$100 million

Cancelling Ontario’s White Pines could cost $100 million says company.” Nearly every major media outlet shouted the same headline, or a variation of it, last week upon the news that the new provincial government was moving to cancel the White Pines industrial wind project south of Milford.

The threat from the developer was the story. There was, unfortunately, puny effort exercised to understand why the project was opposed by so many folks in this community and across the province. Little or no mention of the coalition of conservation organizations, community groups, local government and vast number of individuals arrayed against this project—putting their own resources and energy in a nearly decadelong battle against an ideologically twisted government and a powerful multinational corporation.

Like sheep, these news organizations huddled together and bleated the same message over and over again. Others picked up the chant. The NDP’s Peter Tabuns called it a war on science. The David Suzuki Foundation’s Gideon Forman said the move would kill jobs and scare away investment. One Globe and Mail columnist offered this in his weekly column: “Doug Ford delivers on people-pleasing promises, but fiscal plans still a puzzle.” This awkward bit of alliteration went a step further—suggesting Ontario voters were rather dim-witted, easily duped and being led down a treacherous path by Doug Ford. It is, I think, a rather odd gambit to premise your public comments by assuming a large portion of your readers are dopes, yet here we are.

So in the off chance any of my colleagues in Toronto pick up The Times, I offer you some context to this story that, while unlikely to make it more alluring as clickbait, may be useful information for readers seeking to comprehend this important change in policy— trusting, of course, your daily news venues remain interested in such ambitions.

Across the reach on the east side of the County from a peninsula known as Cressy, sits an electricity generating facility capable of providing a constant supply of electricity to about two million homes. It never does. It sits idle 98 per cent of the time. And it costs Ontario ratepayers in excess of $7 million a month for this plant to remain on standby.

Right next door, a few dozen metres away, is a brand new gas-fired electricity generating facility. The plant was originally slated for Oakville, where electricity is needed, but cancelled by Dalton McGuinty’s government in 2010 fearing a suburban seat was at risk. As a means of compensating the inconvenienced developer the Liberal government agreed to pay them to build an utterly redundant generating facility side by side to the existing mostly idle plant south of Napanee. The shiny new plant is capable of powering a million homes. But likely never will.

The many millions of dollars wasted moving this plant is being equated by the developer and my Toronto media colleagues to the cancellation of White Pines. It is a wrong and lazy parallel, but makes a tidy and easy narrative.

Directly across the channel from these two idle plants, just east of Cressy, lies Amherst Island. There, the last of 26 massive industrial wind turbines are being bolted together. On this wee isle of mostly pasture and fields of hay, there is no escape from the grotesque industrialization— no place to get out from under these monstrous machines. Each intermittently generating more useless and unneeded electricity—within view of two idle gas generating plants. All theses agitated electrons, and not a market for 200 kilometres.

This is public policy at its most twisted, most debauched and most expensive.

Yes, it will cost Ontario to unwind this and 758 other renewable energy agreements, as Doug Ford promised last week. But the final cost will certainly represent a fraction of the amount we were liable to pay under McGuinty and Wynne’s disastrous policy.

Finally, let’s consider the $100 million. Where did this number come from? The aggrieved developer says his company will sue the Ontario government to recover “a serious loss of over CAD $100 million.”

Setting aside the Dr. Evil quality of this number, I can only speculate that this number likely approximates the revenue the developer was hoping to reap from this nineturbine project over the span of its 20-year deal to sell generated electricity to the government—fully reimbursed for a product we don’t need, want or will ever use.

House leader Todd Smith says legislation will be introduced this week barring the developer from litigating the cancellation of this project. There will be much gnashing of teeth, further threats and likely some second-guessing, but it seems likely the government has this power and is willing to exercise it.
But let us suggest for a moment that we paid the developer his full demand. This money was spent. Already committed by the Wynne government. It was already going out the door. Anything we as taxpayers spend less than the headline number, is a bonus. For Ontario taxpayers and electricity consumers it is great news. For residents of South Marysburgh and Athol, endangered species and migrating birds, it is life-changing.

We may not be able to undo all the waste and destruction caused by the last government, but we can put a hard stop to it and begin to clean up the mess. This, for most Ontario families, is the headline.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca