The Ben Mulroney Show - Is Ontario set up for economic success? And are hydro rates going up?

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

GUEST: Peter Bethlenfalvy -- Minister of Finance of Ontario GUEST:  J.D.M. Stewart/Author of “The Prime Ministers” GUEST:  Francis Syms /  Humber college If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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For more details, visit hope in the city, Toronto.ca.ca. That's hope in the city, Toronto.ca. Thank you, Welcome to the Ben Mulruni show on this. this Friday, November 7th. Ladies and gentlemen, we have to jump right into this show. There is no time to warm you up. There's no time to

welcome you into my day or what I did last night because we are privileged to have with us today the Minister of Finance of the Province of Ontario, Peter Bethelan Falvey, who just yesterday unveiled his government's fall economic update.

Minister Bethelan Falvey, thank you for being here. It's great to be with you, Ben. So I think a lot of of people maybe on their way home last night, were in the car, maybe they caught something on social media. They probably woke up today with the sense. If they didn't read it, if they didn't get too, too much information, they woke up with the sense that predictably this was going to be an update that sort of laid out that things are not great. And that should be unsurprising to most, given the news that we in the province have been experiencing

over tariffs and the hollowing out of our manufacturing and the, you know, what's going on and what we saw in the budget in Ottawa. So why don't you in just a few sentences kind of give me your take and what you want Ontarians to know about this economic update? Yeah, great question. You know, we're not immune from tariffs. The world is being impacted. And of course, Ontario, given the tariffs on steel and auto, we're really having an impact.

But we have a plan. I want people to know that we campaigned on a plan in February. We tabled a budget in May, and we're executing that plan. It starts with an improved deficit position. We improved the deficit by a billion dollars. We retained a path to balance, so we're less than two years away. So, you know, we've shown that you can be fiscally responsible and yet invest in our economy. So that $30 billion we unleashed back in the spring is flowing to companies.

right now. It's helping companies in the north like Algoma. It's helping in Windsor and Osha and the auto sector in Brampton. And some good news that I can share this morning. The unemployment rate in Ontario dropped the 7.6%. And 54,500 new jobs were created in the month of October. Now, we're not going to stop. We're not going to be relentless on executing our plan and protecting and supporting all the workers and businesses in this province. Well, and that's the thing. I'm glad that you brought that up because it dovetails into one of the questions I had. You know, we on this show have been sort of trying to keep our eye on the prize, which is jobs in this province. And we saw wholesale furniture in Lindsay, Diageo and Amherstburg were hearing about plant closures for in the automotive sector and the inevitable knock-on effects for the ancillary businesses.

Is there a plan by this government to help those municipalities which are being hollowed out in the near term and a long-term strategy to repurpose those workforces into productive members of society? And, you know, we're only a year into this tariff threat and working with Donald Trump seemingly against us. This is what's this is the outcome thus far. I'm really nervous for the future, Mr. Minister. Well, Ben, you know, we've been through some rough times before, and, you know, Terrians are resilient. They're very self-reliant businesses in Ontario, and we're going to get through this. And let me tell you, we put in 30 billion of supports.

And so the answer to all those towns is absolutely, we're going to fight like hell for every single job in Ontario. The $30 billion of supports is flowing to companies right across Ontario. and we're supporting companies in the north like Algoma who are really at the eye of the storm in terms of 50% tariffs on steel, we're supporting Algoma. We're doing tax cuts. We're cutting taxes for individuals and cutting taxes for businesses. The manufacturing tax cuts have been in place. And the people should, I would say the people should bet on Ontario and businesses here in Ontario.

We're doing free trade in Canada. Your father did a great job in 88 having free trade with the U.S. Mexico, but now all these years later we have a free trade deal with every country except for Canada. We can boost our economy by $200 billion just by reducing the trade barriers into provincially and Ontario's leading the way. So yes, there's hope and I want to leave on a very positive tone for your listeners. One last question for you, Mr. Minister, because I know you got to go. But the LCBO is top of mind for a lot of people. It's not necessarily the most important issue, but it is something we talk about.

It's kitchen table conversation, and the revenues have dropped below $2 billion, a far cry from the high watermark of a few years ago. Some people are suggesting that this is being floated out there because of a privatization push. Can you let us know whether that is in the offing? And I have a solution for you if you would like to hear it. Sure, I'll wait through your solution, but they're absolutely. Absolutely wrong. The LCBO is going to stay in public hands, so don't let anyone fool you

or talk to you in anything otherwise. The $1.8 billion bottom line from the LCBO was the number that we produced in May, so it hasn't changed one iota. Now, there is lower consumption of alcohol in the province, but we've lowered taxes and we've lowered fees. We've increased the points of sale, 6,000 new points of sale. And, you know, what I hear from people is, man, going to a convenience store to get a case of beer or a bottle of wine, It's just such a game changer. Their revenues are way up. And I've got to tell you, some of the problems I hear is that they can't keep the alcohol

stocked on the shelves. So this is a world-class problem to have. We're just going to keep going. All right. Well, Minister, I'm going to solve this problem for you right now because I've thought long and hard about this. Are you ready? I'm really ready.

