Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and her cabinet ministers excel at alternative facts and fake news. The latest example was Finance Minister Charles Sousa’s speech Thursday to The Empire Club, part of which boasted about how the Liberals saved Ontario’s electricity system by doing the heavy lifting needed to improve it.
As a result, Sousa said, Ontario’s electricity grid is now “the envy of North America” because the Liberals restored “integrity and reliability” to it, unlike neighbouring Canadian provinces and the rust belt states. Simply put, what on Earth is Sousa talking about?
Hydro One controls the transmission of electricity through 29,000 km of hydro lines in Ontario and provides electricity to 1.3 million customers.
In her December, 2015 annual report, Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk said between 2010 and 2014, Hydro One customers experienced 24% more power outages, lasting 30% longer, while costs to run the system increased by 31%.
She described Hydro One as “consistently one of the least reliable among large Canadian electricity distributors”. She said its maintenance backlog increased by 47% and power outages by 7%, between 2012 and 2014.
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