Nuclear: Build now or pay later
When Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne announced she was going to toss away $180 million in preparatory work paid for by the taxpayer in order to abandon plans to build two new nuclear reactors, she once again put her shortsightedness and partisanship on display.
Looking at the future, and planning for it, does not fit into their strategy plan, which is why the Wynne Liberals’ hasty and politically-motivated decision to cancel those two new nuclear reactors provided yet another example of how the Liberals have no problem trading the future for the present.
That is one thing I will not do.
Now that the costs of mishandling wind and solar have rightfully become a political liability, however, the Liberals found themselves scrambling for programs to cut in order to present to ratepayers the false claim that their hydro bills will be more affordable in the future.
In choosing what to cut, they chose to cut nuclear power, the workhorse of our system. And they chose to cut it out now, not because it is too expensive, or because it hasn’t worked like a charm for 45 years, but because these two new nuclear plants would not come online for at least a decade,
So they could easily abandon it to save their day, thereby making it someone else’s problem.
Liberal Energy Minister Chiarelli later went on to explain that those two nuclear plants were cancelled simply because Ontario was in no need of a power boost.
And, in a way, he was right. When your government is responsible for the loss of more than 300,000 manufacturing and resource jobs, the demand for power tends to back off considerably.
But all that will change for the good when we change the team that leads, and an Ontario PC government is put in charge.
The recent cancellation of those two gas plants to save two Liberal seats in the 2011 election, and at the cost to taxpayers of $1.1 billion, is yet another example of the Liberals’ self-centredness.
As leader of the Ontario PCs, I fundamentally reject any notion that Ontario cannot complete anymore in the manufacturing sector and, unlike the Liberals, I refuse to accept that our gradual decline in manufacturing is irreversible.
My vision for the Ontario economy is one where our kids are trained and educated for the good skilled trades and engineering jobs of a 21st-century economy where Ontario actually makes things, and where jobs are created, not lost.
A growing economy requires a reliable source of affordable energy – and that’s nuclear.
The Liberals, on the other hand, believe they can power whatever is left of an industrial economy on wind farms, solar panels and conservation programs.
Energy Minister Chiarelli also seems to believe that nuclear power plants can be thrown up overnight like a pup tent in a provincial park.
Need more power? Poof, there’s your nuclear plant.
Fact is, it takes about a decade to build a nuclear power plant, but then they last a half-century.
So the question is this: Do you think Ontario will still be in decline in 10 years, or should we invest in a better future starting today?
The answer, of course, is to invest. In our Paths to Prosperity policy papers, which can be read online at OntarioPC.com, we talk about investing in reliable, affordable energy with a clear-eyed view of why nuclear power is essential.
Energy policy, however, must be treated as a key part of economic policy, and not treated like a social program. We cannot continue to pursue energy programs that are unaffordable, woefully inefficient and ineffective and that only drive up the costs to consumers while leading manufacturing layoffs.
When it comes to nuclear power, the benefit to our energy needs is that it is real and long lasting. And so are the jobs it will create.
But one thing is also certain. Our nuclear fleet – producers of 50% of this province’s electrical power — is aging. Canada currently has 22 nuclear reactors, 20 of them right here in Ontario.
While we must begin closing some of them down, we must begin now to build new ones, 10 years in advance of their switch being turned on.
Ontario’s future depends on both of us getting it right.
We must not trade away that future for the present, and that means changing the team that leads.