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Ontario 2002 Introduction
When Michael Harris announced his decision to step down as Premier, there
began a leadership contest which seemed critically important to the future
direction of the province. Would it
continue, and even expand upon, the “Common Sense Revolution,” under the
leadership of someone like Jim Flaherty or Tony Clement, or would it return to
the more pragmatic style of the
The leadership contest delayed the opening of the Legislature until May 9
and the provincial Budget until June 17. On
June 27, the Legislature recessed for the summer but was called back into
session on July 11 to pass back-to-work legislation to end the
Indeed, apart from the leadership race in the spring, and some issues of
expense claims in the summer and fall, the political life of the province in
2002 was engaged with many of the continuing issues that have marked the
province’s history over the last decade or more, especially in the areas of
education; health; energy and the environment.. Leadership
The race for the leadership of the Progressive-Conservative Party (and by
extension for the post of provincial Premier) began in earnest at the start of
the New Year. Separate and apart
from the choice of a head of government, there was an early announcement
(January 10) of the new vice-regal representative to succeed Hilary Weston.
The 27th Lieutenant Governor of Ontario would be the
Honourable James Bartleman. Mr.
Bartleman was a career diplomat whose distinguished service in External Affairs
had included appointments as Ambassador to the European Union and High
Commissioner to
On January 17, April Lindgren of Southam News reported on the previous
evening’s debate among the leadership candidates.
Elizabeth Witmer and Chris Stockwell established themselves as the
candidates for change, she observed, calling for new policies for the governing
party. Tony Clement and Jim Flaherty
by contrast urged a recommitment to the unfinished “common sense”
revolution. The PCs could not win by
running as Liberals, they said. Ernie
Eves seemed to remain above the fray, perhaps foreshadowing his emergence as the
front-runner.
In early February, Chris Stockwell was expressing concern that the party
was not using the leadership race to sign up as many new members as might have
been hoped. He suggested the party
would be lucky to have forty thousand voting members by the time the decision
was to be made; at the time he spoke, there were only twenty-three thousand.
By March 1 however, the party reported some one hundred five thousand
members would be eligible to vote for the party leader. When
a candidates’ debate was scheduled by CTV and the Globe
and Mail, Ernie Eves declined to take part unless other media outlets were
given access. His fellow candidates
accused him of ducking the event. The
debate went on as planned on February 11 without him, and Flaherty and Stockwell
directed their attacks largely at the absent Eves.
Elizabeth Witmer presented herself as a “uniter” who could smooth
relations with groups like the
Some PC party members suggested in early February that Tony Clement
should be banned from running for leadership of their party because of his
support for the Canadian Alliance in the last federal election.
A party committee, reflecting the separation of the federal and
provincial Conservative organizations, rejected the suggestion, and Mr. Clement
continued to run.
Mr. Flaherty got considerable press attention when he proposed that
special police be appointed to get homeless people off the streets.
While some heralded the suggestion as an innovative and direct approach
to the problem, others criticized him for implicitly criminalizing poverty and
blaming those who they believed were the victims of the policies implemented by
the government of which he was part. He
was similarly criticized in January when he suggested that people be limited to
two years out of five on the welfare rolls.
He was prepared to make exceptions for those who were single parents of
pre-school children, those with disabilities, or those caring for someone with a
disability, but critics did not accept this implicit identification of
“deserving” poor. When he was
quoted earlier that month, by Canadian Press reporter Andrea Baillie, as saying
that that the federal government could provide money to deliver health care for
“real people in real towns” if it cut special funds for aboriginals, David
Young, the Minister responsible for relations with First Nations was led to
distance himself from the remarks and to express regret.
While the leadership race proceeded, the Ontario Public Service Employees
Union called for a strike vote in their negotiations with the province.
They called on the government to table a final offer in response to their
call for a twelve percent wage increase over two years and a commitment to
rebuilding the At
one point, striking civil servants occupied Ernie Eves’ campaign office; at
another they banged on the doors of the Legislature while Cabinet was meeting.
As in many public service strikes, there was debate over what constituted
“essential services” which had to be maintained in spite of the strike.
