DAM-L Globe and Mail covers the NDP Hydro Tour (fwd)

["D. Murray" <dianne@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca>]

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From: Hamilton, Doug <dhamilton@ndp.on.ca>
To: 'dianne@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca' <dianne@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca>
Subject: Globe and Mail covers the NDP Hydro Tour
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 14:53:49 -0400
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Here is an article from today's Globe and Mail (Thursday April, 18)

NDP capitalizes on public's worry about Hydro sale 
 By MURRAY CAMPBELL					
Thursday, April 18, 2002 - Page A19   SHELBURNE, ONT. -- The comments from
the people coming and going at the Bagins IGA supermarket ought to be enough
to keep Ernie Eves awake at night. This part of Central Ontario is solidly
in the hip pocket of the Progressive Conservative Party, but there is a good
deal of muttering these days about how the government has got the wrong end
of the stick when it comes to providing electricity to their homes and
businesses. The deregulation of the electricity market is two weeks away and
the privatization of the province-wide Hydro One transmission system is
under way. This is making many, many people very nervous. "Why do they have
to privatize Hydro?" Beryl Orme of nearby Dundalk asks. "I don't understand
that." The May 1 move to market-pricing of electricity represents another
step in the Tories' assault on the old Ontario Hydro, the Crown corporation
set up nearly a century ago to generate and distribute electricity. Mike
Harris and the ideologues around him believed Ontario Hydro was old, slow
and stupid and they bristled at the $38-billion in debt it had built up
through its misadventures in building nuclear-power plants. Mr. Harris had
been in office only a few months before he convened a commission that later
recommended major changes to the province's electricity system. Ontario
Hydro was broken up three years ago and its responsibilities given to a
variety of companies as the government promised to open the electricity
market to competition. The Tories pledge that deregulation will provide, as
former energy minister Jim Wilson said, "a safe and reliable supply of power
at the lowest cost." This remains their mantra. When Elizabeth Witmer, now
the Deputy Premier, suggested a few months ago that Ontarians were nervous
about the prospect of massive price increases, her cabinet colleagues
reacted with horror as if she had just published the password to the Albany
Club. There's a rumour that the deregulation could be postponed to allow Mr.
Eves to review the issue, but his new Energy Minister isn't even hinting at
this. "Frankly, the horse is out of the barn," Chris Stockwell said this
week. "We are deregulating on May 1 and I think anybody who is talking
otherwise probably doesn't have a good understanding of the issue." Critics
such as New Democratic Party Leader Howard Hampton foresee a disastrous
impact from deregulation and privatization of Hydro One's distribution
system and many of the province's generating stations. (Last month, Brascan
Corp. bought four plants for $340-million.) Mr. Hampton has been travelling
the province for the past six weeks to warn of skyrocketing prices,
blackouts because of electricity shortages and growing levels of pollution
as profit-hungry private operators crank up coal-burning generating
stations. Mr. Hampton believes he is on to something. "This is an issue that
touches everybody," he said recently as he continued the antiprivatization
tour that has taken him to more than 70 communities. His tour -- aboard a
customized, luxury "power bus" -- is reminiscent of the barnstorming that
Mr. Harris did in the early 1990s to sell his agenda of lower taxes and
smaller government. It is classic retail politics -- a handshake here, a
conversation there. His campaign hasn't been much noticed by Toronto
reporters but he is given a respectful hearing and columns of ink elsewhere.
He gets headlines when he calls the electricity retailers flooding the
market "fly-by-night rip-off artists." The stories that follow his
appearance in a community are almost always a straightforward summary of his
bleak prognosis. The New Democrats have the antideregulation field to
themselves because the Liberals, while they oppose the sale of Hydro One,
support a competitive marketplace. Mr. Hampton is hoping his party can ride
a wave of outrage over deregulation into the next election. This
presupposes, of course, that his scenario -- not the government's -- will
unfold in the next few months. It also assumes that Mr. Eves is incapable of
a dramatic gesture that would reassure consumers and cut the NDP off at the
knees. Two weeks and counting.

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