St. Thomas hospital’s electricity bill surged 75 per cent since 2012

Electricity bills at the St. Thomas Elgin General Hospital have climbed by more than $581,000 since 2012, according to documents received through a freedom of information request by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

Over the last five years, the cost to power the main campus of the facility rose 75 per cent — up from nearly $780,000 in 2012 to $1.36 million.

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“Instead of paying $581,000 more for electricity, they could have paid for something that matters to the community, like new CT scanners,” explained Christine Van Geyn, the federation’s Ontario director.

“That amount of money could have bought seven new CT scanners.”

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is running a campaign in opposition to the Green Energy Act and cap-and-trade. Van Geyn says money is being thrown away needlessly, and it’s an example of how the province is hurting communities with its energy policies.

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“It’s not just us in our homes who are struggling, it’s the institutions that we rely on, schools and hospitals. That’s our tax money that’s being wasted on additional charges for electricity because the government decided to mismanage the electricity sector in this province.”

Van Geyn is urging people to write their MPs, in hopes of putting an end to green-energy contracts.

“A lot of these green-energy contracts, where you see the government paying multiple times the market rate for wind and solar power — power that we don’t even use in a lot of cases — and it gets exported to other jurisdictions… we’re subsidizing electricity in the United States when we can’t even afford to pay our own bills at home.”

AM980 reached out to the St. Thomas Elgin General Hospital, but a spokesperson was unavailable for comment.