The government obtained some twenty-eight rulings from the Ontario Labour
Relations Board to limit picket line delays and to force essential workers back
to work. The focus of attention was
on jail guards at an early date, and union President Casselman was cited for
contempt of court a couple of days into the strike, when a prisoner was not
delivered to court and the judge was advised it was because of jail guard job
action. The OLRB ordered jail guards
back to work, but the union claimed that they had been locked out by management.
Moreover they accused the employer of trying to calm things down in the
absence of adequate jail security by bringing inmates pornography and pizza.
The final settlement on May 2 gave corrections officers five percent
increase in addition to the 8.45 percent over three years awarded to other OPSEU
members. Employees at the top of
their scale (other than jail guards) got an additional one percent.
On February 17, Colin Perkel of Canadian Press reported a new poll of
committed voters that placed Eves and Flaherty in a virtual tie (around
twenty-eight percent) for the lead in the race to become Premier, with Witmer,
Clement and Stockwell strung out between ten and six percent bringing up the
rear. Jim Flaherty appealed during
February to what could be called the right wing of his party by lauding the
policy of tax relief for parents of private school students, especially as it
benefited independent religious schools. OSSTF
President Earl Manners had called on his members in the winter edition of Education Forum to defeat the PCs in the next election on this very
issue, which he referred to as “two-tier education.”
Flaherty also promised, if elected Premier, to privatize the Liquor
Control Board – an institution frequently cited by critics of the Harris
government as a worthy example of public enterprise.
When the sixth and final candidates’ debate was held March 3, a handful
of protestors (Canadian Press estimated fewer than a hundred) braved the cold
weather to demonstrate outside the hall in
On March 7, the Globe and Mail reported
a poll that showed the Liberals would handily defeat a Conservative party led by
Ernie Eves. The poll, conducted on
behalf of the Globe and Mail,
television station CFTO and radio station CFRB, found that fifty-one percent of
voters would support the Liberals in such a contest if it were held that day,
and only thirty-one percent would support the Eves-led PCs.
The NDP was at fifteen percent.
In mid-March, with the leadership vote only two weeks away, the campaign
took on a momentary lighter tone, when candidates were asked if they had ever
used marijuana. Three of the five
candidates said they had tried it (Clement and Witmer said they had not) and
Chris Stockwell (recalling Bill Clinton’s assertion that he had smoked
marijuana but had not inhaled) said that he had not exhaled.
No-one recalled this discussion in July, at the height of summer pressure
on electricity demand, when Canadian Press reported the assertions of local
utilities that illegal marijuana “grow-ops” were using some five hundred
million dollars a year in electric power.
On the eve of the Convention, Canadian Press reported that a poll
conducted for the National Post earlier
in the week had found Ernie Eves with a commanding lead – forty-six percent
compared to twenty-nine for Jim Flaherty, thirteen for Elizabeth Witmer, nine
for Tony Clement and three for Chris Stockwell.
Voting for the leadership took place on March 23.
Protestors from the striking public service union (OPSEU), the Ontario
Federation of Labour and the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty promised to
converge on the Convention centre in
A week after the convention, it was reported that Eves would become
Premier officially, and his cabinet take office, on April 15, and that a
by-election to secure a seat for the new leader would probably take place on May
2. Mr. Eves named Andrew Hodgson as
Executive Director of the Progressive-Conservative Party of
When Premier Eves announced his cabinet on April 15, Andrea Baillie of
Canadian Press described it as “centrist” and as signaling a move away from
the Common Sense Revolution. All the
candidates for the leadership received cabinet posts, with Elizabeth Witmer (who
had thrown her support to Eves at the Convention) identified as Deputy Premier.
A former teacher and school trustee, she was also given the portfolio of
Education Minister – an area where the government faced considerable
challenges in restoring relations with significant stakeholder groups.
Janet Ecker, identified as a more moderate and pragmatic member, replaced
Jim Flaherty in Finance. Mr.
Flaherty was given a new portfolio – Ministry of Enterprise,
Mr. Eves came into office carrying a little baggage from the
circumstances of his earlier departure to join the private sector.
He had received a payment in recognition of pension entitlement of some
eight hundred ten thousand dollars when the Legislature’s pension arrangements
were restructured under his authority as Finance Minister.
