Cancelling renewable energy projects is bad for business

July 13, 2018

Mike Schreiner, GPO leader and Guelph MPP, made the following statement regarding the PC announcement cancelling 758 renewable energy contracts:

“Today’s announcement by the Ford government that they are cancelling renewable energy projects is bad for business.

Cancelling contracts puts a chill on any business wanting to invest and create jobs in Ontario.

During the election, Premier Ford promised to put up an open for business sign. Clearly the only sign out right now says – in big letters – that Ontario is closed for business when it comes to the $7 trillion clean tech economy.

Renewable energy is good for the climate and for our economy. In fact, 274,000 Canadians have clean tech jobs with an average salary of $92,000 per year. The PC government is killing these good jobs.

Premier Ford has already misled people on how his hydro actions will save money. He said that the severance of Hydro One CEO Mayo Schmidt would cost nothing. The next day we learned about his $400,000 retirement package and $9 million in stock options.

How much will cancelling these renewable energy contracts really cost the people of Ontario?

If the PC government was serious about saving people money, the Premier would save $1.1 billion a year by closing the Pickering nuclear station on time. Instead, the Premier is costing us billions by keeping it open past its best before date.

Premier Ford is choosing to side with the powerful nuclear lobby rather than fix what’s really wrong with our broken energy system.

This is not a good deal for Ontario.“

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