Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Thursday, April 19, 2012

ORNGE isn’t the only secret society playing with public money

Wednesday was a day of double trouble for the Liberals’ damage control agenda: in one corner, you could watch the unravelling of the ORNGE scandal; in another, the unwinding of a failed electricity experiment at the OPA.

The two entities might seem unrelated: ORNGE is the air ambulance service plunged into a tailspin by exposés in the Star; OPA is the boring Ontario Power Authority that most people have never heard of, despite its high-voltage dealings that come directly out of our pockets.

More on The Star's investigation into ORNGE

But there is a common theme to this cautionary tale of two boondoggles — one scandalous, one merely invisible — and it is this: A troubling lack of transparency that allowed both entities to play with public money without proper adult supervision.

Until he learns the real lessons of ORNGE, Premier Dalton McGuinty is condemned to repeat them at the OPA — or any other acronym his government invents.

When it comes to ORNGE and the OPA, there is a limitless capacity for opacity. And opacity is our enemy, starting with the helicopters that produce a political wreck every Wednesday at Queen’s Park. That’s when a legislative committee drills down deep into the detritus of ORNGE.

The star witness this time was Alf Apps, a well-connected former federal Liberal Party president. He helped ORNGE spin a web of for-profit subsidiaries that tied people up in knots, but he clearly wanted to untangle (and unburden) himself in front of MPPs.

A scary thought for McGuinty’s minority government. So at precisely the same hour that Apps set off a few stun grenades that left Liberal MPPs reeling — arguing that the government had no one to blame but itself for the death spiral of its emergency choppers — the government tried to change the channel.

Enter, stage left, Energy Minister Chris Bentley. He called a media conference — same floor, same time — to unveil a countervailing good news story about reinventing the OPA, whose mandate is long-term power management.

Bentley announced plans to merge the OPA with the equally obscure IESO (Independent Electricity System Operator, which matches the province’s real-time electricity supply with demand). The Liberals were hoping to take the spotlight off ORNGE while also lowering the temperature over the OPA, which has been a lightning rod of its own in recent years.

The electricity agency has been targeted by the opposition for its rapidly growing budget, expanded staff and mission creep. And so, eight years after the Liberals proudly midwifed the OPA into existence, Bentley is merging it out of existence — and trying to score political points.

But let’s look beyond the politics to the policy: My problem with the OPA is not so much its soaring size, but its stifling secrecy — a trait shared with ORNGE. Until the OPA’s opacity policy metamorphoses into clarity, we’ll all pay the price, because it handles tens of billions of our dollars in secret electricity contracts.

What does the OPA pay privately operated Bruce Power for the electricity flowing from its nukes? I can’t say, because Bentley and the OPA won’t tell me or anyone else outside their secret society.

What payment flows to privately held Brookfield for the Mississagi River hydro facility sold for a song by the old Tory government? Can’t say.

What’s the payoff for those gas plants in Oakville and Mississauga that the Liberals cancelled? What about all those other expensive gas-fired plants tethered to wind turbines? They won’t say.

All these secret deals add up to mega-billions that make ORNGE look like small potatoes. Shouldn’t we be in on the secret?

When the auditor looked at the OPA last December, he cited a trail of secret “directives” from the energy minister that have derailed the OPA from its original mission. How many? Another secret (hint: dozens).

Let’s see if the opposition MPPs now feasting on ORNGE have an appetite for greater transparency in the double-headed hydro-hydra that Bentley is bringing forth.

Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Martin Regg Cohn

No comments:

Post a Comment