Hudak promises to end McGuintys Samsung deal

In a speech to the Ontario Power Summit, Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak promised that a Progressive Conservative government will provide relief for families on hydro bills and restore transparency and competition to Ontario’s energy sector.

He said he would do that by ending Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Feed-in Tariff (FIT) program and his sweetheart Samsung deal.

Ontario families’ hydro bills are forecast to skyrocket by $732 a year within the next four years. Even McGuinty has admitted the majority of those costs will come from his Feed-In Tariff and Samsung projects, and Hudak said the premier’s approaches to renewable energy have lacked transparency from the start and, unless stopped, will lock Ontario families into paying unsustainable subsidies on their bills for the next 20 years.

He said an Ontario PC government would integrate renewable energy into Ontario’s energy supply by ensuring the process is competitive and transparent and, above all, affordable to Ontario families. While McGuinty believes those families can pay more for his expensive energy experiments, Hudak promised the Ontario PCs will provide the relief they need.

“Even Dalton McGuinty says the largest contributing factor to rising hydro bills over the next several years will be his FIT and Samsung projects,” Hudak said. “Instead of engaging in social engineering and expensive experiments, I will integrate renewable energy sources at prices families can afford.”

He added, “I believe that competition, transparency, and affordability are the best means of delivering value to families who pay the bills, and to the industry itself that deserves a predictable and open partner at Queen’s Park.”

He also promised those who invested in the FIT projects under the current rules can count on an Ontario PC government to honour those contracts.

McGuinty and his government signed the sole-sourced $7-billion Samsung deal in January 2010.

To date, the Samsung deal has not produced a single megawatt of electricity.

Subsidies in McGuinty’s FIT program pay as much as 80 cents per kilowatt-hour, about 20 times the going rate for power. Much like the Samsung deal (whose details have never been released), there was never any explanation in how those FIT prices were set in the first place.