Politics: Tim Hudak's Plan for Ontario if he becomes Premier

[MrsNesbitt]

I like that you don't care about the green, ornge or gas plant scandals at all. That's not incompetence.

Just going to put this out there but the PCs have no real moral high ground to talk down about Liberal "scandals" when their party, under Hudak's right-wing sensei Mike Harris, leased the 407 for 99 years to a private consortium. That deal alone squandered hundreds of times more money over 99 years than all of the Liberal-led spending that you named, combined.

Plus I think people need to lay off the whole gas plants issue. Not only was locating them where they were intended a bad idea in the first place, every party promised to cancel them in the past election, a fact the others are now conveniently forgetting. $1 billion is a lot, but it could be a hell of a lot worse.

 

[jje1000]

I like that you don't care about the green, ornge or gas plant scandals at all. That's not incompetence.

What I'm concerned about is that Hudak, Harper and Ford are seemingly cut out from the same cloth. I don't want to fight again to save our transit projects, I don't want Harper-esque subversive & opaque behaviour in this government, and I really don't want to see the words 'Hudak cancels Big Move, DRL, Eglinton, etc.' plastered on the front of a newspaper.

I am willing to bite the bullet in order to buy a bit more time to get these projects that we need so desperately (DRL, GO Electrification) started. Mind you that survey after survey lists transit as one of the main things impacting quality of life in this city- we can't delay any longer.

Plus I think people need to lay off the whole gas plants issue. Not only was locating them where they were intended a bad idea in the first place, every party promised to cancel them in the past election, a fact the others are now conveniently forgetting. $1 billion is a lot, but it could be a hell of a lot worse.

The $1 billion accounts for total losses pertaining to the losses due to the new power plants being located elsewhere, new transmission being required. It's not all immediate sunk costs, the $1 billion is spread through the lifespan of the new powerplants.

This is a decent summary that I pulled from reddit:

There were two plants that were cancelled. The auditor general reports are there:
Mississauga PDF (http://www.auditor.on.ca/en/reports_en/mississaugapower_en.pdf)
Oakville PDF (http://www.auditor.on.ca/en/reports_en/oakville_en.pdf)
They are quite readable and most of the information is contained in summaries at the beginning.

The gas plants were planned in 2004 to replace coal plant generating capacity. They were bitterly fought by local interests, including local municipalities, for years. They were cancelled in 2011. The two plants are still being built, but the Mississauga one in Sarnia and the Oakville one in Napanee.

There are four kinds of costs.
The cost of work done
The cost of equipment, parts, and supplies already purchased
The cost of getting out of financing agreements
The long term difference between what it might have cost to have the plants in their planned locations versus their new locations

$115 million was paid for work done. "Sunk costs".
$275 million was paid for equipment and parts. It isn't clear to me what will become of this equipment and parts. If they might get used, then this isn't really wasted money. If they aren't used or sold, then it is wasted money. Some of these parts seem to have been counted towards
$150 million was paid to the financiers of the Mississauga plant, who had it in their contract with the contractor that if the agreement was cancelled then the financiers would still get 14% interest for 8 years on amount they would have lent ($263 million). It turns out only $59 million of the loan was ever taken out before the cancellation happened.

The rest of the costs are nowhere near being paid yet, and most will be paid over a long period of time, and these are the additional costs for the policy decision to locate the plants in Sarnia and Napanee. It will cost more to get natural gas to Napanee, and it will cost more to get electricity from the two plants to where it will be consumed. Some other infrastructure things will have to happen for the Napanee plant. The actual cost of the electricity from these plants will be quite a bit lower, so this is counted as a saving in the reports.

So you have the sunk costs (actual work done and financial penalties) and the hypothetical future additional costs for the policy decision to have the plants elsewhere.

A good comparison is with the 2013 decision to change the Scarborough LRT to a subway. All the money spent on the LRT up to then is gone ($80 million+), and there will perhaps be some other sunk costs too. Then there is the future cost of the policy decision to build a subway instead (couple of billion more), and whatever difference there might be to actually operate a subway instead. If you add up all of those costs, you would end up with a comparable amount to what the costs are of the gas plant cancellations.

http://www.reddit.com/r/ontario/com..._did_the_gas_plant_cancellations_cost/ci0x8f6

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

Just going to put this out there but the PCs have no real moral high ground to talk down about Liberal "scandals" when their party, under Hudak's right-wing sensei Mike Harris, leased the 407 for 99 years to a private consortium. That deal alone squandered hundreds of times more money over 99 years than all of the Liberal-led spending that you named, combined.

