There was another backtrack from the ruling Ontario Liberals last week – a Friday the 13th admission that it was a mistake to impose a 27 per cent decrease in the amount landowners would receive for small-scale, solar-generated electricity.
The proposed decrease was first floated July 2. At that point, suspicion had already been mounting among the entrepreneurs who had jumped on board the microFIT bandwagon since it was first announced in October, 2009. With an original, guaranteed, 20-year price of 80.2 cents per kilowatt-hour, they had successfully signed up thousands of landowners to purchase approximately $100,000 ground-mounted systems.
But after granting so-called “conditional offers” to those who had applied between October and February, 2010, response from the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) had fizzled. Then, July 2, came word the rate would be decreased to 58.8 cents per kilowatt-hour, pending a 30-day comment period. Everyone with a conditional offer would remain at the original price; anyone who hadn’t yet heard back from the OPA would be subject to the new rate.
Reaction was swift and loud. The optics, in rural Ontario, suggested the government was cutting into a potential new source of stability for the province’s embattled farm economy.
Last Friday’s compromise position – 64.2 cents per kilowatt-hour for those projects submitted for approval after July 2; and the full 80.2 cents for anyone who submitted prior to the unexpected July 2 reduction – was reached, ostensibly, as a result of feedback obtained during the aforementioned 30-day comment period.
There has been a level of satisfaction in farm country with the compromise. “The government has listened,” proclaimed Ontario Federation of Agriculture president Bette Jean Crews.
Have the farm groups settled for something less than what their membership constituents really wanted in return for buttering up the government?
Without getting into the fine details of financing the projects over 20 years, it is conceivable that 64.2 cents is a reasonable rate of return under which the microFIT program can sustain itself. It is conceivable that the government and the OPA sincerely failed to anticipate the popularity of the ground-mounted options.
Perhaps the real question, however, should be what was given up by voters in Perth-Wellington, most of whom didn’t even know they had a role to play in the controversy.
Dalton McGuinty’s regime has been struggling lately. There was the back-track on the eco-tax. Charges have been laid against government employees. Real estate agents and pharmacy operators effectively took the Liberals to task over separate policy adjustments. Local Health Integration Networks didn’t effectively insulate the Health Ministry from criticism in the wake of Emergency Ward cutbacks. And then came the unpopular OPA announcement of a decrease from 80.2 cents to 58.8 cents.
The one success, in a long winter and spring of disappointments, was the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST). The transition sailed through virtually unopposed.
People grumbled. Anyone who had suffered even a minor heart murmur in the past five years forced the hiring of extra part-time secretarial help at funeral homes, by rushing to make their dying arrangements prior to the 13 per cent deadline. They scrambled to finalize home purchases, despite assurances from brokers that the HST would have a minimal effect. But there were very little organized opposition.
Fronting the government’s promotion of the change was Perth-Wellington MPP John Wilkinson. He criss-crossed the province, selling the idea – with unprecedented success.
In short, McGuinty owed Wilkinson.
So, when Wilkinson relayed the news to the premier about a visit by four St. Marys-area men to his office, in opposition to the proposed microFIT change, McGuinty listened.
In that meeting, according to Rannoch farmer Barnby Cade, Wilkinson “said the government has the legal right to change the rate. But he agreed with us that it doesn’t necessarily have the moral right.”
Would Wilkinson have taken the moral argument to the premier? We’ll never know. But if he did, there’s a good chance the government’s debt to our MPP has now been paid.
So if you wanted some provincial money for a downtown heritage project, or bridge reconstruction, you might be out of luck.