Falling on His Sword, Again, Kind Of

"We were faced with a circumstance where gas plants were sited right next to schools, condominium towers, family homes and a hospital. That wasn't right."
"I knew that going into this, that when I said we're going to relocate gas plants, that I did not have at my hand the costs associated with that."
Former Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty

But backing up, it was this same premier and his cabinet who determined just where those gas plants should go. The backlash from communities resistant to the gas plant locations in their neighbourhoods held no resonance with him, and he proceeded with his plans, regardless. After all, it was his Liberal government's initiative to nobly haul Ontario into green energy production, and concommitant higher energy costs.

Energy costs that reflected ineptitude and blase oblivion to practicalities, focusing instead on the optics that then-Premier McGuinty was so anxious to convey. His full-steam ahead approach only ran into a roadblock when he realized, before the 2010 provincial election, that it unappetizingly appeared very likely that the Liberals were about to lose their important Oakville and Mississauga ridings.

And it was then that the decision was made, to balance the killing of the gas plants, even one that was already under construction, on the need to regain political power, to retain a majority election standing that would allow the Liberal project to keep perpetuating itself as the governing party. All of a sudden Premier McGuinty understood, on the cusp of the election that  it wasn't right to expose school children to the near presence of gas plants.

"In my office, we don't have the capacity to make calculations associated with these kinds of contractual arrangements, or to make these kinds of estimates as to what ultimate costs might be", of the gas plant cancellations, he unctuously, righteously, informed the legislature's justice committee looking into the debacle of the cancellation and the resulting whopping penalties.

After a good deal of low-ball estimating from an office without the capacity to make calculations, post-election, when the realization set in that there would be a lot of tax-payer rage over tax dollars hitting the fan, figures did circulate. No big deal, just a few million dollars. And then the cancellation of the two energy projects and their relocation was judged to be, maybe, $230-million, enough to enrage the public, at any rate.

That is one hell of a lot of money wasted on a split-moment decision made in an amateurishly puerile attempt to retain riding votes. But $230-million it was, despite the howls of anger, and the more knowledgeable estimations of potentially far, far more in penalty costs. A cost that now hovers at $600-million and threatens to expand upward from there, as well.

"What became apparent -- at least to me -- was that getting out of this was going to be complicated, and that there were going to be costs associated with that. But I'd much rather be here today talking to members of this committee, rather than ducking the people of Oakville and Mississauga over the course of the next 20 years as we put in place gas plants which never should have gone in there", blathered Mr. McGuinty.

"The people of Ontario are the ones stuck with the bill, and they're also stuck with a real sense of cynicism around a government's commitment to being accountable", observed NDP Leader Andrea Horvath. Who now has the opportunity, should she wish to exercise it, to refuse to support the new Liberal budget brought to Ontario courtesy of the old Liberal cabal under a new leader who was part and parcel of that election-eve decision.