Soon thereafter he left the House. He
described the buy-out scheme (which overall cost some ten million dollars more
than anticipated) as a bargain for taxpayers, but the issue dogged him through
the leadership campaign, and in February, Integrity Commissioner Coulter Osborne
received a complaint from Liberal MPP Mike Colle and began an investigation.
He wondered initially if he had jurisdiction to hear the complaint, as
Mr. Eves was not a member of the Legislature when the complaint was filed.
However in May, days after the by-election that returned Mr. Eves to the
Legislature, Mr. Osborne dismissed the complaint.
It had alleged Mr. Eves had a conflict of interest because he was Finance
Minister when his own pension buy-out was being determined.
However Mr. Osborne noted that Eves had not been benefited any more than
other MPPs who were similarly situated, and indeed that the Liberals had
supported the changes in pension rules Mr. Eves had proposed.
Later in May, Premier Eves was questioned on the specifics of a $78,000
severance package received when he departed from the Legislature as Finance
Minister and Deputy Premier, now that he had returned.
He replied that he had paid the money back to the Legislature on the eve
of his being sworn in as Premier, and despite the Liberal leader’s asking why
he had concealed the fact for five weeks, the issue faded from view.
Mr. Eves’ predecessor had been somewhat coy in February about his plans
for the future. He had said he was
not interested in entering federal politics and even suggested he might remain
in the Education
Education hit the government agenda in a number of areas during the year,
but foremost among them were two – teacher certification and testing, and
school board budgets and funding. In
early January, the government announced that it would require teachers to be
screened for criminal convictions. While
the information would remain part of the teacher’s personnel file and not be
made public, school boards would have the responsibility of deciding what to do
about the information. All current
teachers were to be screened by July 2003, and no new teacher was to be hired
without the background check after
The province had already announced mandatory professional development
courses for teachers and the required completion of a teacher test before
initial certification. Some
teachers’ groups had undertaken to boycott in-class training of student
teachers as a protest against the government’s required professional
development courses for recertification. In
March however, the public elementary school teachers decided not
to join the boycott, mounted initially by the English Catholic Teachers
Association. They were reluctant to
abandon their role in training the next generation of teachers.
At the same time however, teachers turned their attention to
organizations being called on to provide the professional development courses.
Faculties of Education were already being urged not to cooperate in
producing such courses, and now the Theatre Festivals in
In mid-March, the government sought to make clear their position that the
teacher tests for initial certification were not being provided as a pilot
project. Student teachers would be
required to pass the test if they hoped to teach in the fall.
Then in April, they appeared to reverse their position and said the tests
would not count for 2002. The tests,
developed at a cost of $2.6 million, would be required for teachers beginning in
2003. The government maintained its
aim however to test existing teachers in three-year cycles.
The rules for the latter appraisals had been passed into law in March and
would apply starting in September. While
experienced teachers would be tested every three years, new teachers would
undergo assessment twice in each of their first two years.
Students in upper high school grades would be asked to evaluate the
effectiveness of their teachers in helping them to learn, while parents would be
asked to comment on the teachers’ success in communicating with them
concerning their children’s educational progress.
Many teachers worried that the assessment would not address the real
quality of teaching or the conditions under which it was done and might be
little more than a popularity contest.
A considerable amount of attention was paid throughout the year to issues
of education funding, including the capacity of school boards to bring in
balanced budgets. In February,
seventy-two Directors of Education from across the province and from public,
separate, French and English school boards, complained to Ediucation Minister
Janet Ecker that they were starved for cash.
The Toronto Star (February 19)
quoted Scott Browning, an aide to the Minister, as saying education funding
had gone up in every year of the government’s mandate, and that “Education
remains a priority for this government.” Earlier
in the month however a group of parents had formed a new organization called
Concerned Parents of Toronto to protest cuts to school budgets.
Because their membership included doctors, lawyers and business people
from upscale neighbourhoods like
On February 21, Andrea Baillie of Canadian Press reported that the
Education Ministry was looking into reports that two public high schools were
violating provincial rules by charging students extra fees for workbooks and
classroom materials. Annie Kidder,
of People for Education, quoted a survey conducted the previous year that showed
seventy-five percent of secondary schools were charging fees for labs or
classroom materials. In early March,
several parent groups reported increases in the use of special fees, as well as
increases in the shortage of textbooks.
