Jim Merriam, London Free Press
You have to wonder how bad the Ontario Liberal party’s internal polls are to force the government to fold on its signature green energy policies.

Published polls show both Premier Kathleen Wynne and party have found a basement under rock bottom and it’s likely private polls show the same or worse.

The fact wind factories were destroying communities and tearing families apart in rural Ontario meant nothing at Queen’s Park.

Likewise, the Grits ignored endless pleas and protests from municipal leaders and wind opponents. They dismissed as meaningless complaints about wind turbines driving families from their homes.

Even the mounting evidence giant turbines are contaminating nearby wells didn’t move Wynne and company.

Plus, the Liberals were experts at ignoring the media, who repeatedly pointed out green energy problems that were leading Ontario into power poverty, particularly in rural areas.

As the old joke about always being ignored until you pass gas in an elevator goes, it only took one Scarborough byelection loss to change the landscape. Read article

Toronto Sun, Ezra Levant
Put aside the scandals and corruption and police investigations into the Ontario Liberal Party. That’s just morality and ethics stuff, and Ontarians are apparently fine with that. But what about the economy created by the Liberals, happily accepted by voters last Thursday?

For seven years running, Ontario has had a higher unemployment rate than the national average. Ontario is a have-not province, now subsidized by others, including Saskatchewan and Newfoundland, two new have provinces. Stop and let that sink in.

Ontario’s taxes are high, and about to grow higher: Premier Kathleen Wynne’s campaign centrepiece was a new payroll tax for a provincial pension plan, deducted from every employee’s paycheque. In other words, a job tax. There will be other taxes too, including on Pearson Airport, the airport already saddled with the highest user fees in the world.

And Ontario’s disastrous experiment with wind turbines and solar panels will continue for decades — that’s the length of time Ontario will force residents and companies to buy power at inflated rates to subsidize their green schemes. Read article

Toronto Sun
Liberal MPP and former energy minister Brad Duguid says Tory Leader Tim Hudak is “completely irresponsible and out of his mind” for trying to extricate taxpayers and hydro consumers from the Liberals’ green energy disaster. In fact, the only people who were completely out of their minds on the green energy file were Dalton McGuinty, Kathleen Wynne, Duguid and the entire Liberal cabinet and caucus.

First, their criticism of Hudak is a straw man. They charge Hudak would be irresponsible to tear up absurdly generous, 20-year contracts the Liberals signed with wind and solar power developers for expensive and unreliable electricity.

Except Hudak didn’t say that. He said he won’t cancel approved projects that are already supplying power to the electricity grid because it would cost even more to walk away from them. He did say he won’t approve new contracts and will review on a case by case basis contracts awaiting final approval from the energy minister. Read article

Lucknow Sentinel, Patrick Bales
Premier Kathleen Wynne may have been in Walkerton Thursday morning to announce her party’s support for the Walkerton Clean Water Centre, but inevitably she was asked about the contentious issues of wind turbines.

Wynne said the wind turbine placement process has improved since she took office. “There needed to be a change in the way those wind turbines were sited,” she said. “I believe that it’s very important that communities have more input.”

Wynne noted since she was elected Liberal leader, there have been changes regarding the way turbine contracts are finalized.  “Communities must opportunity to have a say and have much more buy-in,” she said. She also expressed regret for the way the Green Energy Act was implemented. “If I could roll back the clock and we could have a better process from the beginning, I would do that,” Wynne said. “But I can’t do that. All I can is make sure that, going forward, we have a much better process in place and that communities are consulted.” Read article

Sun News, ANTONELLA ARTUSO
TORONTO — Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak has learned nothing from Liberal government’s mistakes in the $1 billion gas plants controversy. That was the unusual message from Liberal MPP Brad Duguid, who said Hudak is about to waste 20 times as much public money if he proceeds with his plans to tear up solar and wind power contracts.

“Ontarians should be asking Tim Hudak whether he’s learned from the mistakes that were made during the gas plants issue,” Duguid said Sunday. “We certainly as a government have. We’ve taken a number of measures to make sure that doesn’t happen again. “Tim Hudak, though, in his plan, would repeat the same darn mistake again, costing us tens of billions of dollars.”

