Hydro One privatization will hurt schools
Guelph Mercury
Tue May 12 2015
Byline: Misty Gagne
“The privatization of Hydro One will further exacerbate already underfunded school board budgets.”
I couldn’t agree more with that statement. The sale of Hydro One will mean rising rates as private corporations demand larger profits.
You don’t have to take my word for it, either. That quote came from the lips of Liz Sandals, now Guelph’s MPP and the province’s Minister of Education. It was made in 2002 during a presentation to a government panel holding hearings into the sale of Hydro One in 2002, when she was president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association.
Sandals very articulately laid out the argument against hydro privatization, and as an MPP and education minister, I hope she remembers the truth in what she said.
She argued Hydro One should not be sold because private investors will expect profits from the company that will drive hydro rates up. That would translate into a real hit for schools across the province as they struggle to find the cash for higher hydro rates from already overstretched budgets, she argued. A private investor also won’t want to sink money into necessary hydro infrastructure improvements, she said.
Well, today we’re in a situation where program budgets for schools, as well as for health care and almost every public service, have been kept below the rate of inflation and population growth for years. Ontario spends less on public service programs than other provinces. The government is already forcing school and hospital closures across the province. We’ve seen the death toll from a cost-cutting privatization of snow clearing on provincial highways.
The government has said they plan to keep a minority 40 per cent stake in Hydro One, but the legislation they introduced anticipates what will happen when government ownership falls below 10 per cent. That says to me they have a long-term vision of a complete privatization of our provincial electrical transmission and distribution infrastructure.
How will this privatization and the rising rates be any different from what Sandals foresaw 13 years ago?
The simple truth is, it won’t be.
Experience in Ontario and around the world says so. Our electrical system will become less reliable. We will lose local control over a vital public service. Rates will go up, and schools, hospitals and other public services we rely on will have to cut millions of dollars more from front-line services to pay for rising demands for profit from Hydro One’s new corporate owners.
Liz Sandals was right in 2002. I encourage our MPP to fight the Hydro One sale in caucus and in public, and to do the right thing and vote against it in the Ontario legislature.
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