Later in the year, a number of school boards expressed to the Ministry
their belief that they could not carry out their responsibilities if they were
compelled (as they were by provincial regulations) to bring in a balanced
budget. On May 28, the Toronto
District (Public) School Board defied provincial rules and passed a deficit
budget.. On June 26, the
Ottawa-Carleton School Board also passed a deficit budget, and by then the
Hamilton-Wentworth and
By early August, the Education Minister (now Elizabeth Witmer) was poised
to receive reports from accountants she had appointed to conduct forensic audits
of the school boards who had passed deficit budgets.
When the reports appeared, they were highly critical, especially that of
the Ottawa-Carleton Board, which blamed trustees for delayed or uneconomical
decisions. However the report
suggested it was too late to recoup and recommended new targets be established
for January or September 2003. In
By September 1, the Ministry had taken over the School Boards in
The government moved in early September to investigate school funding in
general. They appointed an Educational Equality Task Force, headed by the
President of the
In early October, Minister Witmer did move to put some additional funds
into the system for teacher recruitment and training.
She announced $11 million for teacher recruitment and professional
development – five million for distance education for teachers, five million
for professional development in the teaching of early reading skills, and one
million for recruiting, especially in mathematics, science and technology.
Canadian Press quoted Emily Noble, President of the Elementary Teachers
Federation, as saying the money was “a drop in the bucket” – not nearly
enough to offset cuts made by the government, estimated by some critics to be as
much as two billion dollars since the start of their term.
A coalition of parents, unions and trustees in
On December 10, Mordechai Rozanski submitted his report and recommended
an infusion of $1.8 billion into the school system.
Before the Legislature rose for the Christmas recess (and the government
retired to consider Dr. Rozanski’s report) the Premier announced a grant of
$341 million for teacher salary increases.
Money was at issue in the world of post-secondary education as well.
In January, five students invaded the office of the Principal of
Queen’s University to protest that institution’s support for a proposal to
deregulate tuition fees – allowing universities to charge what the market
would bear. Although Queen’s was
not alone in its position on fees, the universities of the province were divided
on the question, and on January 24, it was reported that the government had
rejected the deregulation request from Queen’s and would keep the two percent
cap on tuition fee increases in most programmes for 2002-03.
In February, during the leadership campaign, Jim Flaherty expressed his
view that post-secondary tuition was a bargain and was quoted by Canadian Press
as saying students were paying about thirty-five percent of the costs of their
education. The figure seemed out of
date at many provincial universities where tuition now accounted for between
forty-five and fifty-five percent of operating expenses.
In May, the government made three significant moves in the post-secondary
field.
In August, the government invited CAATs to apply for the right to offer
“applied degrees.” It was
assumed that not all Community Colleges would apply or be granted the right, and
some observers predicted a division of the CAATs into two tiers – those with
applied degrees and those without. The
degrees would be four-year technical programmes, rather than the two and three
year diplomas and certificates currently being offered.
The opening of new “degree” opportunities was thought to be part of
the government’s response to the “double cohort” resulting from the end of
Grade XIII. In mid-October, Canadian
Press quoted Queen’s professor Alan King as saying there was a secret
government report that predicted more than seven thousand qualified university
applicants would not be admitted in September 2003 because of inadequate
planning. Government representatives
denied the problem was of that magnitude and university officials sought to
reassure parents and potential students that space would be available for
qualified applicants. Later in
October, the government revealed its plan to provide forty million dollars to
the post-secondary system – twenty-seven million to universities and thirteen
million to colleges – to renovate facilities to accommodate the double cohort
demand.
In addition to concerns that there would not be room for those who wished
to continue their education after high school, there was also a fear that new
testing requirements in the schools would make increasing numbers of students
ineligible to graduate. (In January,
when Grade IX mathematics testing was underway, it was reported that in the
previous year only forty-four percent of students had met the seventy percent
standard on the standardized test.) In
late September, Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty had proposed a new high school
diploma that would combine academic achievement with workplace experience.
