who hired this guy?

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I added another interesting article to my last post. Some spin in it, but ignore that and look at the numbers.

It's been a lot of work finding this. Learned some more info too.

I wouldn't consider Tom Adams neutral in much of his proposals on the net, however, the point was to look at the #s and facts provided which are solid.

As for overall corporate income reporting, numbers that I've seen referred to are net profits, not gross profits, for obvious reasons. If OH or others use OH's gross profits to describe its financial status, then yes it is not commonly done, and is purposely misleading.

It wasn't the politicians that destroyed OH, it was OH leaderhip and decisions (failures in nuclear and in power planning were epic), running the ship in to the ground pretending they couldn't see any problems. Crazy. Over $38 billion of debt, and no record of or plan to change anything.

I don't know why you are straying to privatization. I don't care one way or another, and have no comments on the ON actions in these regards. I am familiar with what happened in the US and especially California. Certainly went off the rails for a a year or two. Laws were introduced, other laws strengthened, people arrested. Things got better and it is no longer an issue. It doesn't matter if it is government or private business, there are people gaming the system and doing crooked things. The biggest difference I've observed over the years is that people get held accountable in the private sector much much more often than in the government sector. As other's have noted here, in the government, such as OH, they get golden handshakes.

Please don't take the OH report, cherry pick an important piece out of the finances and then say look, they're profitable. That's not logical and doesn't work. Yes many units in OH were profitable, but some of the big ones were a disaster of unprecedented proportions (think nuclear and power capacity planning). It's like someone who hacks their legs off, but then says look at my arms, I'm fine.

How can you still say that OH gave money to the ON government? My evidence and link directly refutes that completely. That is incorrect. The ontario government never took money from OH and had them assume added debt. Only the newer entities pay revenue to the provincial government, because they sloughed off much of their debt and frankly most people would say they should still be accountable for that.

Since OH was a huge disaster of debt in its last 20 or so years, I'd say most everyone would not want the same playing field for the new successor companies, for obvious reasons. Think of the fool me once idiom, that bush mangled. Which is precisely why the playing field was changed. Seems reasonable to me.

I appreciate your job experience, it shows through in your posts, and you are knowledgeable too. I'm not knocking you here, just trying to highlight issues with the logic and reasoning in your suppositions. Supporting third party evidence is needed for your suppositions, and without them it becomes an argument from authority - logical fallacy.

Unfortunately, you are putting a big spin on the evidence and knitting a narrative to suit your position. It is a selection bias often called a cherry picking logical fallacy. Hey it happens all the time, I am just trained to notice it. I put the info out there, I think it speaks for itself and no narrative is needed. I'll leave it at that.
 
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I disagree with this statement "The biggest difference I've observed over the years is that people get held accountable in the private sector much much more often than in the government sector. As other's have noted here, in the government, such as OH, they get golden handshakes."

There are crooks in both the private and public sector, and although public sector may get benefits that they don't deserve. The private sector crooks rarely get caught and if they do they hide it alot better and get way bigger payouts. How do the think the whole housing crises started ... greedy banking , fund , investment companies in the US manipulating regulations for their gain. Very few got charged.. So I wouldn't use that as a comparison.


 
250R-ICE said:
I disagree with this statement "The biggest difference I've observed over the years is that people get held accountable in the private sector much much more often than in the government sector. As other's have noted here, in the government, such as OH, they get golden handshakes."

There are crooks in both the private and public sector, and although public sector may get benefits that they don't deserve. The private sector crooks rarely get caught and if they do they hide it alot better and get way bigger payouts. How do the think the whole housing crises started ... greedy banking , fund , investment companies in the US manipulating regulations for their gain. Very few got charged.. So I wouldn't use that as a comparison.
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Prime example; the financial types who wrecked the world's economy.
 
Lol. You'll notice that I never said that private sector people are "always" held accountable in that post. There are crooks out there everywhere for sure. And there are exceptions, nothing is black and white.

The thing is private sector crooks rarely cost taxpayers their money (again note how I didn't say never, lol)

That financial stuff and accountability is just too depressing for me to even think about. I am a no fan of total deregulation, that's for sure. This thread highlights a few examples of how bad things can go with big time deregulation.
 
