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May 5, 2016   ·   0 Comments

Ottawa’s Lobbyists

The same Council of Canadians’ letter mentions that “Big Oil, Big Pharma and countless more industries essentially wrote some of the very laws and trade deals that our new government is promising to fix.”

Having corporate lawyers inside government to negotiate in legalese with stream of corporate lobbyists no doubt helps the bureaucracy work smoothly, but this cushy government work at taxpayers’ expense is kept confidential, with little if any public oversight.

This conjures up an image of poor old hard-done-by corporate lawyers lined up outside of the ‘government soup kitchen.’ The same corporate lawyers work hard to keep their employers’ vast profits hidden in offshore tax havens.

Corporate and labor union donations to political parties have always influenced government, but it is coming to light again in Ontario. Would Medical Doctors and Nuclear power executives be any different?  The phrase ‘corporate welfare’ seems an apt description of this deeply entrenched corruption in Democracy.

Fred Brailey

Orangeville

Hydro at any cost in Ontario

Approximately 25 OPG workers are still employed at the closed coal Lambton station to preserve its idled condition for possible future conversion. How many other closed coal plants employ people to do very little?

The Atikokan converted biomass plant operates at less than 10 per cent of capacity and produces power at eight times the cost of some other Ontario biomass plants. A biomass plant in Thunder Bay runs at 2% capacity and costs 25x more to run than other biomass plants.

Then there is the outrageous contracts to produce wind power – up to 40 cents a kwh for the next 15 years and 80 cents a kwh for solar power for the next 15 years we are still on the hook for.

Auditor general Bonnie Lysyk’s annual report said consumers are paying $9.2 billion more for 20-year wind and solar power contracts signed by the Liberals.

Then there is our new hydroelectric generating station in Niagara Falls running a partial capacity.

The Wynne Liberal now have slightly lowered the price we are paying for new solar and wind power being produced and you wonder why our hydro rates at peak time has quadrupled since 2003 when we paid 4.3 cents all day long.

Ross Ayotte

Smiths falls

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