In October, Education Minister Witmer said she was willing to consider an
alternative diploma for those not going on to post-secondary education, but no
action had been taken in that direction by year end.
Perhaps the most ironic moment for education in 2002 came when the
Ontario Labour Relations Board responded to parents of blind, deaf and otherwise
disabled children who wanted special schools reopened that had been closed by
the OPSEU strike. They argued that
the workers in the schools provided an essential service.
The schools should be reopened,
said the Board, but not for the purposes of teaching.
The education was not an essential service, but health care for the
disabled students was. Health
As health care delivery continued to account for the largest proportion
of provincial government expenditure, issues of health remained at the forefront
of political consideration during the year.
However with one or two exceptions, no aspect of health care took up the
public’s attention for any great length of time.
Waiting times for emergency care and surgical procedures, the quality and
availability of medical personnel, the government’s plans to develop Family
Health Networks, the funding of hospitals, refusal of paramedics to accept
mandatory flu shots, and specific outbreaks of communicable disease all made
headlines at one point or another. Of
somewhat more durability than all of these however was the report of the
Walkerton water contamination inquiry. In
early January, the government announced it was providing $2.6 million to
Walkerton “to rebuild,” but critics observed that the bulk of the funding
was going to service an industrial park, rather than to address issues of water
quality in particular.
In the third week of January, the Liberals and NDP both called on the
Conservatives (heavily engaged in their leadership race) to recall the
Legislature to deal with the first report of the Walkerton inquiry.
Canadian Press quoted Justice Minister David Young’s response on
January 21: “The last thing the people of the province need is more debate
from politicians. They want
action.” No-one expected that the
report would result in action without any legislative debate, but clearly it was
not to occur until the PCs had selected their new leader.
Late in May, Mr. Justice O’Connor released the second report of his
inquiry into the Walkerton tragedy. In
it he included ninety-three recommendations for improving the safety of the
water treatment system and to prevent a recurrence of events such as those that
had occurred in Walkerton. He called
on the province to enact a safe drinking-water act, related to treatment and
distribution. In addition he
recommended a branch of the Environment Ministry be devoted to drinking water
and another to watershed management. The
Ministry, he said, should be in charge of regulating farm impacts on water
sources. (The contamination that
resulted in seven deaths in Walkerton had come from the excrement generated by a
nearby livestock farming operation.) The
report also addressed the responsibility of municipal governments for aspects of
drinking water safety and called for the accreditation and periodic inspection
of water-testing laboratories. The
government took the report under advisement and promised legislative action
later in the year.
In late October, the government made good on its promise, introducing
safe water legislation that contained many of the elements recommended by Mr.
Justice O’Connor. The bill had
drawn some inspiration from a private member’s bill introduced earlier by NDP
environment critic Marilyn Churley, but Ms Churley was critical of the fact that
the government bill did not adequately address the issues of cost (especially
for municipalities). The Premier
opined that much of the additional cost would have to be borne by consumers,
noting that people were apparently willing to pay more for cable television than
they were for water. Some of the
actions contained in the legislation has already been implemented; others were
to be put in place in the future. While
the Opposition was critical of the bill (including asking why it had taken so
long), the Globe and Mail (October 30)
called it “a bold step back from Harris cuts.”
One potential victim of the Harris government’s restructuring of the
hospital sector was given a final reprieve in February.
The government had proposed the closure of the Montfort hospital in
Ottawa, but the Ontario Court of Appeal had agreed with the assertion that the
hospital – providing services largely in French – was vital to the survival
of the French-language community in that city.
On February 1 it was reported that the government had decided not to
pursue an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, and the hospital was thus saved
from closing.
In late January, the province announced – as a public health measure
– it would require paramedics working with ambulance services in the province
to have flu shots each year. Perhaps
because of skepticism about the efficacy of such inoculations, and noting that
they were already required to take many other shots, the paramedics voted in
February not to comply. Negotiations
continued for several months, until in early October the government relented and
lifted the requirement.
Public health issues appeared on a few other occasions during the year.
In January, an e-coli outbreak occurred in several towns, with a total of
twelve cases, but the cause was undetermined.
