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Orillia councillor presses energy minister on solar-power contracts

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In Orillia
Sep 13th, 2010
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Letter to the Orillia Packet and Times September 13 2010
This past month, Mayor Ron Stevens, Coun. Ralph Cipolla and I attended the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) conference in Windsor.
There were three great guest speakers along with Liberal members of provincial parliament. There were also about 1,700 members, mayors and councillors from all over Ontario.
When these people spoke, you could easily understand what they were saying. Jeff Rubin, past chief economist at CIBC world markets, spoke of all past recessions being instigated by a spike in oil prices including the last one at $1.46 a barrel.
Andrew Coyne, national editor of Maclean’s magazine, talked about political issues. Diana Swain is a veteran journalist who spoke about everyday leadership and where leaders come from.
My summary would be that paying back the infrastructure stimulus package will be difficult with the high rate of retiring baby boomers to pay and that it will take real leadership to bring economic balance to Ontario in the near future.
This is the one day a year there’s a chance to come face to face with the ministers of the province that make business decisions on how to run our province. All the various ministers line up at head table and you are allowed to state your question and ask the minister of choice to respond.
My question was to Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Brad Duguid and went like this. “My name is Maurice McMillan, councillor, City of Orillia. My question today is on the pricing of solar projects, giving an unpredictable 80-cent power priority over one-cent water power and four-cent nuclear. Why haven’t you stopped signing more unreliable solar projects until price and reliability impact studies are done?”
Minister Duguid did not answer my question, but went on to sell the benefits and not the cost of the Green Energy Act.
This letter is to press the minister to address these concerns of a growing unaffordable power supply and to push for price-and system-reliability impact studies to be completed before he signs us up to any more solar-power contracts.
Maurice McMillan Councillor, Ward 2 Candidate 2010

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