Show Transcript – November 27

Transcript for Saturday, November 27, 2010 – 1830

Also airs Sunday, November 28, 2010 – 0700 and 0000

Monday, November 29, 2010 – 0630

Ontario’s 20-Year Energy Plan

GUESTS –

Energy Minister Brad Duguid

PC Energy Critic John Yakabuski

NDP Energy Critic Peter Tabuns

SEAN MALLEN: If there’s one issue that eats up Ontario governments of whatever political stripe, it’s hydro. An opposition leader once welcomed a new energy minister to the portfolio by remarking that he stepped into the Bermuda triangle, and that “the landscape is littered with the corpses of his predecessors”. Those comments were made by Liberal leader and future premier, David Peterson, in 1983. A little later in that same Question Period another Liberal MPP asked the minister whether the government should be “a little more cautious about nuclear power, until we knew all the ramifications, in fact until we know the true cost”. Twenty-seven years later and those comments still resonate.

(video clip)

The 20-year energy plan introduced by the McGuinty government calls for a lot more wind power and a continuing reliance on nuclear, even though we still owe billions for the reactors we already have. And the current Energy Minister believes we’re all ready to pay more on our bills to fulfill the vision.

Hon Brad Duguid, Minister of Energy: I can’t wait to tell Ontarians about how ambitious we are to build a cleaner, healthier future for them and their kids because I think Ontarians are going to be with us on this.

It means a total investment of $87 billion, partly public, partly private. The government estimates thirty-three billion dollars of that will go towards building two new nuclear reactors and refurbishing ten others. Nuclear will provide half of our power. Fourteen billion dollars will be invested in wind generation, which will grow to ten per cent of our supply. And twelve billion dollars will go towards conservation measures.

Household power bills are projected to rise an average of 3.5 per cent a year, which means a doubling at the end of twenty years. But critics say most of the numbers are at best, a guess, and that the nuclear component alone is sure to cost billions more than predicted.

Shawn-Patrick Stensil/Greenpeace Canada: Premier McGuinty will not be around when the cost of the new plant kicks in in five to ten years, so there’s really no accountability.

But for those who work in the nuclear industry it’s a chance to preserve, and perhaps add, to the 30,000 people who work in the field in Canada, mainly in Ontario.

Neil Alexander, Organization of CANDU Industries: For us there’s also the opportunity to get back into the world renaissance in nuclear power and become a leader again in the supply of nuclear goods and services.

On this week’s Focus – Power Play.

From the Global News Room in Toronto, this is Focus Ontario with Sean Mallen.

SEAN MALLEN: Thanks for joining me again. Later in the program we’ll hear from the opposition critics on this file, but first Ontario’s Minister of Energy, Brad Duguid. Welcome back to the program.

Brad Duguid: Great to be back, Sean.

SEAN MALLEN: Far from the Bermuda triangle.

Brad Duguid: Oh, absolutely. And I’m alive and well and feeling great.

SEAN MALLEN: Okay, well let’s get to the plan now. We just had a twenty-year plan delivered just three years ago by one of your predecessors in the Liberal government. This new one I guess calls for more renewable power, especially wind. It ups the price for nuclear by about seven billion, calls for more conservation, but I guess the first question I would ask is what good is a twenty-year plan if it has to be revised after three years?

Brad Duguid: Well, you want to make sure that your plan is always updated. Things do change, the world changes, technology changes, you want to make sure you’re right on top of that technological change when it happens. So three years from now we will review this plan again. But for today, for now, we’re operating on a twenty-year plan going forward, which is unique for Ontario. We’re the first government to come forward with a twenty-year plan. This twenty-year plan provides Ontario with certainty that we will be out of coal-(fired generation) by the year 2014, which means cleaner air for our families to breathe, which means a healthier future for our kids and our grandkids. It also means the development of thousands of new clean energy jobs, and this plan jettisons Ontario to the top of the global clean energy market internationally. It’s something that’s going to be very good news for Ontario workers.

SEAN MALLEN: A lot of attention as I suggested in the opening about the cost of nuclear, $33 billion is the guess. It’s never been officially published, but the report was that buying two new nukes was already too much. It was going to cost $26 billion alone. Surely $33 billion is nowhere close to what it’s going to cost.

