Wellington-Halton Hills MPP Ted Arnott and Perth-Wellington MPP Randy Pettapiece teamed up in Question Period on May 15 to raise questions about a new provincial agency intended to address climate change.
“We all know that life just keeps getting harder for the people of Ontario under this Liberal government, and we all know of their reputation for scandal, waste, and mismanagement,” Arnott stated. “Now we learn that they’re setting up the Ontario Climate Change Solutions Deployment Corp.”
Arnott, Progressive Conservative critic to the Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, raised several questions about the new agency.
“How is this new agency not redundant? How much is it going to cost to administer?” he asked. “Does it overlap with other existing ministry functions and programs? Why do we need it? Will the minister commit to this house that it will not become just another Liberal slush fund?”
Pettapiece, the Ontario PC critic to the Minister of Government Consumer Services, claimed “The government wants to stuff the board of directors of this climate change agency with green energy insiders and lobbyists.
“Of course, under the Liberals’ terrible long-term hydro contracts, many green energy firms have already cashed in big-time. The result? Amongst the highest hydro rates in North America. Now they’re appointing insiders and lobbyists to spend cap-and-trade tax money on Liberal vanity projects instead of putting the money back in the pockets of hard-working Ontarians.
“We need the minister’s personal guarantee,” Pettapiece continued. “Will he tell us that his green energy friends will see no personal or commercial benefits from this boondoggle in the making?”
According to the official Hansard record, environment minister Glen Murray responded, “I always find it entertaining getting questions from the party that managed to double hydro rates … they managed to double hydro rates in one summer.”
Murray added, “The green Ontario corporation operates very much like its counterpart in Quebec, which has been hugely successful. It will deploy billions of dollars into home heating retrofits, reducing the energy and heating costs of Ontarians and cutting the costs to businesses.”
Explaining the new corporations’ role, Murray told the House, “People go and retrofit their homes. When they retrofit their homes, they buy a high-efficiency furnace or a geothermal system, and this corporation gives them a grant to help with the cost of that.
“The opposition in lieu of this would cut $8 billion of subsidies to Ontario families and businesses to help them reduce (greenhouse gases), and they would increase the cost of carbon reduction per tonne by 400 per cent.”
