BY TAMMY FLORES
Ontario’s new Financial Accountability Officer says privatizing Hydro One will be a bad deal for the Province. The Province says they are moving forward, full steam ahead, with privatizing Hydro One and throws the sale of Highway 407 to 407 ETR, in the face of everyone that questions the rationale behind what appears to be an irrational decision.
When you look back in history, the sale of Highway 407 to 407 ETR, for the most part meets with cautious optimism. As a matter of fact, not even the auditor general had anything bad to say about the deal. Fast forward to the sale of Hydro One and you have eight Provincial Watchdog agencies, including the newly formed Financial Accountability Office, warning that this deal is bad for the Province. As well, hind sight is always 20/20 and for the most part, people think the sale of Highway 407 was bad for the Province.
Last week, I wrote about partisan politicians using the sale of Highway 407 in their argument to sell Hydro One. If you recall the early years of this current administration, the biggest uproar they made was about privatizing Highway 407. They even took 407 ETR to court in an effort to appear to be concerned about consumers. They claimed to have lost that case, but the reality of the situation is they did not lose; they simply did not appeal the lower court’s decision and opted to make an “amicable” agreement with the company with expectations that they would improve their customer service issues. To date, those customer service issues are still outstanding and now the very same critics of the sale of Highway 407 are pushing forward with privatizing Hydro One. But unlike the sale of Highway 407, there seems to be one negative report after another saying this deal is bad for the Province.
Every time the opposition criticizes this administration’s decision to push forward with the privatization of Hydro One, the sale of Highway 407 is thrown in their face. How is that an argument? How does this justify ignoring all the reports that say this is a bad deal for the Province? Did they not learn from the sale of Highway 407? Why do they want to do more of the same?
When you go to twitter, to see what people are saying, it is evident that people are not supportive of privatizing Hydro One. Unlike the Province, people don’t see the connection between the sale of Highway 407 somehow supporting the sale of Hydro One. To the contrary, people agree the sale of Highway 407 was bad and see the sale of Hydro One being worse.
Again, how is throwing the sale of Highway 407 in the face of the opposition an argument to support the sale of Hydro One? I guess what this administration is saying is that, we have lived with the consequences of selling Highway 407 so we can live with the consequences of selling Hydro One. We don’t care about your quality of life. We are doing it because we can and we don’t care about the consequences.
We are in for a rough ride folks.
