Energy

Green Lobby Up In Arms After Cut In Subsidies

Shutterstock

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Jason Hopkins Immigration and politics reporter
Font Size:

Ontario Premier-elect Doug Ford has already dismantled major components of his predecessor’s green energy legacy — much to the chagrin of the renewables industry.

Doug Ford — brother of late Toronto Mayor Rob Ford — won the election on June 7 to be Ontario’s next premier. His Progressive Conservative party also won a decisive majority in the province’s legislature, ending 15 years of Liberal Party rule. Ford has promised a return to fiscal responsibility, sharply rebuking the Liberal Party’s accumulation of spending scandals and debt during its reign.

“The party with the taxpayer’s money is over,” he yelled to a cheering crowd on election night.

In his bid to fix Ontario’s budgetary woes, the incoming premier has announced a rollback of costly environmental programs enacted under the previous administration. The business-friendly Ford has vowed “the very first item” on his agenda will be to end a cap-and-trade carbon tax. The cap-and-trade program funded a number of other environmental initiatives.

Ford will also be undoing GreenOn, a sweeping program in Ontario that promoted green energy through a number incentives, he announced June 19. GreenOn, launched in late 2017, awarded residents with free smart thermostats and rebates worth thousands of dollars for solar equipment. The program has been riddled with waste and inefficiency.

“[The Ontario government] allocated C$76 million dollars for this program for the whole year. They blew through it in two months,” Ford said of his decision to end the GreenOn rebates. “So they came back to us and said ‘we just blew through C$76 million of the taxpayers’ money in two months, and by the way, we want another C$224 million out of each and every one of your pockets.’ We ran on ending the cap and trade, reducing gas prices by 10 cents a liter, ending the carbon tax — the worst tax Canada has ever seen. It hurts jobs, it hurts families, it hurts businesses.”

There is one group, however, that is very unhappy to hear the government incentives will be coming to an end: the solar lobby.

“In the last few years the available business for a solar company within Ontario was insufficient to keep the boat floating,” stated Klaus Dohring, president of Green Sun Rising, according to CBC. “If we were totally dependant on Ontario as a business, we would not exist anymore.” (RELATED: Doug Ford Says Carbon Tax’s ‘Days Are Numbered’ In Ontario)

Other solar executives have made similar comments, claiming their businesses will not last without the government rebates that make their products more attractive to consumers. Nevertheless, a Ford spokesman said the premier-elect has been given “a clear mandate” from voters to undo the expensive and unpopular programs initiated by his liberal predecessor.

Ford’s late brother, Rob, became a well-known figure in the media in 2013 for his admission of smoking crack cocaine and his larger-than-life personality. Rob passed away in 2016 from abdominal cancer.

Ford will be replacing outgoing Premier Kathleen Wynne on June 29.

Follow Jason on Twitter.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel