By Staff
April 27, 2015
BURLINGTON, ON
Joe Gaetan has taken the position that “Regardless of your party politics, selling off Ontario Hydro One Inc., is not a good thing.”
He maintains that the selling of publicly owned assets is a trend that started a while ago and in some cases makes perfect sense. However in this case there are a number of reasons as to why the current proposal should come off the table.
The revenue produced for the province by Ontario Hydro is outstanding. The provincial government wants to sell the asset and forgo the revenue for a fantastic cash grab.
‘First and foremost the government of the day neither asked for, nor were given a mandate to sell Hydro One. In exchange for a one time inflow of cash from the sale, we the taxpayers will forego the differential future income of Hydro One in perpetuity. If Hydro One is good enough to sell, it’s good enough to keep a controlling ownership of at least 51%.
“If the government keeps a 40% minority share in Hydro One, as currently planned, they will be mostly insulated from complaints about performance shortcomings and rising fees. Once sold it will be almost impossible to buy it back.
“The current model of electing governments has resulted in many people giving up and not voting on Election Day. There are many reasons for that, one of which is many people don’t believe their vote counts. Direct democracy is where enough of us take a stand and tell the government that even though they won the last election they do not have a mandate to do as they wish.
Joe Gaetan believes hydro is too good an asset to sell – wants the government to at least maintain control.web
“In New Zealand 895,322 taxpayers voted against a similar sale of assets, in spite of the vote the government went ahead anyway and sold the assets, but they at least had the foresight to retain a 51% ownership of the assets it had on the auction block.
At 8:20 on April 24, 2015 Gaetan launched this petition asking for a moratorium and a referendum on the sale of Hydro One Inc. as it has been proposed. The petition can be found at: https://www.gopetition.com/petitions/hydro-one-sale.html.
If you feel strongly about this, please click the link to add your signature to the petition and then feel pass it along.
No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.
This needs to stop. Wynne needs to go if she endorses this.
Enough.
Do not sell Hydro One
If you sold your house and you had a mortage,you would have to pay it off first right.well we have a big debt with hydro one and if it sold,then the monies received should go to the debt.How much more money will the Liberals squander.If it is to be sold,then we should retain 51%.After the gas plant scandal we should never elected the liberals.Boy will we never learn.
don’t sell Hydro One, bad mistake.
don’t sell, the tax payers will be paying more for a drastic error by our government.
Premiere you have been led the wrong path by your advisers .
Check out the facebook group Enough is Enough. There is a huge protest organized for May 13 in Toronto.
The sale of Hydro will cost us all large money down the road just like smart meters. We need to get all Ontario residents to send our Premier and all Liberals a message not to take such short-sighted ways to raise a small amount of cash in the short term.
Andy Wiles
I agree with all of you. I suspect that the majority of Ontario residents getting hydro bills also agree that selling off Hydro One makes no sense at all.
I urge Joe Gaetan to post his petition on Change.org. This would reach a far wider audience.
Lets hope this DUMB sale dose NOT go thru !!!We are getting shafted enough by this Goverment.
This sale must be stopped, nothing good can come of this. The Liberals would sell their souls to the devil for a buck.
This belongs to me and the rest of Ontario. I did not give anyone the authority to sell something that I own….that is a cash cow.
The liberals so far have been a train wreck
Too many cover ups and this sale would just add to the list.
Why are we paying the USA to take our access hydro? How dumb is that. Put the brakes on the windmills.
I can see it now, Hydro One gets sold then after a few more times of being bought and sold. It will end up as a USA ownership. Then we will have no choice but to pay, that is “IF” we want hydro. Just my opinion.
It’s really a very simple present value calculation. if the Ontario government was to borrow the $4 billion today, how much would it have to pay in perpetuity to finance that? Compare that with how much the province earns on its Hydro assets.
Honestly, I think much of the potential proceeds will be eaten up by underwriters and other financial intermediaries. Add to that the fact that private industry will only invest in something if there is a percieved benefit for them (i.e. if they are getting a deal, such as one given the company that bought the 407). They also have much greater resources to find the true value of the assets than does the government selling it.
Add it all up and it looks like a very expensive way to finance the province’s desperately needed transit investments. The analogy to “selling the silverware” is apt.