THUNDER BAY -- Northwestern Ontario’s municipalities are calling for a greater voice and greater investment in long-term energy planning.
The Common Voice Northwest Energy Task Force intends to submit a 12-page letter including 14 recommendations to the Ministry of Energy as the region’s contribution to consultation on the province’s Long Term Energy Strategy.
If implemented, the recommendations would regionalize energy planning and overhaul the way energy development is funded.
“There really shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all scenario,” said common voice chairman and Thunder Bay Coun. Iain Angus.
“The Northwest should be looked at differently than the rest of the province, whether it’s in terms of conservation or whether it’s in terms of planning for transmission or distribution lines, it shouldn’t be an all-Ontario rule. It should be a rule that fits this area.”
The letter claims 25 mines are “working their way through to development” across a region whose energy capacity is already peaking. It states under the existing system, communities can’t make a business case for their own expansion while energy-hungry industry is expected to pay to extend transmission lines into mine sites.
Common voice suggests the province pay for those grid expansions -- including bringing natural gas to northern towns and ensuring alternate energy supplies -- interpreting the projects to be in the public good, as does every province but Alberta and Ontario.
Existing policy that develops industry in the population-rich south, it argues, can’t be applied to industry with 10 times the energy need that can be 100 times further away from the grid.
“Connection costs to/for a new industry (mines, mills etc.) to the existing electrical grid should not become prohibitive, to the extent that it makes the development financially unfeasible for the proponent,” the letter reads.
“Up until this reality is realized Northwestern Ontario’s remote potential industrial developments will never be built.”
Common voice envisages a regional body advising the provincial regulating agencies under the guiding principle of economic development. Angus said the decision-making impetus has shifted to the political realm and that has left northern energy development in a shortsighted arena.
“We want to see a return of authority to the Ontario Energy Board to make some determinations and have public hearings on these matters,” Angus said.
“The province has been looking away form the regulatory agency having any involvement and the ministry has been doing more and more of the planning and making decisions. They’ve eliminated the formal public review process. We want to see that going back.”
The letter has been endorsed by Thunder Bay City Council, the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association, and the Northwestern Ontario Associated Chambers of Commerce.