Plus I think people need to lay off the whole gas plants issue. Not only was locating them where they were intended a bad idea in the first place, every party promised to cancel them in the past election, a fact the others are now conveniently forgetting. $1 billion is a lot, but it could be a hell of a lot worse.

Fair enough, members of the public do feel this is a big deal. The Liberals really need a majority.

What I'm concerned about is that Hudak, Harper and Ford are seemingly cut out from the same cloth. I don't want to fight again to save our transit projects, I don't want Harper-esque subversive & opaque behaviour in this government, and I really don't want to see the words 'Hudak cancels Big Move, DRL, Eglinton, etc.' plastered on the front of a newspaper.

I am willing to bite the bullet in order to buy a bit more time to get these projects that we need so desperately (DRL, GO Electrification) started. Mind you that survey after survey lists transit as one of the main things impacting quality of life in this city- we can't delay any longer.




The $1 billion accounts for total losses pertaining to the losses due to the new power plants being located elsewhere, new transmission being required. It's not all immediate sunk costs, the $1 billion is spread through the lifespan of the new powerplants.

This is a decent summary that I pulled from reddit:


http://www.reddit.com/r/ontario/com..._did_the_gas_plant_cancellations_cost/ci0x8f6

I don't disagree with you. Toronto has to worst commute times among the developed world, that's outrageous and needs to be fixed. But the Liberals need to show something to people in the 905 that they mean business about the debt.

 

[TOareaFan]

Just going to put this out there but the PCs have no real moral high ground to talk down about Liberal "scandals" when their party, under Hudak's right-wing sensei Mike Harris, leased the 407 for 99 years to a private consortium. That deal alone squandered hundreds of times more money over 99 years than all of the Liberal-led spending that you named, combined.

It was sold in a market deal....anyone could have bid and if it was worth so much more than the PCs sold it for where were the other bidders bidding it so much higher?

In any event, it was not done in secret the way, say, the gas plant was done.....there were no records destroyed....there were no hard drives wiped and there certainly was no OPP investigation over the matter. You may disagree with the decision to sell, as is your right, but it is hardly a scandal when done so openly and transparantly.

Plus I think people need to lay off the whole gas plants issue.

So we should now tell people what should be important to them?

Not only was locating them where they were intended a bad idea in the first place,

Who made that bad decision? Who's idea was it?

every party promised to cancel them in the past election, a fact the others are now conveniently forgetting. $1 billion is a lot, but it could be a hell of a lot worse.

What the auditor general's report showed is that there were many ways to cancel the plants and a big factor in the increase from the Liberal's $40 million cost promise to the over $1B in actual costs was the way the Librerals did it. Had they just waited, for example, until the town of Oakville refused to issue building permits the Oakville plant would have been cancelled at substantially reduced cost....but it would not have had the political impact of cancelling it weeks prior to the election (something that neither of the other parties could do) and, in the words of Kathleen Wynne herself "it was a political decision"

But, again, if you don't think there was anything wrong with what the Liberal government did, you should again listen to Ms Wynne when answering the very first question of the recent debate "There was a breach of trust" she said.

 

[MrsNesbitt]

It was sold in a market deal....anyone could have bid and if it was worth so much more than the PCs sold it for where were the other bidders bidding it so much higher?

In any event, it was not done in secret the way, say, the gas plant was done.....there were no records destroyed....there were no hard drives wiped and there certainly was no OPP investigation over the matter. You may disagree with the decision to sell, as is your right, but it is hardly a scandal when done so openly and transparantly.



So we should now tell people what should be important to them?



Who made that bad decision? Who's idea was it?



What the auditor general's report showed is that there were many ways to cancel the plants and a big factor in the increase from the Liberal's $40 million cost promise to the over $1B in actual costs was the way the Librerals did it. Had they just waited, for example, until the town of Oakville refused to issue building permits the Oakville plant would have been cancelled at substantially reduced cost....but it would not have had the political impact of cancelling it weeks prior to the election (something that neither of the other parties could do) and, in the words of Kathleen Wynne herself "it was a political decision"

But, again, if you don't think there was anything wrong with what the Liberal government did, you should again listen to Ms Wynne when answering the very first question of the recent debate "There was a breach of trust" she said.

I won't disagree that the wasting of $1 billion by cancelling the plants in the way they were was the wrong decision. That rests on the Liberals' shoulders, for sure. As does the burden for the secretive nature of the cancellation; that is to say, the breach of trust.

