I was never much of stick-handler in my hockey playing days – more of a skate straight down the ice and knock over anyone who got in your way kind of a player. If I kept the puck somewhere in front of me that was a bonus. Despite seeing some good puck handling in the current NHL playoffs one has to admire the way Premier Wynne skated around the questions at the recent FONOM conference in Timmins.
Questioned about high energy costs in the north she said Hydro One was making changes. They were to become more efficient and by golly you have to know that will lower the costs of supplying us with electric power. I suppose that goes along with how if we don’t use as much electricity the rates will go down. Boy, that one certainly worked. The recent increase in rates had something to do with fixed and variable costs and the renaming of the stranded debt not how much electricity you saved by doing your laundry at night..
But Wynne made a cross-ice pass and shifted to the cap and trade carbon tax and how because we don’t use coal anymore, our power generators will benefit. All those mayors from Northern Ontario who were riding the pine just looked at each other. Before they could jump over the boards for a rebuttal (they would likely have taken 5 for rough play) Wynne moved onto California as an example of how they had cap and trade and their power rates are liveable. She had already forgotten she was in Northern Ontario not surfing with the dudes in LaLa land.
Then some upstart asked her about regulating gasoline prices. She did not explain why but simply said that those provinces that tried that had unfavourable results. She didn’t explain that but reading between the lines it probably meant that tax revenue went down. Then she took off down the ice – hair flying like Guy LaFleur before he wore a helmet! She segued at the blue line and said how the present government, realizing the burden of high gasoline costs among other things, the Liberals had accommodated us by offering free tuition to low income families.
What does this have to do with regulating the price of gasoline?" asked media. “It has to do with the cost that people have to bear everywhere,” Wynne stated. “It has to go with how far people’s pay cheques go and it has to do with quality of life people have. . .” Yep.
Somehow, all of us who buy gasoline for our cars and toys would benefit by this generous ploy. As she was doing the spinnerama on tuition everyone in attendance was wondering if they were in the low income bracket and indeed if they had some child who would benefit from this scheme. Most of the grey-haired mayors and attendees were past that stage in life and having paid for their tuition, wondered how they missed the classes on BS 101.
It was when asked about the ONTC that she let go an Ovechkin-like shot, one that would make any goal-tending northerner jump: “We need to invest in renewing rail across the North and not only the ONTC that we work across the North,” she added. The ONTC is only a northeastern entity.” So there we have it – the ONTC does not belong to the people of Ontario, just those in the northeast. That explains a lot. Darn, they should have just called it the Ontario Transportation Commission!