Brad Duguid: Well, that’s the best estimates that are available today and there’s a lot of rigour that has gone into those numbers. So as of today they are the best estimates available. We are investing in nuclear, we need to. We have ten aging units that need to be refurbished. That’s a very significant project that we’ll be embarking on. It will create thousands of jobs here in this province, about five billion dollars actually in economic stimulus to our economy, and we will need to purchase two new units over the course of the coming years.

SEAN MALLEN: So you’re kind of stuck, aren’t you, because your predecessor said before you wanted to buy Canadian, you wanted to buy CANDU’s, but AECL is up for sale and the reports show no certainty of whoever is going to buy it is even going to want to sell CANDU’s. So I guess my question is at what point, if you’re committed to nuclear, do you have to say we can’t wait any longer, we’re going to have to go somewhere else, to France or the United States, or somewhere?

Brad Duguid: But there’s no question, when the federal government decided in the middle of our procurement process with AECL, to sell AECL, there’s no doubt at all that was problematic to us moving forward. We asked them not to do that, they went ahead and did it anyway. We asked them to sit down with us and do this nuclear agreement so that we could move forward, and it actually improved the value of AECL, which we thought made a lot of sense. They rebuffed us on that as well. So they’re moving forward with their own process; we’re eager to see that come to a close so we can restart discussions with whoever owns AECL at the end of this. We’re confident we will be purchasing these two new units. Fortunately though Sean, because of the investments we’ve made, the 8400 new megawatts of power we’ve added over the last seven years, because of the conservation efforts of Ontarians, and because demand has moderated somewhat, we’ve got a little bit of time to get this done.

SEAN MALLEN: But it takes ten years to get a new one built.

Brad Duguid: That’s right.

SEAN MALLEN: And you need to get going soon.

Brad Duguid: Yes. Exactly why we want to do this –

SEAN MALLEN: How soon?

Brad Duguid: Well, we don’t have a set time, a deadline that we’ve set for this at this point in time, but because it does take eight to ten years to get a nuclear unit from being purchased, to up, built and operating, we want to do this as soon as possible.

SEAN MALLEN: Shouldn’t you at least be looking at the other alternatives though? I mean to be ready to go to France or the United States, wherever?

Brad Duguid: Well, we want to do all that we can to ensure that we support the Canadian and Ontario nuclear industry. Seventy thousand Canadian jobs depend on this industry. We have a great opportunity here if we were to purchase these units domestically, to let CANDU and that technology have access to a multi-trillion dollar market globally. So we want to make sure we do everything we can, if we can, to purchase those units domestically, but our priority is Sean, a fair price. And we’ve been clear on that from the beginning. We will purchase these two units, but getting a fair price for consumers will be our first priority.

SEAN MALLEN: I’m going to stop you there, we’re actually over time in this segment. We’ll be back in a moment to talk to Brad Duguid.

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SEAN MALLEN: And we’re back with Energy Minister Brad Duguid, talking about the twenty-year energy plan. Before we leave nuclear, one other point about it. You suggest that it’s irresponsible to suggest we try to phase it out. But this twenty-year-plan, that is a long time, and there’s a lot of uncertainty with nuclear, a lot of questions about the cost, nuclear waste, all the rest of it. Isn’t there in fact an option with this amount of time period to think about maybe a bunch of smaller projects, instead of a couple multi-billion dollar ones?

Brad Duguid: I don’t think there’s a realistic option. Nuclear is emission-free, it’s clean. We know how nuclear works, it works well. It’s really giving a fantastic base-load power.

SEAN MALLEN: That’s why we owe $15 billion for the ones we built.

Brad Duguid: Well, that’s what we need these units for. But when you add it all up and you look at the economics of it, it’s still the most economical way to go in terms of building that base load capacity. So it makes sense. I think it’s irresponsible to suggest that we can move forward without nuclear. It’s fifty per cent of the power that we use.

SEAN MALLEN: Okay, the Green Energy Act. Your predecessor, Mr Smitherman, introduced it. He was adamant, and I think you were still adamant when you came into the portfolio, the Green Energy Act would affect power bills by about one per cent a year. A lot more than that though, isn’t it?