So yes, the Liberals have made mistakes. Are they past those mistakes? Have they confessed to them, apologized, and are now cooperating fully with the relevant investigations? Yes. Is it worth looking at that scandal, recalling that those plants would've been cancelled by any party (and there's no reason to assume any other party would have cancelled them in the lowest-cost way possible), and tarring the party in this election with the most progressive and best plans for the province (especially in the transit portfolio; we are on a transit forum here, after all) with those scandals to such a degree that we should vote in a PC government which will turn this province into the scorched-earth dystopia of low-wage low-tax America? Absolutely not. I would not democratically choose that fate for Ontario in a million years. Even swallowing $1 billion in wasted gas plant costs is worth it to avoid that kind of future.

Also, your view of the 407 privatization is based on a pretty falsely optimistic view of the market. Of course it was a market deal, but the decision to lease the highway was entirely ideological - it made, and still makes, no fiscal sense. Harris wanted to score points with his right-wing agenda by holding up a fistful of cash useful for the short term, while ignoring the wheelbarrows of cash down the road that he was turning away. The winning bidders knew this, and when they bid, they did so at a price that they knew Harris would accept for his political reasons, even though it was far lower than the true value of the 407 over 99 years.

Those benefits of maintaining the 407 under provincial control are difficult to quantify precisely, but undoubtedly vast: not just the toll revenue, but also not turning the high cost of right-of-way acquisition and construction into sunk costs thrown away for no benefit, and also the benefit that a 407 which could more properly serve as a 401 alternative or "new Toronto bypass" would have given this province by relieving congestion and improving the efficiency of our economy as a result.

In essence, the 407 was an example of why the "invisible hand" theory and Adam Smith were wrong. It may have been a market deal but the market sure as hell wasn't self-correcting or didn't just smooth itself over to give a right outcome. In the end, the province and people of Ontario got ripped off to the tune of an ungodly sum of money and benefits. Gas plants are water under the bridge by comparison.

 

[jje1000]

Of course it was a market deal, but the decision to lease the highway was entirely ideological - it made, and still makes, no fiscal sense. Harris wanted to score points with his right-wing agenda by holding up a fistful of cash useful for the short term, while ignoring the wheelbarrows of cash down the road that he was turning away. The winning bidders knew this, and when they bid, they did so at a price that they knew Harris would accept for his political reasons, even though it was far lower than the true value of the 407 over 99 years.

Yes, the decision to lease off the 407 is as ideological as the gas plants- the Harris Conservatives had a stubborn deficit that even the cancellation of the Eglinton Subway and the Amalgamation of Toronto failed to solve. As such, they needed to plug it before the 1999 elections, and they saw in 407 an opportunity to plug that deficit.

Likewise, the Liberals saw an opportunity to boost their chances in Oakville and Missisauga by cancelling the gas plants as quickly as they could. And so they did.

 

[MrsNesbitt]

Yes, the decision to lease off the 407 is as ideological as the gas plants- the Harris Conservatives had a stubborn deficit that even the cancellation of the Eglinton Subway and the Amalgamation of Toronto failed to solve. As such, they needed to plug it before the 1999 elections, and they saw in 407 an opportunity to plug that deficit.

Likewise, the Liberals saw an opportunity to boost their chances in Oakville and Missisauga by cancelling the gas plants as quickly as they could. And so they did.

Indeed. The only difference is in the amount of money lost - Harris screwed the province over for 99 years of lost revenue plus costs harder to quantify for a short term gain which, in the long run, was quite paltry.

So again, there should be no real moral high ground for the PCs to talk about saving money here.

 

[TOareaFan]

Yes. Is it worth looking at that scandal, recalling that those plants would've been cancelled by any party (and there's no reason to assume any other party would have cancelled them in the lowest-cost way possible),

your assumption that the other party's would without the same political time pressure the Liberals were facing find the same, most expensive, way of cancelling the plants maybe just shows that you are a Liberal supporter unwilling to accept/face that they may have, in this case, have been wrong.....once the election was passed (the only scenario where, either, the PCs or NDP would have been in control of cancelling the plants) the decision would no longer be "political" and would be based on "what's best for Ontario and its citizens" and either the NDP or PCs would have been free to find the most cost efficient manner of cancelling the plants....but you refuse to accept that either of them would have done so and the cost would still have been $1.1B...something the auditor general disagrees with.

