Things Ontario Liberals want you to forget

The new Ontario Liberal Leader says that her party has moved too far to the left, but their history suggest otherwise

• This article was first published in Rabble.ca by Paul Kahnert. it has been reprinted here for social media purposes.

The first thing Crombie said in her campaign was that “the Liberals moved too far to the left”. Nothing could be further from the truth. The facts are that the Liberals were sent to the political wilderness exactly because they went too far to the right.

When you look closely at the Ontario Liberal record from the time Dalton McGuinty was elected leader in 1996 to 2018, there is a very strong case to be made that the Liberal’s standard operating procedure was serial lying, misinformation and serial promise breaking.

There is also a very strong case to be made with documentation, that the Liberals were partners with the Conservatives on hydro deregulation and privatization, which was the theft of our publicly owned hydro systems.

The public record, their own publications and out of their own mouths, the Liberals have convicted themselves on both counts.

The misinformation put out by both McGuinty and Wynne on hydro deregulation and privatization was jaw dropping.

When Harris brought his hydro deregulation legislation to a vote. The voting record shows that every single Liberal voted for it and then later bragged about it. An invitation to private energy companies to come to a Liberal fundraiser dated October 31, 2001, titled “Energy Sector Reception for Dalton McGuinty, stated, “Throughout Ontario’s restructuring process, Dalton and the Ontario Liberals have been consistent supporters of the move to an open electricity market in Ontario.”

During the 2003 provincial election, Dalton McGuinty in an exclusive interview with the Toronto Sun steals the main campaign plank of the NDP and promises a return to Public Power and promises to scrap hydro deregulation declaring, “number one, hydro must be public.” McGuinty wins a landslide because of the promise and immediately breaks it. In 2004, the Liberals brought in Bill 100 greatly strengthening hydro deregulation and then again using the Conservative deregulation legislation to. mandate smart meters for everyone at a cost of $2 billion promising that “smart meters will save you money”. Harris brought in deregulation endlessly promising “lower rates”. By 2007 rates had doubled, by 2010 rates had tripled.

By the time Ford comes to power in 2018 rates have quadrupled.

On August 30, 2007, the Liberals announced the 20-year $60 billion Integrated Power system plan. No debate whatsoever. Tucked into that 4,000-page plan are proposals that will increase private generation and continue right on with hydro deregulation making the exact same promise made by the Harris Conservatives, that of “lower rates.”

In 2009 the Liberal’s bring in Green Energy Act. It was a complete failure because it was nothing more than a license for private green energy producers to print money.

On March 10, 2015, after endlessly promising to never sell Hydro One on the Hansard public record, in the Globe and Mail, Wynne announced the sale of Hydro One. She promises, “Whatever we do, we are going to control prices. We are going to make sure that the regulatory regimes that will protect people in this province stay in place.” Wynne again makes the same “lower rates” promise as Harris did.

Wynne, her Minister of Energy and many of her MPP’s, repeated that promise in the media again and again on many occasions including Liberal publications and recorded on the Queens Park public record. Then the Liberals bring in Bill 91. The removal of “regulatory regimes that will protect people in this province” by Bill 91 are jaw dropping. In Bill 91, in plain language, oversight from the Auditor General and the Ombudsman is removed. Oversight, Financial Accountability Officer on Hydro One and all government power to regulate accounting practices and policies of Hydro One is removed. The cap on Hydro One’s executives and the requirement to report salaries to the “Sunshine List” were also removed.

When we won our court case proving that the Conservatives did not have the legal right to sell Hydro One in April of 2002, the Conservatives marched right back into Queens Park and passed Bill 58, The Reliable Energy and Consumer Protection Act, which gave the provincial government the legal right to sell Hydro One. It was this Conservative enacted law that Kathleen Wynne used to sell Hydro One.

Copying their Conservative partners mantra of tax cuts, Wynne cut the corporate tax rate from 14 per cent to 11 per cent and then made huge cuts to healthcare to pay for it.

The Liberals fired more than 1,600 nurses, froze hospital budgets and slashed physician services. Even the Toronto Star criticized the Liberals for their cuts to healthcare to “balance the books”. The Wynne Liberals also closed 600 schools more than any other government in Ontario history. The liberal gas plant fiasco cost taxpayers $1.1 Billion!

The Liberals bring in multi-billion dollar subsidies to deal with the hydro rate problem caused by deregulation and the Enron designed electricity market they supported. Ford has continued hiding and protecting the electricity market and the deregulation failure in exactly the same way the Liberals did. Since Ford was first elected in 2018, he has spent almost $7 billion a year in subsidies.

Voters are not stupid; Voters don’t like being lied to and they don’t like seeing promises repeatedly broken either.

It was the sale of Hydro One that really angered voters. Punching a $500 million hole in the provincial budget for the entire future history of Ontario made no sense to anyone. It was this record of going too far to the right that sent the Liberals to the political wilderness. The Liberal record greatly damaged trust in government and democracy as a whole. It greatly contributed to voter belief that ALL politicians cannot be trusted. When you look at the Conservative/ Liberal record, the public interest was deliberately eroded and public wealth was transferred to the wealthy.

Watch for Liberal spin doctors to revise Liberal history to praise with an invented story of how good the Liberal rule was.

If the Liberals really want to renew and redeem their party with voters, they will have to take responsibility for their actions and make a concrete plan for hydro rates and climate change by closing the electricity market and regulating rates.

Whoever defeats Ford and forms the next government will have to finally deal with the ridiculous situation where artificially high hydro rates are artificially lowered with multibillion dollar subsidies ensuring private producers and for-profit operators get their profits and taxpayers get the bill. This $7 billion a year is much more greatly needed to fix our healthcare system and fight the climate crisis.