Later in the month, several hospitals reported outbreaks of the
Much of the government’s attention during the year was directed to
issues of improving delivery of health case and of ensuring that necessary
medical personnel were available. In
mid-January, nurses in the province agreed to a salary settlement that provided
ten percent salary increases over three years.
The difficulty of retaining skilled nurses remained a concern, but the
settlement of a salary agreement promised to alleviate the concern in some small
measure. One use the province had
made of nurses, in an effort to provide health advice more efficiently, was
through the development of its Telehealth project, sometimes colloquially called
“dial-a-nurse.” In February,
Canadian Press reported the service had logged half a million calls in its first
year of operation, mostly from people reporting nausea, vomiting, abdominal
pains, fever in children, colds, coughs and rashes.
About one third were advised to see a doctor; about forty percent were
repeat calls. Critics called it
“cookbook medicine” and worried about liability.
On the other hand, its proponents argued that if it prevented many people
from clogging emergency rooms unnecessarily, it was worth the investment. In
a different use of technology, the Registered Nurses Association announced in
February that they had created a web site at which people could get answers to
some of their questions about health policy, and at the same time they invited
MPPs to provide their positions on health issues so that the nurses could
publicize them. This effort came at
a time when the PC leadership race was focused on health care, as Ernie Eves had
expressed his view that there might be room for things that other candidates
called two-tier medicine. April
Lindgren of Southam News quoted him as saying it made no sense that one could
pay for an MRI for one’s pet at
The issue of private provision of health care had also arisen in
February, when Provincial Auditor Erik Peters said that private cancer treatment
clinics were proving more expensive that those provided under the auspices of
Cancer Care
Through the year there were frequent announcements of new government
expenditure in support of improving health care.
In February, the government announced it would approve eight hundred
thousand dollars to fund fifteen post-graduate medical training positions for
Canadian citizens or permanent residents who completed medical training abroad
and would return to Towards
the end of November the Premier announced a plan to “fast-track”
qualification of foreign-trained doctors so they could practice in
In an effort to provide primary care with greater efficiency, the
government had urged the creation of Family Health Networks in which physicians,
nurses, and nurse-practitioners would combine their efforts collaboratively to
treat patient who were enrolled with the Networks.
Payment would be on a per-patient or “capitation” basis, rather than
by fees for services. In September,
Health Minister Tony Clement pointed with pride to the growth of participation
in Family Health networks as an indication of the increasing pace of primary
care reform. Critics however
asserted only a handful of doctors had signed up and they called for scrapping
the scheme. The plan came under
attack in October, when the Coalition of Family Physicians of Ontario expressed
their view that the FHNs were not an improvement on the fee-for-service system.
They cited a survey of their members in which ninety-eight percent of
respondents had rejected the scheme and they called instead for giving doctors a
raise in the fee schedule.
Despite the promises of increased funding, and efforts to attract needed
personnel, the rising demand for health care continued to be seen.
In January, Canadian Press reported the creation of a new organization
called Communities for Home Health Care that was calling on the government to
release two hundred ninety-five million dollars in home health care funding
which had been frozen pending the overhaul of municipal Community Care Access
Centres. In March, the Ontario
Hospital Association predicted more emergency room backlogs unless the province
put a billion dollars into hospitals. At
the same time, manufacturers of generic drugs asserted the government was
wasting millions of dollars because they were slow to approve generic drugs.
While both these claims could have been argued to be somewhat
self-serving for the organizations making them, they nonetheless highlighted two
areas of continuing concern in regard to the rising cost and allegedly
diminishing availability of important elements of health care delivery.
In mid-March, a group of midwives and pregnant women protested that the
government was delaying entry to practice for graduates of a new midwifery
programme. The government
reconsidered in light of this protest and announced the graduates could begin
immediately.
In September, a Peel-Toronto Task Force headed by former federal
Conservative cabinet minister Michael Wilson called for a major reform of the
mental health treatment system. What
was needed, they said, was a system of regional mental health boards with
dedicated funding to provide services. Towards
the end of October, parents of an autistic child petitioned the Legislature to
allow the intensive behavioural intervention treatment they had been receiving
for their child to continue to be funded past age six.
The legislation then in place provided OHIP funding only to age six, and
the parents argued that it was needed much longer.
