what was the point of doing this, exactly?

apparently, the government wants you to "know the true price of electricity"?

what? why? who cares?

if you're curious, this "true price" is set by the ontario electricity board, which is an industry captured regulatory body, and is something like five times the price as it is in competing jurisdictions. so, even if there was some value to knowing the "true price", it's pretty clear that this isn't actually it. it hardly seems worth the effort, does it?

i guess that they might think that there's some kind of propaganda value in adding a giant rebate to the bill - and you will now see a 32% rebate on every bill - but that's hardly going to be effective if the people that care most about electrical costs are going to have their rates increased by 800-1000%.

rather, what they're doing is a hand-out to the industry, and they're doing it on the backs of poor people.

first, who is affected, and how?

1) poor people that qualify and receive their rebates will have the effectiveness of their rebates reversed - rebates that were targeted to them because they need it the most. the rebates are not being cancelled. but, if a million of us have to pay an extra $10 a month, that's a $120 million dollar cut in welfare for people that need it.
2) people that don't qualify for the rebates, and that still use small amounts of electricity (meaning bourgeois liberals, essentially) will actually get a small rate cut. if you don't qualify for the rebates, you won't care about a $4 cut. but, if there's 3 million people that save $4 a month, that's a 144 million dollar tax cut for people that don't need it. so, you see what they did here?
3) if you use a lot of electricity, you're going to get reamed by a 10%+ rate hike. enjoy your $7, though.

and, what is the actual effect of the changes?

1) the amount that producers can charge is going up by 55%. so, they're going to get much higher profits.
2) the amount that the government is subsidizing is going up from 8% to 32%. that's a four fold increase. so, the amount of money that taxpayers are giving the producers is going to increase dramatically, thereby increasing their profits even more.

together, that's called corporate welfare.

and, that's the baffling thing about it - if there was ever any reason to criticize the system that existed, it was that it was siphoning out public money into the hands of private corporations. the liberals can be awful, it is true. but, they're not so blatantly corrupt as this....

so,

1) you're looking at a cash transfer from students and disabled people to toronto condo owners.
2) you're looking at huge amounts of money being shoveled out of public coffers and into private industry, which is going to contribute to the deficit, while ford and his cronies laugh about it all the way to the bank.

this is what they do when they win. every time.