Ontario’s energy minister Dave Levac has some explaining to do.

Question: Glen Murray, Eric Davis and several other Liberal candidates have advocated for a carbon tax – given the success of the carbon tax in BC, is this something you will also advocate for if re-elected?
Dave Levac: It’s being reviewed and some of my colleagues are more enthusiastic for it than others. Our present policies are leading us to a carbonfootprint reduction already. At this time its not part of our platform.
Question: Just to clarify, if a carbon tax is being reviewed does that mean there’s a possibility it would appear in the next 4 years if the Liberals were re¬ elected? It seems like a really progressive policy to help supplement the Green Energy Act.
Dave Levac: Jim: Yes there is a possibility that a carbon tax is on the table to evaluate, because it presently is.

McGuinty, who initially opposed a carbon tax, said Liberal Leader Stephane Dion’s “green shift” plan is still a good idea, even though it could slap a hefty bill on emissions from Ontario’s four coal-fired generation plants.”

Premier Dalton McGuinty

Either the minister is out of line or  Dalton has not abandoned  the idea of a  carbon tax in Ontario.

I could raise the scary specter of a coalition in Ontario, instead I will settle for the fact that this gives us even more reason to soundly defeat the Liberals.

From National Post

the prospect of Ms. Horwath’s NDP holding the balance of power in a minority government is one that should not be taken lightly by the province’s voters. The NDP, its platform says, would undo the corporate-tax reductions that have been the focus of the Liberals’ competitiveness agenda. It would embrace Buy Ontario schemes. It would remove the HST from electricity and heating bills, which is not terribly consistent with its plan to encourage public transit use by freezing fares. (Speaking of inconsistent, it would also cap gasoline prices.)
As detrimental to the economy as any of these things would be, consider as well the prospect of Mr. McGuinty being at the negotiating table when the NDP outlined its conditions for support. The Premier, to put it bluntly, is a turtler. Whether it’s proposals for a natural gas plant in Oakville, changes to the sexual education curriculum, or the province’s remarkably supple rates and times that form part of its peak-timing electricity-price plan, Mr. McGuinty has shown a distinct flair for backing away from a fight.
It’s enough to make one suspect Ms. Horwath would relish sitting across from Mr. McGuinty at minority-government bargaining time. Accept these terms, sir, or I will ask again that you do so.

From Ottawa Citizen

The fact that power derived from the green energy act forms such a small proportion of Ontario’s power generation mix raises questions about the pace of the Liberal party’s signature subsidy plan, known as the Feed-in Tariff (FIT).
Those questions were amplified late this week when the National Post revealed that a solar plant used for a Liberal campaign photo op days earlier had temporarily shut down production.
When pressed on the issue, McGuinty subsequently explained that the company “went through their inventory faster than expected.”
But even staunch proponents of renewable energy say there are obvious problems with the Liberal plan, which pays green energy producers above-market rates on 20-year contracts in return for buying up to 60 per cent of their project materials domestically.
The heavy incentive (also known as micro-FIT for smaller installations by homeowners) was designed to kick-start an entirely new green energy manufacturing cluster in Ontario.
However, bottlenecks in the system, doubt surrounding the future of the program and a challenge to the domestic-content provision at the World Trade Organization, have reduced to a trickle the number of projects becoming a reality in the province.
No less an authority than Ontario’s environmental commissioner, Gord Miller, remarked on the slow progress of the program this summer, telling a press conference, “There’s been an awful lot of discussion about something that’s fairly modest so far, I’d say.”

Simply put the Liberals don’t seem to have any problem treating economic policy as a laboratory experiment. Meanwhile, the taxpayers have to pick up the tab for technology that has not yet come to maturity. No government can subsidize their way to prosperity.

From Owen Sound Sun Times

If you haven’t seen them take a drive south to Lake Erie along historic Highway 3 between Blenheim and Leamington. On a windy day, “The sound is like a freight train,” says Dave Benson, Heritage Coordinator for the Municipality of Chatham and Kent. “A modest house is worth 30 per cent less and a million-dollar property is unsaleable.” Are they ugly? You bet. Texan billionaire T. Boone Pickins, a heavy investor in wind power, has said he won’t put any turbines on his 68,000 acres. On a gorgeous fall day the rolling hills of golden fields east of Lake Huron rival Tuscany. Imagine turbines over Tuscany.
Yet, McGuinty talks proudly in television election ads of 900 turbines installed so far. However, with the exception of one Lake Ontario project, the power’s not going anywhere. Wind farms along Lakes Huron and Erie are not, as yet, on the grid. While this is talked about locally, few Ontarians are aware that the turbines are mainly just gigantic lawn ornaments.

There is obviously a groundswell of grassroots support against the green energy act in wind farms. However,  the Ontario Liberals proceed with a program that is perceived by some to be antidemocratic. Further fostering a sense that the government of Ontario, Only cares about issues in Toronto. Talk about the politics of division.