The law that regulates the LCBO stipulates that we cannot use the purchasing power of the largest purchaser of alcohol on the planet to obtain the lowest possible. possible prices for consumers. It's in the law. If you changed that and if we got away from this nonsense that for some reason, Ontario's relationship with alcohol is different than anywhere else in the world, if we were able to obtain the lowest possible prices, you could increase the margin between what you pay and what we pay at the LCBO and that would produce a lower price

and you could jack up the taxes, which means you'd be bringing in more revenue and we'd be paying less and everybody wins. Well, I think all options are on the table. I was hoping I wouldn't get a political answer from you, sir. I was hoping you're going to say, Ben, that's the most brilliant thing I have ever heard. You've blown my mind. We are going to come up

with the Ben Mulrooney-L-CBO amendment and it's going to change everything here in the province. Well, you know what? If we follow through with that, I might come back on your radio show and might give you a... I want to thank you, sir. Listen, you get into politics because you want to affect change for the positive,

and sometimes that also means giving tough news to people, but I appreciate you coming on and answering our questions. I wish you the very best, sir. Very much appreciate that, Ben. Thank you. And that was the Ontario Minister of Finance. Peter Bethlehem Falvey. We were talking about some of the high-level stuff,

obviously couldn't get to everything that is in the fall economic update. You know, one of the things that he mentioned that we'll talk about with them at a later date but you know the fact that the ontario government is going ahead with reducing the taxes on businesses uh i i'd like for us to research a little bit more what that means because you and i mike droulet and trepid producer mike drollay over there happy friday happy friday to you uh that um the federal budget really didn't have a lot in the way of helping out small business and and that that community well the liberals certainly thought it did and say that it does uh but as you know when you take a

deeper dive into the fine print. It shows that a lot of what they're suggesting will help businesses that are unionized. Oh, but yeah, but I do want to give them the credit. Because yesterday we had somebody on the show from Build Canada who suggested that the simplification of the application process for shred funds is going to make it so they are less reliant on third party experts to do those things. Apparently a full third of that budget went to advisors and went to other people besides the end beneficiary, which is supposed to be the small business. Well, so many of the rules that we have in place benefit so few.

There's a lot of people with their hands on the pie. All right. Up next, let's hear from you. What are the issues that stand out to use of the province? Privatize the LCBO. The minister says no, but what are your thoughts? Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. It's time now to turn the microphone over to you.

The listeners of the show, 416-8-8-0-6400 or 1-8-225 talk. We want to hear your thoughts on the fall economic update. It doesn't have to be about the LCBO. It can be about any aspect of it. It can be about your thoughts when you hear that, you know, we've got some headwinds. And those are being reflected not just in the federal budget, but in this provincial fall economic update. And look, if you want to call in.

and say that my idea on how to make the LCBO more efficient and raise more money is genius, feel free to do that as well. Please welcome Tim to the show. Tim, happy Friday. Tim, you there? Did we lose Tim? Tim, if we don't hear you there, so call us back. All right, we're going to go to Mike.

Mike, welcome. Hi, Mike. How are you? Good. Before I give you my comment, I want to make a little statement here. I met your dad a couple of times. and in my opinion, he's in the top three of prime ministers we ever had. Well, thank you very much.

I feel one of my great sadness is I never got to vote for him. Yeah. Listen, I believe that private can do everything better than the government. You want something to be done wasteful and stupid. Make it a government agency. And the LCBO is the only one I disagree on. And it's only about this. If you went private, your liquor store would quickly become

a quickie mart yeah and your selection would at least be cut in half why would you carry a product that you only sell two percent of when you're a quickie mark uh yeah never mind yeah i don't worry about the ambiance but i think this is the only place where i would keep it public just to offer the public a wide variety of product yeah you know like years ago i had big feelings about privatizing the LCBO and it mattered to me. I think they run a fine organization and I like visiting my local LCBO and I don't need a selection of 15 different liquor stores. I need one close to my house and I've got one so I'm lucky.

