As noted in the Globe and Mail, Ontario’s Auditor General estimates that the provincial government’s politically motivated decision to cancel two gas power plants will cost taxpayers $1 billion:
Ontario’s Liberal government will spend a billion dollars to cancel two gas-fired power plants, a sum that puts the scandal among the costliest in the province’s history and threatens to damage the party months before an expected election. What’s more, Liberal intervention – including from staff in former premier Dalton McGuinty’s office – drove that price tag far higher than it needed to be, Auditor-General Bonnie Lysyk said on Tuesday.
Her audit on one of the plants, in the Toronto suburb of Oakville, had Mr. McGuinty’s successor struggling to contain the fallout. Once again apologizing to Ontarians, Premier Kathleen Wynne took the extraordinary step of vowing to ban political staff from interfering with commercial transactions. “As a new Premier leading a new government, I pledge to you that this will not happen under my watch,” Ms. Wynne told a Queen’s Park news conference after the audit was released. “It never should have happened and it pains me that it did.” She also promised new rules to make sure residents are consulted before a power plant is built in their area.
The story also states that government officials at Ontario Power Authority were sidelined from termination talks by the former premier’s political aids who promised to pay the terminated contractors their full lost profits. This political interference undermined the government’s ability to exercise contractual protections that could have limited taxpayer and ratepayer liability during contract termination talks. A government official with Ontario Power Authority is quoted in an email as stating, “This is really a mess. We are going to get into trouble.” As the story notes in its conclusion, a legislative committee continues to investigate the controversial contract cancellations and is contemplating a contempt of parliament charge that could result in unprecedented jail time for elected officials who were allegedly involved in a cover up of information relevant to the scandal.