Costs of treatment were such that parents could ill afford them, but they
argued the treatments were effective and medically necessary.
By year end, no action had been taken and the parents contemplated court
action to try and force the government’s hand. Energy and Environment
The province struggled throughout the year with plans to open the
electricity market to competition and to ensure an adequate supply of electric
power. The breaking up of Ontario
Hydro into component parts and the intended privatization of significant parts
of the resulting organizations was a cause of much debate during the year.
The tension between developing the energy capacity of the province and
maintaining an affordable energy supply remained a troubling issue at year end.
When Ontario Hydro was broken up, it was left to consumers to pay off the
“stranded debt” of the corporation. In
January, Canadian Press reported speculation that households might each pay four
dollars a month extra for electric power as local utilities found themselves
required to pay off the debt through payments to the province in lieu of taxes.
By September, the unfunded debt, held by the Ontario Electricity
Financial Corporation, was seen to be increasing, and electricity bills were
therefore likely to continue their rise.
Another concern born of the restructuring was the impact on employment.
The Toronto Star reported (January 15)
that Ontario Power Generation (one of the companies resulting from the Hydro
breakup) would have to cur two thousand jobs over the coming two years in order
to be competitive after the electricity market opened on May 1.
OPG was at that point responsible for generating seventy-two percent of
In the meantime, as the opening of the market approached, there was
concern expressed (by Energy Minister Jim Wilson among others) about he tactics
being used by energy marketers who were trying to sign up as many consumers as
possible to long-term electricity contracts before the market opened.
The confusion of consumers about these contracts, and the high pressure
sales approach of marketers, was reflected in the revelation in early March that
many households (some estimates went as high as half a million) had signed
long-term electricity supply contracts with more than one supplier.
The complexity of operating in the new market environment was highlighted
by the case of Toronto Hydro, revealed in September. They had been fined by the
Ontario Energy Board after it was determined that the regulated arm of the
corporation, Toronto Hydro Electric System (which owns the wires carrying
electricity to homes and businesses) had improperly conveyed information about
consumers to the deregulated arm of the corporation, Toronto Hydro Energy
Services (which sells fixed-price electricity and natural gas contracts).
It was also alleged that some door-to-door sales personnel had led
customers to believe they represented the utility rather than the unregulated
retailer. Toronto Hydro Energy
Services stopped selling contracts door-to-door as a consequence and relied on
direct mail, advertisements and call centres instead.
It was announced in late February that Ontario Power Generation would be
required to rebate to consumers any additional revenue it received if the
electricity price rose above 3.8 cents per kilowatt hour after the market
opened. OPG estimated it would be
rebating about four hundred twenty-five million dollars, as the price was
expected to be 4.3 cents per kilowatt hour.
Perhaps in an effort to calm fears about price increases in the new
privatized market, the Independent Market Operator (which would regulate the
market after May 1) predicted in early April that demand for power would be
modest and supply would increase. However
by April 18, the same body was predicting that Somewhat
earlier, NDP leader Howard Hampton pressed the government to reveal any dealings
it had with the
In late March, the NDP had complained to the Advertising Council about a
supplement in the Globe and Mail that
the opposition party described as “propaganda masquerading as news.”
(Canadian Press, March 26) Much
of the debate through the remainder of the year was concentrated on two issues:
the privatization of electric power and the price of electricity.
In early April, two unions (the Canadian Union of Public Employees and
the Communications, Energy and Paper-workers union) had taken the In
mid-July, the Board of Directors of Hydro One (the operator of the power grid)
announced that they had fired the CEO, Eleanor Clitheroe, asserting that she had
misused company resources for personal needs.
The Board was a new one appointed by the government after the original
Board had supported the CEO. Ms
Clitheroe filed suit alleging wrongful dismissal a month later and also asked
that the court overturn, as unconstitutional, legislation rolling back salary
increases of Hydro One executives. Hydro
One challenged her right to sue, but in December the courts agreed that she
could sue to seek fulfillment of her contract.
The case remained unresolved at year end. When
the electricity market opened on May 1, prices were initially lower than they
had been, but price fluctuation began soon thereafter.
