Angry consumers refuse to pay

Kitchener Waterloo Record - October 25, 2002
by Stacey Ash

Sue Falcioni said she saw red when she opened her hydro bill this month.

Now she wants to pass the feeling along to Ontario hydro companies by withholding payment and she is encouraging others to do the same.

"I'm not saying, 'Don't pay your whole bill,' " Falcioni said. "But let's not pay the energy charge until we're told why it's gone double in two months."

After moving to a townhouse from an air-conditioned apartment in August, Falcioni said her hydro bill more than doubled.

The energy charge on her Kitchener-Wilmot Hydro bill increased to 7.8 cents per kilowatt hour in September from about 3.5 cents in June.

Feisty by nature and infuriated by the price hike, she phoned the local hydro company.

"I said, 'I don't see why I should have to pay this,' " Falcioni said.

She was told to either pay or prepare to have her hydro cut off.

Although she loves her adopted homeland, the British-born woman says Canadians tend to be too quick to throw up their hands in defeat when faced with unfair public policies.

Individually, people may be powerless to change the new power regulations, Falcioni said.

But she believes the situation can be changed if Ontarians protest together.

Kitchener-Wilmot Hydro president Ron Charie said Falcioni is looking to punish the wrong people by withholding payment.

"She will be shooting her local utility in the foot and the problem is not with us," Charie said.

Although he sympathizes with customers, he said the real problem lies with poorly implemented provincial regulations.

"We have absolutely no input and no control over the price of the commodity," Charie said. Problems with rising prices "rest with the market and with the way the government has set this up."

Kitchener-Wilmot Hydro has received 9,000 calls from concerned consumers in the past six weeks.

Charie said customer service representatives at the company are doing their best to let ratepayers know where to take their concerns.

In addition to contacting the Ontario Energy Board and the Independent Electricity Market Operator, an agency that runs Ontario's wholesale electricity system, people concerned with rising costs can also contact their MPP.

Locally owned utilities are as much victims of badly implemented energy market rules as homeowners, Charie said, with Kitchener-Wilmot Hydro carrying about $9.5 million in unpaid hydro costs.

"A lot of that is the lag between when we have to pay for everything and when we collect from the customers," Charie said. "Originally, the act and the Ontario Energy Board said their should be no financial impact . . . on the local utility."

But Charie said that has not been the case.

"There is a cost and that's going to be borne by the customer," he said.

The provincial electricity distributors' association is pushing for changes that would see the Independent Electricity Market Operator directly bill energy retailers. A task force will likely be established to study the need for changes.

About 25 per cent of customers across Ontario and 11 per cent of Kitchener-Wilmot Hydro customers have signed long-term contracts to purchase their electricity at a fixed rate from an energy retailer.

To date, Kitchener-Wilmot Hydro has not had to borrow money to cover those costs but other locally owned utilities in the province have been forced into deep debt by rules that require them to pay energy retailers and producers before getting paid themselves.

As a consumer, Falcioni is far from alone in her concerns about rising hydro costs.

Burlington's Darrin and Theresa Cahill, after receiving a massive hydro bill this fall, started an online petition calling for the government to reverse deregulation and bring in an accountable system of electricity delivery.

"It was a whopper," Darrin Cahill said.

"It was an increase of over 60 per cent from the same time last year."

In little more than a week, the petition has already collected more than 23,000 names.

"A lot of the comments if you look into it are from people on fixed incomes, single parents, the elderly, who are really, really having a hard time with it, people who are in fear of losing their homes because they just can't pay utilities," Cahill said.

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