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Rob MacLennan said:
So where did all of that debt come from and who considers the value of a corporation, without looking at both assets and liabilities? If I own a $500K house my net worth isn't $500K+ dollars, if I have $450K of mortgage debt. Because the cost hasn't yet been paid in no way means that the cost doesn't exist. Those costs go waaaaaaaaay back.
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Rob - the debt was accumulated by building generating stations (which were amortized over their life expectancy of 40 years) and much political interference in the later years of OH. Two examples of political interference that caused debt to accumulate were an Ont. government directive that there would be no price increases for X number of years (I forget exactly which years these were, but it was after the large rate increases in the early '90s.) More rate increases were required, but being unable to raise rates, the only alternative was to operate at a loss ( financed by accumulating debt.) The second example of political interference is shown in the continued political delays in the building of Darlington which added approximately an extra $6B-$8B to the cost of building the station.

kwtoxman said:
I added another interesting article to my last post. Some spin in it, but ignore that and look at the numbers.
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Thank you for finding this article as well. I cannot dispute the numbers quoted - they support what I have been saying throughout my posts. The decline in publicly owned generating assets under the Libs has been insane. OPG, as a provincially owned, regulated power producer, is the only thing moderating rates for the benefit of consumers. The ability of OPG to moderate rates (and function as a business, including servicing their debt) is being destroyed by government decisions to shut down coal fired generation, cancel the new nuclear plant out at Darlington and shut down Pickering Nuclear within the next few years. The Green Energy plan is also destroying the provincially owned utility. OPG is regulated at approx $55/MW for the power they produce. Wind and solar generators are guaranteed access to the grid whenever they are able to generate and for every drop of power they feed into the grid, they are guaranteed up to $180/MW (wind) and up to $750/MW (solar). Their guaranteed access has a price though... it means that in times where their generated electricity would create an oversupply on the grid, OPG must cut back on their relatively cheap production to accommodate them. The Green Energy plan is replacing power that we were paying $55/MW with power that we must pay up to $750/MW for. The Green Energy plan is, by my reckoning, out of control.


kwtoxman said:
I wouldn't consider Tom Adams neutral in much of his proposals on the net, however, the point was to look at the #s and facts provided which are solid.
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I'm sure that there are few who would consider him, or Energy Probe to be neutral. It is difficult to determine the source of their funding, but rumour has it that it was a consortium of private interests who were intent on privatizing Ontario's electricity system. Toward that end, the paper you quoted (presented at the Harvard symposium) appears to be full of inaccuracies and more spin than a top.

kwtoxman said:
As for overall corporate income reporting, numbers that I've seen referred to are net profits, not gross profits, for obvious reasons. If OH or others use OH's gross profits to describe its financial status, then yes it is not commonly done, and is purposely misleading.

It wasn't the politicians that destroyed OH, it was OH leaderhip and decisions (failures in nuclear and in power planning were epic), running the ship in to the ground pretending they couldn't see any problems. Crazy. Over $38 billion of debt, and no record of or plan to change anything.
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No doubt, in the early days, nuclear had it's challenges, but those have been worked out many years ago and are no longer issues. In fact, Darlington is one of the worlds top 10 nuclear plants and Bruce Power saw fit to refurbish Bruce "A". As for failures in power planning, the numbers indicate this to be false. Back when OH released their last power plan (back around 1990, I believe) they called for the construction of at least two multi-unit stations to meet future demand. This created quite a stir and was quickly denounced by the OH detractors. Were their predictions that far off? No, according to the Financial Post article you quoted, which states that 7200MW of new generating capacity has been added since 2005. Coincidentally, if the OH energy forcast and plan of 1990 had been adopted and followed, new publicly owned generating stations (that would have supplied the same 7200 MW of energy) would have come online sometime between 2000 and 2005, negating the need for these private generators.


kwtoxman said:
Please don't take the OH report, cherry pick an important piece out of the finances and then say look, they're profitable. That's not logical and doesn't work. Yes many units in OH were profitable, but some of the big ones were a disaster of unprecedented proportions (think nuclear and power capacity planning). It's like someone who hacks their legs off, but then says look at my arms, I'm fine.

How can you still say that OH gave money to the ON government? My evidence and link directly refutes that completely. That is incorrect. The ontario government never took money from OH and had them assume added debt. Only the newer entities pay revenue to the provincial government, because they sloughed off much of their debt and frankly most people would say they should still be accountable for that.

Since OH was a huge disaster of debt in its last 20 or so years, I'd say most everyone would not want the same playing field for the new successor companies, for obvious reasons. Think of the fool me once idiom, that bush mangled. Which is precisely why the playing field was changed. Seems reasonable to me.
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Cherry picking info? Correct me if I am wrong, but that is exactly what you did with the same figures to make an erroneous point. I simply used those numbers and information presented in previous pages of the report to unravel that spin and present a more neutral account of what happened. I'm not entirely sure how we can both look at exactly the same numbers and come up with opposite conclusions. As for OH giving the government their profits, I refer you back to my previous post about them being a Crown Corporation.

kwtoxman said:
Unfortunately, you are putting a big spin on the evidence and knitting a narrative to suit your position. It is a selection bias often called a cherry picking logical fallacy. Hey it happens all the time, I am just trained to notice it. I put the info out there, I think it speaks for itself and no narrative is needed. I'll leave it at that.
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I have attempted to use the facts and figures to unravel some of the infinite spin that has been put on the whole issue since the early 90's. The truth is a wonderful thing... if you can get at it. I'll admit to having a bias here... I like the idea of having non-profit, benevolent government monopolies acting in the public interest to supply our essential services such as water, health care, and yes... electricity. Increasingly, profit-driven companies have shown themselves to be amoral entities for whom money is their new god. I'll point to the Lac Megantic rail disaster as just one illustration of profits being put ahead of the public interest. Sadly, it wasn't always this way in the corporate world, but these are our new realities.
 
