http://business.financialpost.com/
The question all Ontarians must begin asking is how much economic pain — high transportation costs, soaring electricity rates, rampaging housing-market shortages and costs, stalled transit development, soaring debt — are they willing to endure to satisfy the Central Planning Monster.
The beast is everywhere, lurking in the background of every twitch in government policy and every legislative lurch. It’s thick claw-marks are all over Finance Minister Charles Sousa’s new Ontario budget, tabled Thursday, taking control of more and more economic activity and extending policy-making’s reach far beyond the iron grip it already holds on health care.
In the name of climate change and carbon control, Ontario’s Liberal government sent electricity prices soaring, the predictable product of the 2009 Green Energy Act that allows the government to seize control over an expanding range of energy operations.
Carbon taxes on gasoline and fossil fuels are set to climb inexorably in years to come, claimed as essential to fulfill a green agenda and fund assorted uneconomic anti-automobile transit initiatives.
The causes of the energy-price crisis are generally understood by the majority of Ontarians: Botched government planning by politicians and bureaucrats who adopted green central planning at the core of an increasingly authoritarian land-control regime. Personal choice be damned. Market forces be damned.
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