To most Ontarians, this probably doesn’t seem like a good time to be spending billions of dollars on expanding our ability to send power to the United States.
Yet that is exactly what the Government of Ontario wants us to do. They want to spend billions of dollars to build new nuclear reactors and north-south transmission lines to export more power to the United States.
Even without tariffs and the economic damage the Trump administration seems determined to do to Ontario, these projects make little economic sense. First, power from these new reactors is going to be far from cheap and nowhere near competitive with power from wind and solar.
Ironically, to execute this plan, Ontario is planning to buy GE-Hitachi reactors and enriched uranium from the Americans who are trying to torpedo our economy.
Instead of spending billions of dollars to buy nuclear technology and enriched uranium from the United States, and then praying that they will buy our high-priced nuclear electricity, we could instead expand our east-west electricity grid.
Ontario is sandwiched between two renewable energy powerhouses: Quebec and Manitoba. And it’s not by chance that power rates in these provinces are much lower than in Ontario as a result. Montreal’s residential electricity rate is almost 50% lower than Toronto’s; Winnipeg’s is 30% lower.
By investing in renewable energy and expanding our east-west grid, we can create jobs, reduce our dependency on the US, and lower our electricity bills.
For example, we know, thanks to a study done by the Independent Electricity System Operator, that we could expand our transmission links with Quebec by 7,500 MW using existing Hydro One transmission corridors at a tiny fraction of the cost of building new reactors. Those links would immediately allow us to increase our electricity trade with Quebec. And in the future they would also allow us to tap into on- and offshore wind power from Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia.
When election candidates come knocking on your door, ask them if they support keeping our power in Canada by expanding our east-west electricity grid. Their answer will tell you a lot about who really has Ontario’s interests at heart.
Please send a message to Ontario’s 4 major party leaders asking them if they support a clean, made-in-Canada electricity solution
Thank you for raising electricity issues in the election.