And so I've given up sort of caring about the idea of privatizing it, making it as efficient as possible, giving value to the consumer. That is the part of it that is of interest to me and making sure that it's of value to the government, given the fact that it's run by the government. So if they can square that circle, if they can make it more efficient, I like it as it is. One more comment. Sure. When it becomes a quickie mart, you will be dealing with a guy behind a piece of bulletproof glass. But the staff at the LCBOs are courteous, they're knowledgeable. I mean, I don't use them very much.

but it's nice to know what's there so like I agree with you 100%. Yeah, try to make things efficient, but leave it alone. Yeah, leave it alone. And I very much like the fact that you can, in fact, get spirits or those single beverage, whatever, the mixed drinks at your Circle K and at your gas station. I picked some stuff up last night after the LCBO had closed

on my way home from a work thing I did. So I'm very glad that that is there for us as well. So very pleased. Thank you very much, my friend. And let's go to Verinder. Verinder, thanks for calling from Suri, B.C. Yes. Actually, Ben, she's about on the talk about something else, but now

hearing the left, I want something to talk about Ontario government. Your father proved that the government has no business-owned things, right? Like an airline, that sort of stuff, right? Yep. That's the way I said, I like Doug Ford. I didn't in Ontario for two years, right? That's where I like Doug Forge's privatizing Ontario Place, which losing money on the taxpayer side. Oh, listen to

me, my, my position on Ontario Place has been the same for about 30 years. And I know people are going to consider this a hot take, but I'm say it again, I do not believe, call me crazy, that the government has any business running an amusement park. Mel Rudy was right. I've said it since I was a little

kid, Mel Rudy was right, and also once a one last thing before I go. Yesterday, the CPC MP decided to step down, resign, right? And liberals think they can win that writing. You know, that writing, in 2015, Trudeau, who won a lot of seats, but most seats

to any prime minister, like, from a difference, right? You couldn't win that writing. Mark Carney, who wanted a writing that traditionally, considered an NDP, like Southbury, White Rock, or Victoria, you could have went in that writing. That's still going to be a conservative seat. And I think maybe, you know, maybe Mark Maroonie can run and parachute in. I don't see that happen. Listen, Verinder, all I know is I, nobody could have predicted the whiplash-inducing six months that we endured following the resignation of Justin Trudeau. I am not about to sit

here and predict what's going to happen six months from now, let alone three years from now when we'll probably be going back to the polls because it looks like the liberals are going have some sort of de facto majority until then. Thank you very much, my friend. Let's go to Tim. Tim, welcome. Oh, Tim, you got cut off, so welcome back. Hey.

So my big problem recently with the LCBO is the government dictating what can be sold on the shell. So whether it be Kentucky, bourbon, California, wines, or Russian spirits. It's not the government's, the government doesn't own the LCBO. It's a Crown Corporation belonging to the taxpayers. Yeah. So any decision that they make, should be going to the electorate, not just them armatrarily dictating what they are going to sell.

Okay. Listen, hold on, Tim, let's let's have this conversation. Fair points. I would argue that I'm pretty sure Doug telegraphed this. If it wasn't part of the policy platform of the last election campaign, I think we all knew where he stood on this. So in that way, the people did vote on it. And while, listen, I think there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a very,

big performative aspect to not selling these international or U.S. brands and Russian brands because we already own them. They're sitting. We're warehousing them. It's costing us money to sit on them as opposed to sell them and get them off the books. But it also gives an opportunity for us to, without that choice, we're buying Canadian. Canadian vodka, Canadian this, Canadian that. And so at a time where we unfortunately have been put in a position or where we have to do these sorts of things. So I don't know what you think about that. No.

So the whole point is that it's not costing us money because things are purchased under the LCBO are under consignment. But the whole point of the LCBO as a crown corporation is to make money. So you have to run the LCBO like a business and get the politics out of things. I was saying that it's costing us money

because we have to warehouse the stuff. It's sitting in a warehouse somewhere. It is true to that. So the benefit to be would be to leave it on the shelves. If it sells, great, because then they're just giving the tax revenue from that, and that benefits the province in terms of selling things. So keep the Russian spirits, keep the Kentucky bourbons, keep the California wines on the shelf and sell it, and then we're further ahead.

