ANALYSIS: Please, Ontario. Stop subsidizing my hydro bill

Look up, everybody, because I’m about to get up on my high horse again.

Every Ontario budget consists of thousands of numbers. But the one that consistently confounds me the most is the amount of money taxpayers are going to fork over to subsidize the electricity use of ratepayers. In some ways, it’s a bit of a shell game. Taxpayers will give $6.9 billion this fiscal year to ratepayers to help them pay their electricity bills, so it’s sort of like taking that money out of one pocket in your pants and transferring it into the other pocket. Of course, you have to ask the banks to give you that money in the first place, because we don’t have it.

But I’ve always been confused about who’s entitled to get that electricity subsidy. People with a low income? Absolutely. They should get it. They need it.

But I get it, too. That’s right. The province of Ontario goes to the financial markets and borrows nearly $7 billion a year to help me pay my electricity bill. Well, me and a bunch of other people who don’t need the break.

Why? I certainly don’t need the $43.62 a month the province sends me. In fact, I’d much rather they sent that $43.62 to someone who really does need it. But Ontario doesn’t do that, and doesn’t really have a good explanation for why.

In fact, if you look at the province’s annual deficit for this 2026-27 fiscal year, Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy is forecasting a shortfall of $13.8 billion. That means fully half the deficit could be wiped out if we stopped subsidizing people’s electricity bills.

Critics of this approach will tell you it makes no sense. They say we should be ensuring lower-income people get a break on their bills, while wealthier people pay more. It’s probably also the case that wealthier people live in bigger homes and use more electricity, and thus are perversely […] This is an excerpt. Read the full article at TVO.org.