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Home My WebLink AboutHuron Expositor, 2017-03-08, Page 5Wednesday. March 8, 2017 • Huron Expositor 5 Grits' hydro bill plan uses worn-out tactic he Ontario Liberals are using little imagination in their plan to lower elec- tricity bills. To achieve a 17 per cent cut this summer, the government will simply do what it has done for the bet- ter part of the past decade -- push the expense down the road while creating addi- tional debt. Premier Kathleen Wynne announced the details Thursday. Electricity bills will be cut by 17 per cent, probably in time for June billings. But to allow for those savings, the cost of operating Ontario's massive electricity program will be allowed to pile up as new debt, ultimately costing rate- payers billions of dollars in additional interest payments. Indeed, it's been calcu- lated the Liberal plan will cost an additional $1.4 bil- lion a year in interest pay- ments over the next decade. The cost of electricity won't be cut this spring; it will be subsidized. Or more accurately, the Liberals' political fortunes will be subsidized. That's what Thursday's announcement is all about. With just 15 months before Ontario goes to the polls, it's becoming clear the path to victory will belong to the leader and party best able to convince voters they can solve the province's electric- ity wges. Andrea Horwath threw down the gauntlet earlier this week. In a series of roundtable discussions and announcements, the NDP leader set forth her party's plan to solve the energy puz- zle. New Democrats would buy back Ontario Hydro shares recently sold by the Wynne Liberals, would review and push for new terms on contracts signed with private energy users, and would give consumers the option to opt out of'time- Courts need bold change to cut backlog 0 ntario Attorney Gen- eral Yasir Naqvi's pro- posal to eliminate prelimi- nary inquiries in most criminal trials sounds bolder than it is. But let's give him points for trying. Naqvi is struggling to reduce the time criminal tri- als take, after a 2016 Supreme Court decision set hard limits for completing such cases. In its R. v Jordan ruling, the top court said such trials must be timely: 18 months in provin- cial court and 30 months in Superior Court. Because that doesn't always happen, charges have been stayed in a number of high-profile cases, including a first-degree mur- der case in Ottawa. To help reduce the back- log, Naqvi wants the federal justice minister to change the Criminal Code to elimi- nate preliminary hearings in all but the most serious criminal cases. In reality, preliminary hearings only occur in a small number of criminal cases now. But they are use- ful for determining whether the Crown has enough evi- dence for a trial. These hear- ings can lead to charges being dropped or reduced. Many defence lawyers say the hearings are valuable for sniffing out evidence not automatically disclosed by the Crown, such as third - party documents like medi- cal records. This can happen at trial too, they say, but dis- closure that far down the line could lead to delays, making life harder for everyone. Dispensing with this tool of the justice system, there- fore, must be considered with great care. Nevertheless, most cases clogging the court system don't have preliminary inquiries. So the bigger problem isn't the hearings themselves, but the fact there are simply too many cases in a court system that can't handle them. Naqvi himself admits ditching preliminary hear- ingsisn't a panacea (this hasn't stopped Manitoba's attorney general from requesting this same meas- ure). So he is also appointing more judges, and hiring new Crowns. He wants the fed- eral government to fill the judge positions it's in charge of quickly. But "it's time that ... we do put sorne controversial, bold ideas on the table and discuss them so that we can really meaningfully change the way (the) criminal pro- cess is done," Naqvi says. Naqvi's quite right that bold thinking is needed. It's less clear that eliminating preliminary inquiries fits that definition. Still, he has started a con- versation that isn't simply about resources but about how the system itself works. That is a useful contribution of -use pricing. Horvath said those meas- ures, plus others, would save consumers as much as 20 to 30 per cent on hydro bills. Until the NDP leader announced her plan the Lib- erals had no substantial answer to the crisis of rising electricity costs. The Pro- gressive Conservatives, meanwhile, have offered no solution of their own, per- haps content to remain silent while the Liberals strangle on an issue com- monly understood to be their creation. Yet there's a good chance voters will accept the Lib- eral plan for what it =ID appears on the surface -- a 17 per cent cut in electricity bills. Wynne and her predeces- sor Dalton McGuinty have collectively doubled Ontar- io's debt over the last 13 years, and Wynne's own gov- ernment has yet to table a balanced budget. They have governed Ontario through a blizzard of debt creation, with tacit approval from vot- ers who handed Wynne a majority government in 2014. Her response to the elec- tricity crisis shouldn't be surprising. -Peter Epp Canada has one of the highest multiple sclerosis in the world. mfAnhritis Society Take control of your arthritis 0 1 in 6 Canadians have arthritis That's nearly 9.5 million people lining with the pain and disability of arthritis Call the Arthritis Information Line at 1.800.321.1433 or visit our website at wwwarthritis.ca to get the support and information you need. 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