Frank, I didn't make any arguments about privatization, rather arguments about how green energy and grid refurbishment were somewhat routinely conflated to an extent that the numbers don't bare out a direct line between energy cost and "green" energy initiatives. Nor did I demonize what Ford is doing now, just a little caution of, "let's see what it looks like in a few years time." If you look at the government's own data and cancel out partisan bias/messaging by considering the regulators' statements under all of Harris/Eves/McGuinty/Wynne/Ford governments, then a few things jump out. Harris/Eves allowed the generation capacity to languish. The 2003 blackout was an acute expression of that (Ontario's capacity was about 8000MW short of peak demands) and also, of a significantly languishing transmission capacity. Rolling blackouts happen for two reasons - not enough power, or not enough bandwidth to move it around. In layman's terms, all those transmission towers have to be able to sustain peak loads 2X higher than the max nominal load, so that if one circuit fails for some reason, the power can move into the remaining circuit that will then safely carry both loads only long enough to sustain or reroute power until normal loads resume across both. In actual use, each circuit would be operated close to 40%, and the combined load would peak at 80% when the redundancy was activated for some reason. The cost of all this is in the millions per KM, and Ontario has about 30,000KM to look after. Additional Harris/Eves obfuscated their own fiscal management by burying many of the costs in a corporate restructuring and break of Hydro crowns, including a massive debt holding entity.
Their Liberal successors were very successful at refurbishing this capacity, phasing out coal, replacing it with natural gas and renewables. But, it can be argued that they were too successful, and overbuilt compared to near and mid term projections. Ontario's existing capacity is nearly 39,000MW, peak demand in 2020 was about 60% that on the hottest (highest demand) days. This part is hard to say, because also during the last 17 years we have experienced both unprecedented residential expansion and charted for a sustained rate for at least another 30 years according to provincial growth projections. So, eventually, we will use all of that capacity. Liberals will make the argument that they were trying to root a new sector into Ontario's economy, something that would form a cornerstone of next-gen jobs, but that's hard going, and hard to measure. I think they lost the plot, and people ended up thinking, why am I paying for "green". That was never the case, they were really paying for energy security. How sharply this ever comes into focus may also depend on what Ontario decides about its long term nuclear investments, which account for 13,000MW (or almost 35%). Solar, which got the bulk of negative press is about 1% of the mix, plus some other off grid stuff. Wind, which also got a shit kicking in public opinion, is about 7%. Neither enough to have changed Ontario's consumer electricity costs significantly.
Look at FAO (ontario's financial accountability office)
here. Over the last ten years Ontario's rank tends to remain the same among provinces, and average household energy spending about the same too. And yes, subsidies and consumer spending changes must be taken into account, but it's not so dire, nor was ever, and certainly not because of green energy...