From West Carleton Councillor Eli El-Chantiry’s email newsletter:
This past June I updated residents with some favourable news regarding having 45,000 Hydro One customers transferred to Hydro Ottawa.
At that time, Jim Durrell (Hydro Ottawa Board Chair) addressed Ottawa City Council and noted he was hopeful to have a resolution of some kind by September 2015 to this longstanding issue.
As it’s now October and we haven’t received further updates, I connected with Hydro Ottawa to find out the latest on negotiations. Bryce Conrad, President and CEO of Hydro Ottawa, noted to me last week that both parties have had a number of positive meetings since June and both sides are engaged in good faith. At this point both parties have exchanged and are reviewing detailed financials underpinning any potential transaction.
This is a very complicated exercise – further complicated by changes to Hydro One’s governance model (the provincial government has made clear it plans to privatize a portion of Hydro One through an IPO process) as well as the regulatory model within which the industry operates. Discussions are expected to continue, and both parties will keep their respective shareholders fully briefed and informed as to the process and deliberations.
Mr. Conrad acknowledges that that process may seem like its taking longer than it should, but he reiterates that for a deal to happen, all parties need to be satisfied that it’s in the best interest of their shareholders and customers. I will continue to stay on top of this issue and will update residents as I know more.
None of these companies are in the business of providing electricity. They’re in the business of charging as money as they can get away with. I’m afraid that the obscene amount of money that Hydro Ottawa will have to pay to Hydro One, to “gain” these new customers, will be used as tool to raise rates for Hydro Ottawa customers.
If anyone has any doubt how absurdly corrupt things are around here, check out the whole story on the debt retirement charge.
And no, one can not blame this on a single political party. Both the Conservatives and the Liberals share blame in this. It’s about business manipulating everything and fooling and misleading governments. It’s a game with the single purpose which is to funnel as many dollars as they can get away with.
When we ( Osgoode) became part of Ottawa it should have changed our hydro, we should have been Ottawa hydro, instead we are still with hydro one and paying much more.Street names were changed, land taxes went up! But hydro no!we pay more?
Also why should they customers pay for debt relief, we were not part of the scandal.
Also we are charged for a delivery charge omg outrageous !
And it is now the end of Jan. 2016 and we are still paying more, some family’s I know have had their hydro cut off with small children because it was eat or pay the hydro.
This is nuts, Something has to be done!