Ontario�s plan: destroy jobs, save the planet

Here in clean, green Ontario, where the ambitions of our government know no bounds, a bright new year has dawned. Gasoline is likely to rise by 4.3 cents a litre. Your hydro bill is going up. You’ll pay more for natural gas, too. But don’t feel blue. You are helping save the planet. All of these higher costs are part of the government’s new cap-and-trade scheme, a vast multibillion-dollar enterprise that is designed to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by redistributing tons of money to big emitters in California and subsidy-seekers here at home.

Unfortunately, the timing is terrible – especially for an increasing number of small- and medium-sized business owners, who can’t figure out how to make a living here any more.

Jocelyn Williams Bamford is vice-president of Automatic Coating, a small, specialty manufacturer based in Scarborough, Ont., that employs 75 people. “Our electricity costs are through the roof,” she told me. The reason is something called “global adjustments” – a fee to cover the cost of green energy and conservation programs that is unrelated to the actual cost of electricity itself. Companies like hers are facing staggering hydro bills of $30,000 or $40,000 a month – mostly because of government investments in green energy that Ontario doesn’t need and can’t use.

Now comes cap and trade. That will hurt even more. Larger companies will be required to buy pollution allowances, but smaller ones will just get whacked with extra costs. How much? An estimate by law firm Stikeman Elliott puts the tab at $136,000 a year for starters, rising to $720,000 by 2030. But in fact no one knows what the costs will be or how the billings will work. Large emitters will initially get breaks to allow them to adjust. Small businesses will get none.

“The Ontario government is making sure it will be impossible for manufacturers to compete in a global market,” says Byron Nelson, whose company, Leland Industries, employs about 220 people in two Canadian plants to make fasteners for global export markets. “We’ve expanded a lot over the last number of years, but doing business here is so damn hard.” Most companies like his have invested heavily to reduce emissions, with great success. But the government doesn’t care. The next plant he opens will be in Illinois, where electricity costs are about half of Ontario’s – and where somebody actually listens to people like him.

These companies are exactly the kinds of businesses that everybody in the world is desperate to attract – innovative, globally competitive firms with high-skilled jobs. They are increasingly important to what remains of manufacturing in Ontario, much of which was wiped out by China and other low-cost countries. Yet Ontario’s government seems determined to drive them off. Automatic Coating, which is a supplier to the U.S Navy, is being constantly courted by U.S jurisdictions that want to lure it south of the border. U.S. jurisdictions have been begging the company to move south. “We want to stay here but we feel like we’re being pushed out, ” Ms. Bamford says. “We honestly don’t know whether to pick up and leave or stay and fight.”

Things are better in Alberta – sort of. Rachel Notley’s carbon-pricing scheme, which also comes into effect this week, is everything that Ontario’s is not. It is comprehensible and transparent. You may not like it, but at least it makes sense. Ontario’s scheme is hopelessly opaque, and offers endless opportunities for mischief. Major details (such as how to count emissions cuts) have yet to be worked out. Business people are astonished that such a half-baked scheme is actually going ahead.

Ontario’s Liberals are delusional. They actually believe that they can re-engineer industry and society and even the climate itself. Fortunately, the voters are catching on. Premier Kathleen Wynne’s approval rating stands at a miserable 14 or 15 per cent. Ontarians go to the polls next year. The Conservatives can win simply by sitting back and letting people open their hydro bills every month.

Everybody wants to do something about climate change. The challenge is to figure out whether the costs we’re imposing on ourselves are reasonable and fair compared to our competitors. We should also keep in mind that fossil fuels still supply around 80 per cent of the world’s energy demand – and the same will be true in 2040, no matter how much we choose to kneecap ourselves.

"BartSimpson" said
My advice to Canadian firms wishing to depart the land of Marxist egalitarianism and Utopian pipe-dreams?

Move to Texas. Texas wants your business and Texas won't wage war against you just because you have an entrepreneurial spirit and you dare to say the word "profit" even though it offends the leftards.

https://texaswideopenforbusiness.com/

"BeaverFever" said

Do they also let you dump your garbage in the street or pour your old paint cans into the storm drains? Because, freedom?

"BartSimpson" said
My advice to Canadian firms wishing to depart the land of Marxist egalitarianism and Utopian pipe-dreams?

Move to Texas. Texas wants your business and Texas won't wage war against you just because you have an entrepreneurial spirit and you dare to say the word "profit" even though it offends the leftards.

https://texaswideopenforbusiness.com/

"2Cdo" said
^^^^^^^^^^^^ This is what happens when cuts are made to healthcare in Ontario. Obviously not enough healthcare workers to keep the crazies away from all electronic devices.

"BeaverFever" said

Do they also let you dump your garbage in the street or pour your old paint cans into the storm drains? Because, freedom?

Texas Among Nation's Worst Water Polluters

Texas is the second-biggest water polluter in the country, in terms of pounds released. But when the toxicity of the pollution is factored in, Texas jumps to the top of the list — and it’s not even close.

Texas polluters released about 16.5 million pounds of toxic chemicals into waterways in 2012, second only to Indiana, according to a report released Thursday by Environment Texas, an environmental advocacy group based in Austin.

And in terms of a measurement that compares pollutants according to how toxic they are, Texas is without rival. According to the report, Texas produced 34 million “toxicity-weighted pounds” in 2012 — 30 times more than the next state, and more than double the rest of the country combined.

...According to the EPA's website, the Freeport plant was noncompliant for 12 consecutive quarters ending in 2013, the most recent year for which data are available.

Texas leads U.S. in greenhouse gas emissions

exas' coal-fired power plants and oil refineries generated 294 million tons of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in 2010, more than the next two states - Pennsylvania and Florida - combined, the data shows.

Texas Is the Best. And Worst. #1 in Both Wind Energy and Carbon Pollution.
KATHARINE HAYHOE, DIRECTOR, CLIMATE SCIENCE CENTER, TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY | DECEMBER 6, 2016, 8:27 AM EST

I live in West Texas, and some of the stereotypes are true. There are more SUVs and trucks here than you can shake a stick at. Oil wells are more common than trees. And if you ask people here if humans are changing the climate, most would say no.

Texas is the number one producer of carbon pollution in the United States. If Texas were its own country, it would be the seventh largest emitter in the world. That puts it ahead of Iran, South Korea, and even my native land, Canada. There’s no getting around it, Texas is a big part of the problem.