One of the most outrageous developments in Ontario this year occurred when Ontario’s Tory Premier Ernie Eves won accolades and a boost in the public opinion polls for showing ‘leadership’ during August’s massive power blackout. Yet Eves and the Ontario Tories are the last people who should be getting credit for addressing that crisis because their policies set the stage for it.

The Ontario Tories directly facilitated the power crisis in Ontario in a number of ways. Most notably, they scrapped energy conservation programs implemented by the previous NDP government, and consistently ignored calls for any further conservation measures to be legislated in the province. Prior to the blackout, they showed their absolute disdain for efforts to conserve electricity by scrapping the recently created provincial post of Director of Energy Conservation to facilitate more tax cuts for the rich during a recent round of budget cuts.

These actions exemplify what the Ontario Tories’ priorities are in this regard: the continued privatization and deregulation of electricity in Ontario. Unfortunately, these priorities put us at risk of experiencing more power blackouts by making profit the overriding goal of electricity generation.

Meticulous plant upkeep and the maintenance of spare generating and transmission capacity to meet peaks in demand cease to be priorities in a privatized electricity grid because they cut into profits. Similarly, privatization reduces our ability to use energy conservation measures to meet the objectives of the Kyoto Accord and address the threat of global warming. Finally, deregulation creates the potential for energy corporations to engage in market manipulation, as Enron did with devastating consequences in California.

It follows that the best way to avoid more blackouts is to do the exact opposite of what the Ontario Tories are doing. In other words, vigorously promote conservation and restore a one hundred percent publicly owned and operated electricity generation and distribution system. Socialists must go beyond the NDP’s advocacy of the status quo by keeping hydro-electric power generation largely in the public domain. Socialists must call for all electricity generation to be publicly owned and controlled, including all sources of non-polluting, renewable electricity generation, particularly wind and solar power.

It is especially crucial to keep the development and distribution of renewable energy technology in the public domain, lest the same pursuit of profit, regardless of public, that is intrinsic to the current energy policies of the Ontario Tories ultimately prevail. As memories of the blackout fade, it is time for the left to address and fight the energy policies that left us in the dark.

Ontario’s Poor Hit Hard By Blackout People on low and fixed incomes were the hardest hit by the power outages throughout Ontario, which saw blackouts for over forty hours in many neighbourhoods. Food losses and expenses for emergency supplies, transportation, etc. caused great hardship for poor people throughout the province.

While some recipients of Ontario Works benefits (a social assistance program administered by municipalities) were given small food vouchers, from city to city (and even from office to office) others were told that there was no such program or that any amount given would be deducted in the future. Recipients of provincially-administered Ontario Disability Support Benefits were told that there was no provincial program in place to provide relief. Pensioners who receive federal Canada Pension Plan benefits were likewise told that there would be no crisis money forthcoming, presenting severe problems for many seniors whose medications require that they be taken with food to be effective.