Brad Duguid: Well, we’ve been very clear with this long term energy product. I think that’s one of the good things about it for Ontarians. We’ve been very up front with Ontarians about the costs of ensuring that we have a clean, reliable, modern energy system.

SEAN MALLEN: Excuse me, but were you up-front initially by claiming it was going to be one per cent a year? I mean it has its benefits, there’s a lot of people supporting it, but it’s more than one per cent a year, and really that was pretty clear from the beginning, wasn’t it?

Brad Duguid: We’re also doing more renewables than initially was anticipated. I mean we’re going from three per cent renewables now, to 13 per cent of our base, and one of the reasons we’re doing that is we’re making Ontario a clean energy international powerhouse. That’s creating thousands of jobs in communities right across this province, from Windsor, to Guelph, to Sault Ste Marie, to Hamilton, to here in Toronto. It’s really helping to revitalize our economy, and helping to put some businesses that were hit hard by the global recession back to work.

SEAN MALLEN: You guys are definitely feeling the heat about this power rate thing, yes? Otherwise you wouldn’t have come up with a ten per cent cut in our power bills over the next five years. It’s resonating, yes?

Brad Duguid: Well, we put some (questions) very closely to Ontario families. We’ve done a very significant consultation with Ontarians as we move forward with this long term energy plan. Here’s what they told us, Sean. They said we agree we want you out of coal, it makes sense by taking (theoretically) seven million cars off Ontario highways and roads. It’s going to improve our air. We want to build a healthier future for our kids and grandkids. We really care about that, so we’re with you there. We’re with you in building and creating these thousands of clean energy jobs. We know we need them, we’re with you there.

SEAN MALLEN: But not so much to have my power bill go up 46 per cent over five years?

Brad Duguid: But you know what, the bills are going up, and we’ve just been through a recession, and that’s a little tough on our budgets. So that’s why we’ve moved forward with the clean energy benefit that’s going to take ten per cent off everybody’s bill, every bill, every month, for the next five years. It’s going to help Ontario familys transition through this period of investment so that we can get to that cleaner, more reliable, modern energy system that all Ontario families deserve.

SEAN MALLEN: Only about thirty seconds left in this segment. Our poll this last weekend had you nine points behind the Conservatives. A bunch of reasons for that, but hydro rates certainly a part of it. Are you feeling the heat – excuse the expression – to come up with something else to ease the blow for people, to ease their anger a little bit over the next eleven months before the election?

Brad Duguid: I’ll tell you what I think. I think as Ontarians have a chance to take a look at this long term energy plan – they can go to ontario.caenergy plan – to have a look at it, and they can provide us with some input as well when they do that. I think if they see what we’re doing here, I think if they see we’re building a cleaner, a more reliable, a modern energy system that’s creating jobs, I think that they’re going to think this is something worth fighting for.

SEAN MALLEN: Okay well, we’ll see. Brad Duguid, thanks for coming on the program.

Brad Duguid: Thank you, Sean.

SEAN MALLEN: And back in a moment to hear from the other side of the aisle.

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SEAN MALLEN: Equal time now for the opposition. John Yakabuski is the energy critic for the Progressive Conservatives; Peter Tabuns has that role for the NDP. Welcome back to Focus.

John Yakabuski: Nice to be here.

Peter Tabuns: Thank you, Sean.

SEAN MALLEN: Both of you have been all over the cost of hydro bills under this government, so I guess we should start with a question to you both, can either of you credibly claim that a Conservative or New Democrat government would have hydro bills that go up at a lower rate? Start with you, Mr Yakabuski.

John Yakabuski: A lower rate than this government plans. I would say yes, we could –

SEAN MALLEN: How?

John Yakabuski: – because this government has made all of the wrong decisions when it comes to increasing the cost of hydro. I mean the Minister was on here earlier, he talks about their Green Energy plan, which they have in a way admitted that they totally mislead the public as to what that would mean to them in increased energy bills. And when we look at their long term energy plan it’s going to be more of the same. Their estimate that the bills would double by 2030 is low. They are low-balling the price just as they low-balled the price on their Green Energy Act.

SEAN MALLEN: So Mr Tabuns, would a New Democrat government have a lower rate of increase on hydro bills, and how would you do it?

