Margaret Wente
Globe and Mail
June 26, 2003

"Good news, honey!" I told my husband yesterday. "I’m going out to get some Swiss Chalet for dinner. Premier’s orders." I thought my husband would be thrilled because he is very conservation-minded. Also, he also loves that secret sauce.

Ernie Eves says that decent people ought to stow away their backyard barbecues and eat Swiss Chalet instead. This will save the environment, and also help forestall the chance of rolling blackouts in power-short Ontario. Determined to set a good example, Mr. Eves also revealed that he has programmed his dishwasher to turn on after midnight.

But my husband wasn’t thrilled with Ernie’s big idea. He pointed out that the nearest Swiss Chalet is a couple of kilometres away. So unless I walk there in the stifling heat, it’s going to take two car rides to deliver us a bag of food. Which kind of cancels out the net effect.

On the other hand, I argued, if we eat it right out of the tin there won’t be dishes.

Mr. Eves has another strategy to save energy, which involves praying to the weather gods for a cold snap. "If everybody continues to be energy-conservation-conscious [and] the individual up above gives us a little help," he said the other day, "I’m confident everything will work out."

In fact, divine intervention may be what’s needed to save the Premier’s political career. The power supply in Canada’s industrial heartland is so fragile that even the Americans have begun to worry about it. By the end of the summer, BBQ Ernie could be known as Blackout Ernie.

Ontario’s power shortage is not a natural disaster. It’s a policy disaster, self-inflicted by a succession of provincial governments, including the present one. Ernie implies that we are selfish brats to crank up the air-conditioning when the humidex hits 42. But why shouldn’t we? Electricity is practically free. The province buys it for 10 cents and sells it to us for 4.3. What a deal! And whose bright idea was it to give the stuff away? Ernie’s!

"It’s the perfect storm," says Energy Probe‘s Tom Adams, who has been tracking this debacle for a couple of decades. Demand is soaring, with no incentive to cut down on use. Supply is limited, because our transmission system may not be able to import all the juice we need. Nuclear power was supposed to be creating most of our energy. But many of our nuclear plants are out of action.

The nuclear dream, as Mr. Adams explains, is a major contributor to our current nightmare. Back in the 1960s and 70s, our leaders decided that nuclear power was the way of the future. It was perfect: high-tech, cheap, clean. So confident were we in our nuclear future that we didn’t bother hedging our bets.

Ontario wasn’t alone. Most developed countries jumped into nuclear. Then, in 1979, came the accident at Three Mile Island, which proved that nuclear technology wasn’t so robust after all. After that, the operating rules for nuclear – and the economics – changed dramatically. Instead of being cheap and clean, nuclear power turned out to be "technically exotic, financially exhausting and managerially demanding," as Mr. Adams says. "We were among the last people to figure out what a headache it is."

In 1997, American nuclear experts conducted a review of Ontario’s nuclear program and discovered serious problems. By then, many of our reactors were geriatric. So they were shut down for repairs. If they were working today, we wouldn’t have a power crisis. But five years and hundreds of millions in cost overruns later, we’re still trying to fix them. No one can say for sure when they’ll be up and running again.

No wonder this government would rather talk about the smog. But they’re disingenuous about that, too.

The source of all that chewy air is not our excessive grilling habits.

It’s the hundreds of thousands of extra cars that came along with our population explosion. It’s also our ancient coal plants, even if the Ontario Environment Minister denies it. We never bothered to fix them up, because we thought we’d never need them. During peak-load periods, they create around 20 per cent of our smog.

The real problem is that Canada’s economic engine is desperately short of juice. Every energy decision the Tory government has made has scared away investment. No socialists could have done worse.

Meantime, our infrastructure is collapsing. "Ninety per cent of our coal and nuclear plants are past middle age," says Mr. Adams. "The low-pressure system is converging on us. And the guy in charge is ordering out for Swiss Chalet."

Mr. Eves blames God. But if rolling blackouts arrive before election time, the voters will blame Ernie.

And then they’re gonna barbecue him.