known, it’s still the one party that lets it’s members speak out and speak for themselves (maybe).
Via Jen White:
I am in agreement with Doug Draper on this. I can not believe how far from the grassroots the ONDP strategy is getting. As an Ontarian who lives at the poverty line, who has never lived above the poverty line but frequently below it, who knows what it is to go hungry amidst plenty, to rely on food banks, to feel the boot of a social assistance system whose major goal seems to be public humiliation of those who have fallen on hard times, who knows what it is to not be able to keep heat and lights on despite working yourself into a full-body ache…I am feeling a betrayal.
Does anyone give a damn for the poor, for those who don’t make up the “middle class” whatever that means these days?
I watched Prairie Giant the other day, and was amazed at what Tommy Douglas and the CCF (the forerunner of the NDP) were able to do in Saskatchewan, all while balancing the budget and paying off the province’s debt. It did that while putting in place programs that were of real value to the ordinary people of Saskatchewan. It did not get there by gutting supports to community.
What we have now is a full capitulation to race-to-the-bottom globalization.
I have never felt so hopeless as I do this month where our political landscape is concerned. And if I knew what the answer was, I’d already be doing it.
A Message To Ontario’s NDP Leader – Take Your $100 Hydro Rebate Cheque And Stuff It
niagaraatlarge.com
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Sorry Doug, I am going to take issue with this comment:
“Apparently it is also lost on Horwath that underneath the teachers, police and others that have public sector unions strong enough to keep them in something resembling a middle class, many of the rest of us are at or below the poverty line.”
It is because of these public sector unions and their members that the rest of us have to pay over $3K per year in property taxes to live in a modest bungalow, pay 50% of our income in provincial and federal income taxes and at that indignity pay 13% on the balance which undoubtedly gets spent on some form of goods.
Making over a $100k per year plus extravagant benefits is not “SOMETHING RESEMBLING A MIDDLE CLASS”, but “SOMETHING BORDERING ON UPPER CLASS”!!!!!
Come on Doug…. don’t be part of the problem and make it like these public sector employees deserve what they have because, and I challenge you to do this, take a poll and you will find the vast majority of taxpayers do not agree.
Maybe Horwath should talk about addressing that issue and bringing Ontario’s public sector down to earth and on parity with the wages and benefits in the private sector!
Then perhaps we would have reasonably priced electricity, reasonable taxes and business investment!
Just sayin…….
A Response to Greg from Doug Draper – Hello there, but I don’t see how you can read the last paragraph of my commentary on this issue and arrive at the conclusion that I am somehow not ccaring or concerned over teachers, police and other public sector unions continue to receive generous wage and benefit packages in each new contract the’ve negotiated at the provincial and federal government level since the Great Recession of 2008, while so many others among of have been downsized or downwaged.
Indeed, I have had a long record, through my commentary here and my colums while working at Niagara This Week, of questioning public sector wage and benefit increases at a time when so many others are being asked to accept no wage increase or a wage cut, and others are losing their jobs. I have taken a good deal of flak for my columns in that regard, including threats to have readers lobby for my dismissal as a columnist for Niagara This Week, so I cannot take suggestions that I am not senstive to the impact some public sector unions on rising costs in health care, education, policing and other areas is having on so many members of the public who are struggling to get by. Doug Draper, Niagara At Large.
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Sorry Doug, yes you have been very supportive of the challenges…… I am a tad sensitive on the subject matter to a fault…..
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This is where we go back to the days when the Harrisites broke up the Ontario Hydro, with the break up we have more than tripled the number of highly paid managers,we have northern saw mills close down because they could not afford the gouging by the electricity producers, that is why the jobs are fleeing the Province of Ontario, our power rates are now the highest in the entire country, Hudak is woefully wrong when he blame unions for the disappearing jobs., Tim’s pals in that Mike Harris abortion of a government ,started the downward spiral of our economy, the Liberal’s finally dealt the death blow. We are in the dumpster because the obtuse voters, believe the lies that these dead- beat wannabe Premiers feed us at election time.
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There was a time when a child’s need became everyone’s need.
There was a time when we would move heaven and earth to come to the aid of even one of our children.
There was a time when the father of our health care, Tommy Douglas, promoted health care as we now know it so that we could look after our children collectively; so we could move heaven and earth to come to the aid of a child like little Madi Vanstone.
It’s heart warming to see the community come together on a child’s behalf. It’s sickening to hear from our health-service that they will consider it.
It’s really hard to believe that after all the wasted weeping and wailing of the citizens of Niagara regarding their myriad of negative allegations against their health service and all of the lies and cover-up, we finally discover the ugly truth right here in our hometown newspaper!
There was a time when following the dozens of deaths and allowing unattended deaths on hospital front steps, dozens of infections caused by overcrowding that drastic action would be taken.
Did the Ontario Liberal Government find the time to apologize for scamming Ontario’s resources thus depriving us of necessities?
Tragically, we have no one better to vote for!
Corruption is the antithesis of Democracy
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I agree with 99% of what is written the other 1% is up for grabs..When I retired from a Supervisory position at one of the most efficient, productive Canadian Steel Mills in world the NDP suprisingly came to power in Ontario…One might ask HOW COME? They came to POWER because it was perceived that the other two Corporate parties had become corrupted.
I remember being at the boat to P.E.I talking with a Mountie from Northern Ontario as he blasted “Rae Days” So I decided to find out what ” Rae Days” was all about. From articles I learned…. that rather than laying Civil Servants off he forced some Civil servant employees to take a day off a week without pay thus allowing others that would have been laid off to have work.
Yes the Unions fought it and the Corporate media had a field day cutting up the awful NDP so much for “Union brotherhood or sisterhood” and RAE DAYS became a play on word for every Corporate aspiring would be politician.
I constantly hear about these awful Unions and Yes I agree there are unions that have literally become Corporations with the same Greed and Entitlement……BUT…..There are others that try to raise employee income from below the poverty line even as Chambers of Commerce cry foul.
There is an Ontario Nursing Association add that has been running repeatedly during the past few weeks, add that admonish the laying off of Registered Nurses.
In 2003 there was but one or two Niagara Health Services registered nurses in the “Sunshine List” but as time passed this two or three became one, two and 2+ HUNDRED Registered Nurses on the elite Sunshine List. I asked an ONA Representative about this and she said “OVERTIME” then I asked her How much overtime is need for a Registered Nurse to make $211,000+ taxable benefits. She walked away…
How many “WELL RESTED’ Registered Nurses could be looking after patients if they worked 40 hours a week????? Hospitals especially the N.H.S. model in Niagara should NOT be the place for workaholics and would be nurses whose only concern is their take home pay.
I have had over 20 major surgeries in my lifetime and I have had both Good Nurses and those more interested in their take home pay then the patients supposedly under their care……..You be the Judge
The ONA should be on top of this for it presents a scenario that could be devastating but could be a God send if members worked together for the betterment of the patient and the system.
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