So there you have it.
Hydro One sent out bad bills to
100,000 customers, lied about it and then spent $88.3 million of your money to
cover up the sordid scandal.
Ontario’s ombudsman, the guy who
tries to help protect us from all the incompetents and thieves in our
government, revealed all that this week.
One senior citizen in Timmins was
overbilled, and when he didn’t pay, Hydro One pulled $10,000 from his bank
account, the ombudsman, André Marin, reported to
Queen’s Park. A ski resort received a bill for $37 million.
“Trying to deal with Hydro One math is like
trying to pin down a kangaroo on a trampoline,” said Mr. Marin.
Marin won’t be doing any more investigations of
Hydro One, however. The Ontario government has decided to stop the ombudsman
and six other independent watchdogs from investigating and reporting on Hydro
One affairs.
Premier Kathy says she wants to privatize Hydro
One and investors won’t be interested if the company comes with watchdogs. So
if Hydro One had been privatized for the last couple of years, who would have
told us about the billing scandal and the cover-up? You guessed it . . .
Noooobody.
The government says there will be other controls
on a privatized Hydro One, like a corporate ombudsman. That would be an
ombudspal hired by Hydro One, paid by Hydro One and reporting to Hydro One.
Really Premier Kathy, I know I’m not very bright
but do you believe the rest of Ontario citizens are that stupid?
The government wants to privatize Hydro One for
two reasons, both aimed at improving its own situation, and not for the benefit
of its citizens. It wants free of Hydro One’s mess so it can deal with its
other messes. And, of course it wants the money from investors so it can delay
the inevitable bankruptcy of the province.
Marin’s report, called In the Dark, is a
shocking story that Hydro One customers and others should read. It can be found
online at http://www.ombudsman.on.ca/Resources/Reports/In-the-Dark.aspx#executive_sumary
The most sickening part of this scandal is the
attitude of Hydro One’s bosses and its board of directors. These people, hugely
paid and much pampered, blamed the entire mess on lower level workers. They
said they were caught off guard by a developing crisis in which lower-level
managers fed them over-optimistic reports.
The executives and directors are there to ensure
they are never caught off guard. It is their job to know what’s going on. These
are the people in place to create and protect the company culture. They also
are there to fall on their swords when the company they oversee goes bad.
The top levels of Hydro One should be ashamed
for shifting the blame.
Here’s what Marin said:
“The source of Hydro
One’s mind-boggling maladministration does not lie in defective data and
software programming. Rather, its fatal fault is a technocratic and
inward-facing organizational culture that is completely out of step with public
sector values. Even after Hydro One pledged to become more customer-centric, to
do better, and to learn from its mistakes, it continued to display
insensitivity and disregard for its customers. As late as February 2015, during
the coldest month in Ontario’s recorded history, the company lied to and
bullied customers with the threat of disconnection.”
Lower level workers do
not carry out that type of dishonesty on their own. They are encouraged, or
forced, to act that way by a corporate culture created by the bosses and
appointed directors.
All plans to privatize
Hydro One need to stop now. Nothing should be done with Hydro One until it is
cleaned up, restored and properly serving its 1.3 million customers.
First in the clean-up
should be the firing of Hydro One’s entire executive floor and its board of
directors.
That is a minimum and
a must. The people of Ontario have suffered much from the scandals of recent
years. They are owed some hard-hitting action that shows that the politicians
they elected in good faith are working for them.
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