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ike said:
Rob - the debt was accumulated by building generating stations (which were amortized over their life expectancy of 40 years) and much political interference in the later years of OH. Two examples of political interference that caused debt to accumulate were an Ont. government directive that there would be no price increases for X number of years (I forget exactly which years these were, but it was after the large rate increases in the early '90s.) More rate increases were required, but being unable to raise rates, the only alternative was to operate at a loss ( financed by accumulating debt.) The second example of political interference is shown in the continued political delays in the building of Darlington which added approximately an extra $6B-$8B to the cost of building the station.
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Bob Rae in 1993.

Explaining Price Drivers from 2000-2010
Why did the price of electricity itself increase by 67%? Back in 1993 when the public complained about rising prices, the government froze the wholesale price at about 4.3 cents/kWh, below Ontario Hydro’s average total cost of about 4.5 cents/kWh. The price freeze was lifted on May 1, 2002 when the competitive market opened, but a new freeze at 4.3 cents/kWh for small consumers was imposed on November 11, 2002.3,4
The freeze was supposed to run until 2006, but was lifted in April, 2004. Some of the subsequent increase in price represents the need to cover the full costs that were hidden when prices were held artificially low.

http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j...o_tW3m4PZXSf36yEg&sig2=628ku2_cfcdresshk76zBg

That doesn't make it Harris's fault.
 
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Rob MacLennan said:
Bob Rae in 1993.

Explaining Price Drivers from 2000-2010
Why did the price of electricity itself increase by 67%? Back in 1993 when the public complained about rising prices, the government froze the wholesale price at about 4.3 cents/kWh, below Ontario Hydro’s average total cost of about 4.5 cents/kWh. The price freeze was lifted on May 1, 2002 when the competitive market opened, but a new freeze at 4.3 cents/kWh for small consumers was imposed on November 11, 2002.3,4
The freeze was supposed to run until 2006, but was lifted in April, 2004. Some of the subsequent increase in price represents the need to cover the full costs that were hidden when prices were held artificially low.

http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j...o_tW3m4PZXSf36yEg&sig2=628ku2_cfcdresshk76zBg

That doesn't make it Harris's fault.
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I agree! The price freezes do not make the price we are paying today Harris's fault. The fault lies in disbanding the publicly owned, not-for-profit Ontario Hydro and creating the competitive market. How do you take a not-for-profit public utility and replace it with a market composed of profit making companies, and hope that the price will go down? It makes no sense to me. The actions of the "competitive" market in those early years caused the electricity price to skyrocket almost overnight (which led to the a further price freeze, only 5 months after the market opened. Ummm... Ooops!)

According to the law of supply and demand, market equilibrium is established when supply and demand curves intersect. Obviously, the intersection point is much much higher than anyone realized in their wildest dreams! There have been times on the spot market where the price of electricity went over $10,000/MW because demand was outstripping supply (those were really hot summer days!) That's a bit higher than the $43/MW that we were paying during the price freeze days and the $55/MW that OPG receives for their generation today. Also, the supply curve for electricity is relatively inelastic, which means that people will tend to consume the same amount, no matter what the price. Of course, people will make small concessions as the price rises, like doing all their electricity intensive chores like clothes washing/drying in the low rate periods, but honestly... how high do rates have to get before people truly start to suffer? The lower income people suffer immediately with any rate increase, whereas those who have higher incomes suffer less (or not at all.) And what about shut-ins and the elderly... they suffer the most because they are indoors most of the time and don't have the option of escaping to an air conditioned office or mall. It all leads to one simple conclusion - we were better off with the old monopoly Ont. Hydro than we are today in the competitive marketplace.
 
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AGAVE said:
I think corruption dates back to the creation of currency, but don't tell anyone they are being ripped off! Shhh.
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Probably back to when the caveman Ugh took a little extra mammoth from the day's kill before bringing it back to the cave for the tribe, but who's counting. The point is that when you're giving someone $80K to move further away from where he works, there's something seriously wrong.
 
I do not understand how only in the public sector can you essentially steal, and not only do you not have to repay what you stole, in most cases you don't even lose your job.
 
Renboy said:
I do not understand how only in the public sector can you essentially steal, and not only do you not have to repay what you stole, in most cases you don't even lose your job.
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Well you lose your job but only after the thefts get into the millions, and then you turn around and sue for the 'bonuses' that you're 'still owed.'

Oh, sorry, that should read as "loans that have yet to be repaid."
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