It was shocking news for me …..Canada’s poor are too poor to afford a small hike in electricity price ( only C$72 per year). Isn’t it strange that some citizens of this great nation are so poor?????
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Apr. 1, 2004. 01:00 AM

Editorial: Poor cannot cope with hydro hike



New, higher consumer prices for electricity go into effect today. For most Ontario residents, the price hike for hydro will be just another irritant, like the expected increase in their residential property taxes this year.

According to the Ministry of Energy, the jump in power prices will add a maximum of $6 to the monthly electricity bill for the 60 per cent of Ontarians who consume less than 1,000 kilowatt hours a month.

But for the poor, $72 a year more for hydro, plus all the other nickel and dime charges for basic services, which in every case can be traced to inadequate municipal funding by Queen's Park, can be a major problem. Such hardship is already showing up in the steadily increasing reliance on the city's hard-pressed food banks. The degree of privation will be particularly severe next winter on the disproportionately large percentage of poor households that still depend on hydro to heat their homes.

These are the people least able to cope with what Premier Dalton McGuinty calls "real positive change." And yet these are the people he is in danger of neglecting as he confronts his own cash shortage and the consequent need to bring user charges into line with real service costs.

To be fair, the McGuinty government did move quickly to raise the minimum wage to $7.15 an hour from $6.85, where it languished for nine long years during which the cost of living rose by 20 per cent.

But inflation this year will soak up almost half of the minimum wage increase, while higher electricity prices will take another 12 per cent. Before the almost certain property tax hike or any other costly surprises, people who couldn't begin to make ends meet at $6.85 an hour can at most count on an extra $4.73 a week — far too little to free them from the food banks.

Families on social assistance, by contrast, will find themselves falling even deeper into poverty as inflation and the electricity price increase eat further into their already inadequate welfare cheques.

But instead of subsidizing the needy for rising electricity prices, which they simply cannot afford, Queen's Park has set aside a modest $2 million to provide a one-time bailout for those who can't keep pace with their electricity bills. While that will get them through their first crisis, the McGuinty government is offering no further assistance for those unable to keep up with their higher electricity bills in subsequent months.

McGuinty was on solid ground when he argued that he could not afford to keep subsidizing the electricity bill of every family in the province. However, he took that logic to a callous extreme by bringing in a policy that effectively refuses to subsidize the very poorest in our midst.

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"Change before you have to" : Jack Welch