The new Energy Minister, Chris Stockwell, sought to assuage fears by
asserting that blackouts or brownouts were unlikely.
By July however, the unusually hot summer was leading the Independent
Market Operator and political figures to urge conservation of electricity to
avoid just such eventualities. By
October, the high energy use in the summer had led to fears of service
interruptions, as well as demands from consumers for protection from price
increases. John Baird (by then the
Energy Minister) asserted that By
November, criticism of the government’s energy policy was seen as threatening
to their success in the next election. The
hoped-for expansion in generating capacity had not materialized, because private
firms had shown reluctance to build the necessary plants.
In the meantime, it was announced the renovation of the In
the area of environmental protection, the government had a relatively quiet
year. To be sure, there were
isolated incidents through the year of threats to the environment, such as the
announcement by the Globe and Mail in
February that they had uncovered Environment Ministry documents alleging
dangerous levels of PCBs in the The
first report from the CELA in June accused the Conservative government of
gutting the process for environmental assessment.
The second report, from the Sierra Fund in July asserted that lax
enforcement and low transparency had made Gord
Miller’s third annual report, issued in late September, found inadequacies and
room for improvement in areas of water quality, biodiversity, air quality and
land use planning. He cited
reductions in water monitoring stations and a consequent lack of information on
water pollution in southern The
particular issues arising from the Walkerton inquiry probably took most of the
government’s environmental attention through the year, though they did promise
fifty million dollars in April for clean-up programmes in the Other Issues
The province dealt at various times with issues outside the three main
areas of concern. There were
disputes in the early spring around the continuing issue of Quebec-based
contractors seeking construction work in
None of these matters occupied the front pages for long, but all were of
considerable importance to some part of the community, and some promised to be
of greater importance at a later date. All
served to highlight the diversity and complexity of Legislative Politics
The Throne Speech delivered at the opening of the Legislature May 9 spoke
of the government’s plans in the area of education, health care, water
quality, and energy, and those indeed were the matters that commanded the
greatest attention through the year. When
Finance Minister Janet Ecker presented the Budget June 17, it was the fourth
balanced budget in a row, in spite of fears expressed in February that the
government might have to plan for a deficit.
However when the Minister produced an economic statement in the fall,
things appeared somewhat less rosy, and she elected to postpone some promised
tax cuts to 2004.
There was speculation in the fall about the date of a provincial
election, given the fact that the government had elected a new leader in the
spring and might soon be ready to go to the polls.
In September, all three party leaders appeared at an international
plowing match in Glencoe. In the
province’s more agricultural past, such a gathering was often the prelude to
an election campaign, and traditionalists wondered if the event still had that
function. A week later, the
Legislature reconvened, and the Premier identified the session as
“make-or-break,” suggesting to many that an election might be expected in
the spring of 2003. In late October
however, a poll showed that the government party had suffered a nine percent
decline in popularity, and while the Premier dismissed the poll, saying
government popularity went up and down all the time, he began to talk soon
thereafter about a fall 2003 election.
Perhaps it was a foretaste of electioneering when in May the opposition
accused Chris Stockwell and his staff of filing extravagant expense claims,
including sizable bar tabs. At
first, Minister Stockwell said he would not file such claims in future but
refused to refund the money. A week
later, as opposition and press comment continued, he agreed to repay three
thousand dollars of the expenses. In
early October, similar accusations were levied against Tourism Minister Cam
Jackson, and he was told by the Premier’s Office to repay some seventy-six
hundred dollars of unjustified expenses. Following
allegations that he and his officials had run up expenses of over a hundred
thousand dollars in twenty-six months, he resigned his post.
Canadian Press quoted him as saying, in his defense, that when he was
hosting tourism ministers from across
The government sought to turn the tables on the opposition by accusing
some Liberal members of having similarly filed improper expense claims.
Then in late November, they introduced legislation that would allow the
Integrity Commissioner to review the expense claims of opposition leaders and
their staffs.
Partisanship was clearly increasing, and observers presumed an election
could not be far away. Following the
usual December revelations by the Provincial Auditor of wasteful government
spending, the Legislature recessed, with Canadian Press headlines calling the
government “bruised but still standing.”
Seasoned |