Powerless

The CP reports on Northern Ontario's power problems, as a region capable of producing large amounts of cheap and clean energy is instead suffering from poor distribution and post-deregulation prices:

Some 25,000 direct and indirect jobs have been lost in the past year as a result of a battered forestry industry - a crippling loss for small towns, which have seen their tax base shrink and unemployed workers move away, leaving empty homes, shops and schools.

In acknowledging a weakening industry, the government has helped lower wood fibre costs by improving forest access roads and offered loans for plants that want to expand and modernize. But the coalition says mill owners have repeatedly cited electricity as the most crippling part of doing business in Ontario.

Since the deregulation of Ontario's $10-billion electricity market in 2002, prices have jumped about 60 per cent, even as the price of generating and producing energy in northern Ontario has stayed the same - roughly $40 per megawatt-hour...

Northerners consume just 2,000 megawatts of power compared to the 25,000 swallowed up in the south, said New Democrat Leader Howard Hampton, whose Kenora-Rainy River riding depends heavily on the forest sector.

Unlike the south, where consumption and supply are the problem, the north's electricity challenge is high rates, he said. That's why a northern pricing scheme is so fundamental to the region's economic future.

"The electricity system has totally turned their world upside down," Hampton said.

"Even though they built their mills in the middle of the best wood fibre in the world and in the middle of power dams where they have a surplus...somebody turning on their air conditioner in Toronto will shut them down."...

Since the 1970s, there's been talk of beefing up the north's puny transmission lines. But the province seems more interested in buying power from Manitoba and Labrador, and spending billions on nuclear plants, he added.

"That ticks me off...We have the power right here in our own province. We're just not looking at tapping into the renewable energy up in northern Ontario."

Upgrading lines near the Parry Sound area could get 600 more megawatts flowing south at a cost of $50 to 60 million, less than the cost of a nuclear plant, he added.

It's hard to see what Ontario could possibly stand to gain from its current refusal to make better use of its northern generating potential. But it's far too clear that the McGuinty government isn't the least bit interested in investing in connections across the province. And the end result is not only that the northern part of the province is losing out on both power generation and other industries, but also that the power-hungry southern part of the province is stuck looking to unduly expensive and hazardous alternatives such as nuclear power to meet the demand that could be met further north.