The former energy minister said that people understand that governments and politicians make mistakes — as was done in the case of planning to put two gas plants in residential neighbourhoods without adequate public consultation — but expect that lessons will be learned and not repeated. Ontarians will fork over up to $1.1 billion extra over the next couple of decades for reneging on two signed gas plant contracts for Oakville and Mississauga.

In Hudak’s plan for renewable energy, the PC leader is committing to either ripping up existing solar and wind contracts or giving municipalities the ability to do so. Read article

Financial Post, Bruce Pardy
Tim Hudak says the Ontario Conservatives, if elected, will cancel lucrative wind and solar contracts put in place under the Liberals’ green energy program. Can he do so without racking up huge compensation costs?

The answer is yes – if he does it the right way.

The wrong way is to direct the Ontario Power Authority to simply terminate existing contracts, which have robust compensation clauses. The liabilities would dwarf the $1.1-billion paid out by the Liberals for cancelled gas plants.

The right way is to legislate: to enact a statute that declares green contracts to be null and void, and the province to be free from liability. The compensation clauses in the contract will be rendered inoperative if the statute says so.

Statutes can override iron-clad provisions in a contract because that is the nature of legislative supremacy: Legislatures can pass laws of any kind, as long as they are within their jurisdiction and do not offend the constitution. Legislating on electricity production is clearly a provincial power, as are “property and civil rights.” Read article

Toronto Sun
It’s time to blow off expensive subsidies to wind and solar power, PC Leader Tim Hudak says. The Progressive Conservatives would, if elected to govern, refuse to sign any more renewable energy deals at high rates of return and focus on creating an electricity system reliant on gas, hydro operations and nuclear power. A Tory government would also give more control to local municipalities over the siting of wind projects, he said.

“If people can have a say about a hot dog stand going in for a Canada Day celebration, shouldn’t they have a say about massive industrial wind turbines in their backyard?” Hudak said. The PCs say they will not proceed with any wind or solar applications that have not been already approved.

Those projects that have been approved but not yet connected to the grid would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Such a move would save $20 billion and help businesses create 40,000 jobs through more affordable electricity — numbers confirmed by an independent economist brought in by the PCs, Hudak said. Read article

Deborah Van Brenk, London Free Press
If the minority Liberal government can’t pass its budget next month, Ontario will be plunged into a widely expected spring election. Deb Van Brenk tested the early voter mood in the 10-riding London region, driving its Hwy. 401 backbone. Once almost solidly Liberal, the region now has only one Grit left standing. High power bills, the gas plants scandal, wind turbines — voters are chafing at many issues.

Where: Hwy 401 at Kent Bridge Rd. (Chatham-Kent-Essex riding)
Who: Farmer Glen Ure

From just this overpass, between the West Lorne and Chatham exits, 76 wind turbines are visible in the near and far horizon. Some sprout just beyond the borders of Glen Ure’s farm, where he’s lived all his life and where his parents farmed before him.

Elsewhere in the region, others battle turbines out of health concerns but Ure rejected offers to be a wind landlord because he wasn’t satisfied with the wind companies’ answers to his many questions. Governments and energy companies control enough of his life and he’s not about to let them control his land, too. Read article

The Recorder
Area residents jolted by rising hydro costs have turned the energy file into what could be the key local issue in a possible 2014 Ontario election campaign, Leeds-Grenville MPP Steve Clark says. “Certainly in our constituency office, it’s the number one issue,” Clark said Sunday following his annual Christmas reception for constituents at the Royal Brock.

Residents turned off by the surge in hydro rates expected to accompany the Liberal government’s recently unveiled energy plan have been flooding the constituency office with angry feedback, Clark said. “A day doesn’t go by that somebody doesn’t come into my constituency office furious at the government, with their policy,” said Clark.

Even with conservation efforts, residents are still seeing their bills “skyrocket,” he said. Reiterating his Progressive Conservative party’s stance that the Liberals’ plan is designed merely to get the government through a possible spring election, Clark said the Tories provided possible energy solutions in their “white paper” on energy reform. Read article

Global Toronto News
[Excerpt] Progressive Conservative Randy Pettapiece won Perth-Wellington by the slimmest of margins – 1.4 per cent, or 210 votes. The riding, which borders the Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound area, could be affected by the wind turbine issue that led to conservative success in this area.

“Wind turbines have been an issue and will continue to an issue for southwestern Ontario,” said Robert Drummond, professor emeritus at York University. “It cost [the Liberals] in the last election and that might not change.”