On the electricity file, the Ontario PC’s have made some positive first steps in cancelling early-stage renewal energy projects and scrapping the Green Energy Act. However, as a recent Fraser Institute study notes, while these moves will prevent some future electricity price increases, they would not actually undo the past price increases.
“The next logical step,” write the Fraser economists, “would therefore be to use legislative measures to cancel Ontario’s funding commitments to renewable energy sources under the FIT [Feed-in-Tariff] contracts” in order to reduce the global adjustment “by almost 40%, resulting in an approximately 24% reduction in residential electricity prices.”
Additional reforms to the global adjustment, according to the Fraser economists, could increase the potential reduction of residential electricity prices to 27%. This would surely be welcome relief to Ontario residents given the 71% increase in electricity prices from 2008 to 2016. This was by far the largest increase of any province; for example, electricity prices increased only 10% in neighbouring Quebec and 31% in Manitoba.
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