Also, your view of the 407 privatization is based on a pretty falsely optimistic view of the market. Of course it was a market deal, but the decision to lease the highway was entirely ideological - it made, and still makes, no fiscal sense.........The winning bidders knew this, and when they bid, they did so at a price that they knew Harris would accept for his political reasons, even though it was far lower than the true value of the 407 over 99 years.

The winning bidder did not, could not, just "pick their price" based on some political ideology....they had to bid what they thought would not only be a price the government of the day would accept they had to determine a value for the asset that not only reached what was an unknown minimum price the government would accept but would also be higher than all of the other market bidders. You and I would likely disagree with the value and merits of free markets but they are very good at determining the value of things....you can't just bid what you want you have to bid higher than what you think your competitors will bid.

A very good example of this is the recent sale of the LA Clippers......a vendor that has been forced to sell (hardly the best situation for producing the highest value) exposes his asset to the market....3 bidders emerge and start bidding against each other.....the result was that something that had been previously (recently) valued at $575 million sells for $2B....that is why you expose assets to market bidding....whether they are highways or NBA teams.......we may disagree about whether it should have been sold but blindly spouting the "we undersold it" mantra is closing eyes to reality....the province got what it was "worth".

Those benefits of maintaining the 407 under provincial control are difficult to quantify precisely, but undoubtedly vast: not just the toll revenue, but also not turning the high cost of right-of-way acquisition and construction into sunk costs thrown away for no benefit, and also the benefit that a 407 which could more properly serve as a 401 alternative or "new Toronto bypass" would have given this province by relieving congestion and improving the efficiency of our economy as a result.

The 407 helps with congestion as much in private hands as it would in public hands....it is a piece of infrastructure that is there and available for use and people use it. It seems to me when the core part of it first got congested and needed widening that the widening happened a lot quicker in the private sector than the public sector would have responded .....but that may just be my own thinking bias coming through.

 

[nfitz]

I like that you don't care about the green, ornge or gas plant scandals at all. That's not incompetence.

I can't say I've heard of the green scandal. The premier and staff behind ornge and the gas plants has gone. Hudak and Horwath are the remaining leaders who pushed for those gas plants to be cancelled ... neither one of which has revealed on what they thought it would cost to cancel when they made promises.

But either way, this is the past. There's no evidence that past incompetence is a factor for a future Wynne government, given the cull of the Premier, staff, and the ministers who were close to McGuinty. And yet we've seen gross incompetence from Hudak in this campaign, and Horwath, who is so utterly incompetent, that she's admitted she didn't even look at the last budget before announcing she would vote against it.

Why would I want to punish myself, risk the economic well-being of the province, and set back transit for decades, simple because of an idiot who has now left. I was never a great McGuinty fan, and I'm glad he's gone.

Besides ... who'd vote for a guy, who STILL won't speak out against Rob Ford?

 

[TOareaFan]

Indeed. The only difference is in the amount of money lost - Harris screwed the province over for 99 years of lost revenue plus costs harder to quantify for a short term gain which, in the long run, was quite paltry.

So again, there should be no real moral high ground for the PCs to talk about saving money here.

you are still suggesting that any ideologically based decision is a scandal.....I disagree with that notion. What makes a scandal is secrecy in execution and deliberate attempts to hide the results from the public.

an example....all day kindergarten is something that, ideologically, the Liberals support and the PCs do not....it costs $1B a year.....but it is not a scandal...it is just a decision that some disagree with.

 

[nfitz]

you are still suggesting that any ideologically based decision is a scandal.....I disagree with that notion. What makes a scandal is secrecy in execution and deliberate attempts to hide the results from the public.

The closure of the gas plants is a secret hidden from the public?

Hudak has yet to reveal how much he thought cancelling the gas plants would cost. Was not the his decision to ask that they be cancelled done in secrecy? Have the Conservatives not worked hard to hide the results from the public? Is this then also not a scandal by your definition. The Conservatives in Ottawa (many of whom are Hudak's former colleagues in the Mike Harris government) have worked very hard to keep things secret and hide the results from the public. Are these not scandals?

Surely, Hudak is guilty of the same thing, with his 100-billion jobs scandal ... or his unwillingness to discuss his anti-gay bigotry, trying to keep it a secret.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

I can't say I've heard of the green scandal. The premier and staff behind ornge and the gas plants has gone. Hudak and Horwath are the remaining leaders who pushed for those gas plants to be cancelled ... neither one of which has revealed on what they thought it would cost to cancel when they made promises.

