McGuinty admits he made bad call on coal plants

Ontario Premier reverses earlier remarks blaming advisers over broken promise

KAREN HOWLETT
Globe and Mail
17 November 2006

TORONTO - Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty backtracked yesterday on earlier comments blaming advisers for his ill-fated promise to close the province's coal plants.

Mr. McGuinty said he is the one who is to blame for making, and then breaking, a promise during the 2003 election campaign to replace the province's five pollution-spewing coal-fired plants with cleaner sources of electricity by the end of 2007. This week, his government was forced to concede that the smokestacks from many of the coal plants will not disappear until 2014.

"It's not a case of me trying to foist responsibility elsewhere," he told reporters yesterday. "I made the call, just as I made the more recent calls to delay the closure."

This was in stark contrast to a day earlier, when Mr. McGuinty pointed the finger of blame at unidentified advisers by saying, "Be careful about the advice you get from experts."

Yesterday, he elaborated on the earlier comment made at the end of a media scrum by saying it was his job to distill all the competing advice that lands on his desk on how best to keep the lights on in Ontario. He acknowledged that his original target of 2007 for closing the coal plants was simply too ambitious.

Governments of all political stripes find it particularly challenging to wrap their arms around electricity policy, he said, admitting that he learned a lot more about the topic after the Liberals formed the government in 2003.

"It's been a bit of a painful learning experience for me on the job, frankly, and one of the things I've had to learn is we were too ambitious in terms of the original date."

The best distilled advice he has right now, he said, is from the Ontario Power Authority, the agency responsible for carrying out the government's electricity plan. The authority recommended in a report released this week that the coal plants should operate for another eight years to ensure that there is enough electricity to meet the province's needs.

"We've always got to reconcile our eagerness to eliminate coal-fired generation with our responsibility to maintain a reliable supply of affordable electricity," he said. "And that's a challenge."

The opposition has long criticized Mr. McGuinty for promising to close the coal plants by 2007, when it was unclear how the government would replace a source of power that provided 25 per cent of the province's electricity. The attacks continued yesterday.

New Democrat Leader Howard Hampton said Mr. McGuinty's retreat on closing the coal plants puts public health at risk. The giant Nanticoke coal plant on Lake Erie is the province's single largest polluter.

"From day one Dalton McGuinty's hydro plan has been in shambles, because he only made his coal phase-out promise to win votes and never had a plan to get the job done."

Progressive Conservative MPP John Yakabuski said Mr. McGuinty's campaign promise ignored the advice of an all-party committee, which said the coal plants should remain open until 2015.

"The people of Ontario know what to expect from you down the road," Mr. Yakabuski said in Question Period. "Do you know what? The cauldron is already cooking. You're brewing up another batch of McGuinty's marvellous snake oil."