Peter Tabuns: Well Sean, I think we would have a lower rate of increase and I think we’d do it by making efficiency and conservation the centre of our plan, which is the lowest cost power that we can deliver in Ontario. We wouldn’t do things like the Liberals are doing putting in place time-of-use meters that are extraordinarily expensive and not delivering savings for people in Ontario. And we wouldn’t be spending to nuclear which goes up in price dramatically every time you make a commitment. Those two things alone would protect Ontarians from the kind of price increases the Liberals are putting in place. I have to agree with John, I think we’re going to see much higher increases and not out to 2030, I think we’re going to see much higher increases in the next five years.

SEAN MALLEN: But to be clear, the Liberal side isn’t saying it’s dishonest to say prices aren’t going up. No matter who’s in power, prices are going up, yes?

John Yakabuski: They said it wouldn’t be going up. You asked if it would go up the same under our government and I would say no. And I’ll give you one example, Sean. How do you square this with the people who are struggling with hydro bills. I talk to people every day and they are just beside themselves. They didn’t plan for these kinds of increases, they didn’t budget for them. When you sign a contract with a company like IKEA that made 2.5 billion euros profit last year, sign a contract with them that is going to profit them $700,000 dollars a year for power that at the market cost would cost them less than a hundred thousand dollars.

SEAN MALLEN: That’s the solar panels.

John Yakabuski: Solar panels on the roofs. 71.6 cents a kilowatt hour will come to IKEA. It doesn’t make sense.

SEAN MALLEN: Okay, less than eleven months to the election and the Premier was on both your party’s case about where’s the plan, where’s the plan, where’s the alternative. So I’d like to try to see if I can pry out of either of you some ideas. Start with you, Mr Yakabuski. Your party has been badmouthing the Green Energy Act from the beginning, you’re blaming it for the increases. So would you do away with the Green Energy Act?

John Yakabuski: I mean you can’t do away with something where there’s contracts. We may do away with the Green Energy Act, but I mean the contracts that are in place are the contracts that are in place. We would not continue to sign these exorbitant contracts and we would want to examine every single one of them to see what our options are. But the other thing that we have promised is that time-of-use pricing, we would make that optional. The smart meter fiasco, it’s been a train-wreck from the start and they’ve as much as admitted it by changing the time-of-use peak period, effective May 1st next year.

SEAN MALLEN: Okay Mr Tabuns, you and your party have been big critics of nuclear power and the nuclear power commitment, but the Minister says it’s irresponsible to say we can do without it. It is half of our power supply. How can you responsibly get rid of nuclear power in this province?

Peter Tabuns: Well, quite frankly Sean, if you take your planning and put conservation and efficiency at the centre, and over the next few decades as nuclear power plants come to the end of their life span, replace them with conservation, with renewable power, with co-generated power. Frankly in the end you may even buy electricity from Quebec at a much lower price than we’re paying for nuclear power. All of those things would allow people to have more affordable hydro rates.

SEAN MALLEN: But isn’t it fifty per cent of your power supply?

Peter Tabuns: Well, in fact I think it does, but I want to go back to one other point. We propose to take the HST off hydro bills, and that is one of the steps. Putting HST on hydro bills is one of the big things that has made hydro unaffordable in this province.

SEAN MALLEN: Okay, Mr Yakabuski your party supports nuclear power. Mr Hudak, your leader, said they’ve been dragging their heels on it. How do you get nuclear power built more quickly though, when we don’t even know if AECL is going to be selling CANDU’s in the near future?

John Yakabuski: We can’t build it any quicker than anyone else because we’re not going to be the ones that are going to be building it, the professionals are going to build it. But the decisions and the moving ahead with having a contract to build it could have been done long ago.

SEAN MALLEN: But who do you hire? Do you hire the French? Hire the Americans? You can’t hire AECL right now, can you?

John Yakabuski: Well, at the present time perhaps we can’t, but we certainly could have been doing some of this, we could have started doing some of this six years ago.

SEAN MALLEN: Are you ready to meet the cost of nuclear power? Thirty-three billion or higher, as Mr Tabuns and others think.