But either way, this is the past. There's no evidence that past incompetence is a factor for a future Wynne government, given the cull of the Premier, staff, and the ministers who were close to McGuinty. And yet we've seen gross incompetence from Hudak in this campaign, and Horwath, who is so utterly incompetent, that she's admitted she didn't even look at the last budget before announcing she would vote against it.

Why would I want to punish myself, risk the economic well-being of the province, and set back transit for decades, simple because of an idiot who has now left. I was never a great McGuinty fan, and I'm glad he's gone.

Besides ... who'd vote for a guy, who STILL won't speak out against Rob Ford?

The closure of the gas plants is a secret hidden from the public?

Hudak has yet to reveal how much he thought cancelling the gas plants would cost. Was not the his decision to ask that they be cancelled done in secrecy? Have the Conservatives not worked hard to hide the results from the public? Is this then also not a scandal by your definition. The Conservatives in Ottawa (many of whom are Hudak's former colleagues in the Mike Harris government) have worked very hard to keep things secret and hide the results from the public. Are these not scandals?

Surely, Hudak is guilty of the same thing, with his 100-billion jobs scandal ... or his unwillingness to discuss his anti-gay bigotry, trying to keep it a secret.

You are either willfully ignorant or blind to the reality of this election. I have never heard anything anti gay by any of the leaders, much less Hudak. If the past is the past then why are people till talking about it?

 

[EnviroTO]

Why would I want to punish myself, risk the economic well-being of the province, and set back transit for decades, simple because of an idiot who has now left. I was never a great McGuinty fan, and I'm glad he's gone.

Besides ... who'd vote for a guy, who STILL won't speak out against Rob Ford?

This pretty much sums up my thought process going into the provincial election. As much as it would be nice to vote against the Liberals to say that mismanagement shouldn't be tolerated, there isn't a better run party that will deliver on the same mission statement. I think that even with a lie detector wired up to McGuinty on discussions on Ornge or the gas plant with the question posed "was it deliberate" or "would you allow it to happen again" the answers would be "No". The Liberal's screwed up. The problem with politics in general is that we aren't choosing leaders who are detail oriented, we are choosing them for their vision of an improved future. That vision will align or not align to your own political sensibilities, but their ability to deliver their agenda without screw-ups is probably about equal. The minister of health isn't chosen from a list of Doctors with large scale project management accounting skills, the minister of the environment isn't chosen from a group of environmental scientists, etc. The people chosen are just not at the level of skill where it is reasonable to assume that screw-ups are not going to happen. Voting in the Liberals you get more experience, and experience of hard knocks is the experience that is worth something. If the other parties win then it will be complete rookies in charge which may be worth it if their vision of the future aligns with your own because while they will screw-up, in the end changes will tend towards the vision promised. However, if you are voting for a different party to punish screw-ups then you are likely to be disappointed in any government.

Some people would use this to conclude the solution is less government, but private business and individual citizens aren't going to replace what an enabled government can provide. In a sense I see the government itself as a big company, with the public as shareholders, the members of parliament as an oversized board of directors, the premier / prime minister as CEO, and the ministers as EVPs. When looking at government this way we need to ask ourselves, where is the failure in government? Are too many shareholders voting compared to other companies? Are there too many people on the board of directors? Do we change our CEO and EVPs too often? Is there something wrong with the hiring practises in any level of the company? I don't know the answers but a company where we are the shareholders and which is not for profit seems like it has the potential to meet our needs more closely than private business if we can just figure out how to improve the structure of Government Inc.

 

[rbt]

The 407 helps with congestion as much in private hands as it would in public hands....it is a piece of infrastructure that is there and available for use and people use it. It seems to me when the core part of it first got congested and needed widening that the widening happened a lot quicker in the private sector than the public sector would have responded .....but that may just be my own thinking bias coming through.

I agree with the rest but this is very debatable. Keep in mind that contract to sell included a non-compete for the government which severely restricts their ability to build another freeway (directly or indirectly through 3rd party, for free or tolled) in a parallel route.

I'm not a fan of multiple parallel freeways in close proximity, so I don't really see this as a problem; but for those who do believe freeway expansion relieves congestion this means the 407 sale restricts out ability to build out of congestion.

 

[rbt]

I have never heard anything anti gay by any of the leaders, much less Hudak. If the past is the past then why are people till talking about it?

A persons prior actions are the only way we have to judge character and future actions with any reliability.

The past is relevant.