Today’s economic statement from Ontario Finance Minister Sousa should be the last time we get data to demonstrate his theft of residual stranded debt charge revenue. I’ve written on this many times, so in this post I just want to cover the latest farcical accounting, but I’ll provide one more overview of what the “residual stranded debt” was meant to be, and how a charge of $7/MWh (0.7 cents/kilowatt-hour) ended up on electricity bills to address it.
Ontario Hydro was broken up with the electricity act of 1998, and the successor company left with the financial burdens was the Ontario Electricity Finance Corporation (OEFC). It’s a shell company that held about $20 billion more in liabilities than it had in assets (this is known as the OEFC Unfunded Liability). In order to pay the liabilities the OEFC was provided revenue tools; specifically payments in lieu of taxes (PIL) from sector businesses, and profits (above a certain number) from Hydro One and OPG – two successor companies of Ontario Hydro.
The Unfunded Liability that was not capable of being retired through PIL and sector revenues was called the “Residual Stranded Debt”, and to address that debt the residual stranded debt charge was added to our bills.
I was anticipating today’s lie, and here’s how it was pictured:
Let me explain how this is a lie.Read More »