Paul Vieira
National Post
December 12, 2002

More Ontario residents will qualify for a price cap on the electricity they consume after the provincial government introduced further changes yesterday to legislation governing the power sector.

The new measures will see the number of people eligible for the capped rate expanded from households and farmers to people who live in condominiums and apartment buildings, businesses with less than 50 employees and a recognized charitable institution.

The regulations are aimed at supplementing Bill 210, which basically abandons the province’s attempt to open its power market to competition after electricity prices soared this past summer. Its chief tenet is that the price of power paid by consumers will be capped at 4.3 cents a kilowatt hour (KwH) until 2006, at the earliest. The province will step in and cover the cost if the market price for power exceeds 4.3 cents KwH.

Also, uplift charges – a 0.62 cents KwH levy charged to cover the cost of importing power – will be frozen. The uplift charge soared during certain days in the summer, to as high as 25 cents KwH, due to the need to import electricity from neighbouring provinces and states to meet record demand.

Critics say these two moves will add to the $21-billion hydro-related debt. "They are all in the spirit of Bill 210, and they dig the hole a little deeper," said Tom Adams, executive director of Energy Probe and a critic of the government’s handling of Ontario’s power sector. "This is central planning, without a plan."

The measures, filed with the provincial registrar, also makes the Independent Electricity Market Operator more accountable to the provincial government. The province wants the IMO – whose job it is to balance supply and demand across the transmission grid and ensure generators are paid for the electricity they produce – to seek prior approval from the Minister of Energy for any proposed changes to the structure of the power market.