John Yakabuski: We absolutely believe that as a base load source of energy, given the longevity of our nuclear power plants, that the cost of power over the course of the life-span of those plants, is far more economical than the choices the government is offering with regards to expensive and intermittent renewables. We can’t power Ontario on intermittent sources of power without having something to back that up. We’ve got to have a stable source of base load power, nuclear makes that base load.

SEAN MALLEN: Mr Tabuns, how do you deal with dealing with energy planning measured against political realities? I did a story last week about how Ernie Eves, in the dying months of his time as premier, brought in a freeze and did away with de-regulation because power prices were going up. Now you’ve got the Liberals in the eleven months before the election campaign, bringing in ten per cent rate cuts.

Peter Tabuns: And borrowing a billion a year to do it.

John Yakabuski: Yes, that’s right.

SEAN MALLEN: But where does any party find the political courage to stand up and do what they think is right, even though they’re taking the heat?

Peter Tabuns: Well, I think that all political parties look to their values to determine whether or not they’re going to take heat or not. But let’s go back to a more fundamental question. Can we afford to pay for another round of nuclear investments? Anyone who has a hydro bill and looks at that “˜debt retirement charge’ has to know three-quarters of that is the hang over from the last round of investment in nuclear. We can’t afford that. We simply cannot afford that power. We can’t afford to take the risk again of having a thirty-three billion dollar estimate turn into a sixty-six billion dollar expense. That’s what would kill – kill our electricity system and damage our economy for decades to come.

SEAN MALLEN: You’re also talking about a lot more renewables.

Peter Tabuns: I am.

SEAN MALLEN: Renewables are expensive though, more expensive than nuclear, more expensive than coal or gas.

Peter Tabuns: No, no, because there’s a whole range of renewable power out there, Sean, that the Liberals have not been willing to explore.

SEAN MALLEN: Such as.

Peter Tabuns: They have not been willing to invest in a big way in geo-thermal to take heat and cooling out of the ground, something that’s being done in Manitoba, which we could do in a big way in Ontario at a much lower cost for air-conditioning and heating than with traditional electrical sources. They are not willing to invest in passive solar, insulating houses, apartment buildings and offices well enough that the sun coming in keeps them warm. Those sorts of things are the lowest cost renewables. The Liberals have not been willing to invest in them in a big way and that has been hurting us.

SEAN MALLEN: Just twenty seconds left. Quick answer from you and then you. When is the NDP energy plan coming out?

Peter Tabuns: I have to talk to the leader, Andrea Horwath. Before the next election is my bet.

SEAN MALLEN: Mr Yakabuski, ten seconds. When is your plan coming out?

John Yakabuski: Certainly before the next election, and it will be a plan that respects the need of business and consumers in this province and puts the consumer first.

SEAN MALLEN: Okay, that’s time. John Yakabuski, Peter Tabuns, thanks for coming on the program.

Peter Tabuns: Thank you, Sean.

John Yakabuski: My pleasure, thank you very much.

SEAN MALLEN: And still ahead on our final segment, your comments and the Play of the Week – A Ministerial Freudian slip.

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Play of the Week

(video clip)

Hon Tony Clement, Federal Minister of Energy: … compelling economic growth, driving competitiveness and enhancing our quality of life.

Federal Industry Minister Tony Clement clearly has a romantic view of the prospects for Canada’s Telecom industry, but his audience at this speech last week in Ottawa was bowled over by the extent of his passion.

Tony Clement: Simply put we need more Canadian sex stories – success stories.

(laughter and applause)

Tony Clement: Hello, I just wanted to be sure you were awake. Simply put, we need more Canadian success stories.

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And now your comments. If you were watching last week you’ll recall that I spoke to OPP Commissioner Chris Lewis about some damning allegations in a new book on the Caledonia affair. It prompted Julie Leduc to send me an e-mail. She writes: “The natives know how to deal with police officers. They wear masks and know they cannot be identified, which is why so many never get arrested. Frankly I believe the police officers are afraid to dealing with the natives. It’s time for the government to change the laws and enforce them, in order for all Canadians to be treated equally without prejudice.”

So got a comment on our new energy plan. Here’s how you can send it in. You can write a letter to:

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And that’s our program for this week. I’m Sean Mallen, thanks for watching. We’ll see you next weekend.

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