The Ontario PC party put out some tweets that tweeked my interest yesterday, on payments due to a court ruling.
The parties in the case included those in a ruling I wrote about in May’s Ontario appeals court upholds sentence of higher costs for ratepayers – but the hit on ratepayers in the case I wrote about IS estimated at over half a billion dollars.
After watching an exchange between Premier Kathleen Wynne and Leader of the Official Opposition Brown, I decided to see what they were on about.
It turns out I knew most of what they were on about, it was just hard to be certain as neither of them did.
Two new pieces of information since I wrote on the court case in May:
- the case was appealed to the Supreme Court
- additional payments/penalties were paid to compensate for more months of generation. [1]
The Ontario PC party seems totally unaware what the nature of the case is, and it seems blissfully oblivious to the fact the latest $94.7 million payout was not the first payment, nor will it be the last if the court case fails – and Northland is only one supplier getting the payouts as a result of the court case against the Ontario Electricity Financial Corporation (OEFC).
The exchange in the legislature doesn’t reveal:
- the payment is less than 20% of the cost impact of the court judgement
- the OEFC is a shell corporation
- the control of the OEFC is essentially under the Minister of Finance [2]
- the contracts involved in the court case originate prior to 1995, under Premiers Peterson (Liberal) and Rae (New Democratic Party) [3]
- the court case is due to changes in payments due to calculations changed with the introduction, for 2011, of the Industrial Conservation Initiative (ICI – or Class A global adjustment mechanism)