You have to run a business in a capitalist society like a business and not running it like it's Perestroika in the 1980s in the USSR. Hey, Tim, thank you very much. You have a great weekend. do we have. We've got Adam. Adam, welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. Good morning. So I'm an econometrician, which means I do economic models for banks. I don't do it anymore. Both of the plans, both the budget and the provincial economic statement are very bad. Okay. 40 years ago, Ronald Reagan convinced people that corporate taxes are bad. And ever since, they have never balanced

the budget. Corporate taxes are the only place you can balance the budget. And every time you lower the corporate taxes, the deficit and debt go up. So hearing us double taxation, they basically convince poor people to give rich people money is what they did. And a 1% increase right now in the U.S. corporate tax would wipe out their debt. So that's where they have to go. And I know it won't happen, but that's the only place where the money is. And listen, you know more about this than I, so I'm not going to nitpick and go I'm not going to go toe to toe to with you. But the one thing I would say is, and I don't know how big of a difference, a 1% increase

in the corporate tax rate in the United States is, but any increase runs the possibility that some of those businesses could decamp to greener pastures. Well, that was the classic neoliberal argument, and they managed it once Reagan started it. It became the race to the bottom. And that's the problem. This has got to be stopped. I won't, but it's going to be. And we will see the crash.

Yep. That's coming because no country seems to have the guts to raise corporate taxes. Adam, I got to let you go. I do want to thank you because what you've said will now be sticking in my head. I don't know if I'll believe it entirely, but it's going to be part of what I think. We only have a little bit of time left. I got time for one more. We're going to go to James.

James, welcome to the show. Hey, Ben. Yeah. By the way, sorry, James, you got about 30 seconds. Okay, so straight from Saskatoon, we've actually went and privatized every one of our liquor stores. Now we have more choice, more selection. The attendants at all these locations are more knowledgeable because it is their business to sell us the alcoholic. product. And I understand,

look, safe travels are on your way. Yes, indeed. I'm coming to your province tonight. I'll be there tonight. Thank you. I hope to see you, too. Thank you, my friend. Really appreciate it. Thanks to everybody for calling in. All right, up next, another federal building has officially

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One of my favorite graphic novels of all time was The Watchers. And the line is who watches the Watchers. And we, we, Canadian citizens, are the watchers. We watch the watchers. We watch the people who do the things. And if we don't,

certain things fly under the radar. And if we don't catch them, we can't hold people accountable. Now, around near where I live, off of St. Clair Avenue, there is a federal building that has been being renovated for the better part of half a decade. It's the Arthur Mian building. And I've been paying attention to this thing because I always love watching the refurbishment

of buildings, even government buildings that really don't have a lot of character and they rebuilt it in a beautiful way. And once it was done, I stopped looking at it the way I was before. And I shouldn't have because I missed something. and I missed it. However, our next guest did not. So let's listen to some audio from J.D.M. Stewart, the author of the prime ministers. He's been on our show. Oh, no, we don't have the audio. Okay, sorry, I thought we had the audio. It doesn't matter because we have him. So let's welcome J.D.M. Stewart to the show. J.D.M. Welcome. Good morning, Ben. How are you? I'm well. So I would have been surprised had I noticed what you noticed. Tell us what you noticed. Well, I watch this building all the time like you do, and the Arthur Mien building at the corner of Young and St. Clair, you said, was renovated over a number of years. And then when they unveiled the opening of the building, the name Arthur Mian was missing. And, of course, I was watching it all the time because I knew that this was an interesting building because it had a prime minister's name on it.

So I was looking for it to come back and see what would happen. And it's never appeared. It's never appeared. And does it appear on the website? Is it, did they just forget to put it on the sign? The government website doesn't mention the name of the building. Other websites still will say it's the Arthur Mian building, but they obviously aren't updated regularly and people trying to make the connection

between a name being dropped or not. So this has just been stealthily dropped. And if it were to be the Arthur Mian building, they would have kept the name on. Well, we will get to that. But before we do, let's use your expertise and let's remind everybody who Arthur Mian is. Right. So that's a good point because it's not a name that is necessarily in great public currency. But he was prime minister from 1920 to 21. He succeeded Robert Borden, who was our wartime prime minister. Then he lost an election in 21, briefly became prime minister again in 1926. But he was thought of as one of the great parliamentary debaters and orators of all time, even though he had a short prime ministership. He did, you know, serve as prime minister. He was also in the board and cabinet. So he had. has a pedigree that merits being on a federal building. Okay. And so look, now we got to talk about motivation. Now we've got to ask ourselves

why. And there are a number of different ways to go with this. We've been living in a time where people who don't pass the purity test of how could you not have known back then what the world would be like in 2025. If they don't pass that test, we cancel them, or at least we used to cancel them. And so that's a backdrop that I think we have to pay attention to. However, I am a subscriber, JDM, of the notion of don't ascribe malice to somebody's motivations when incompetence will do just fine. And in this situation, now there is a little bit of malice here, I believe. I think one of the most toxic things ever said by any prime minister ever was Justin Trudeau saying

that we as a nation do not have a core identity. And when you do that, then you invalidate everything that preceded you. And you diminish and you marginalize all of our history, all of our values, all of our institutions because we have nothing of value that binds us together. And if that is something of worldview you subscribe to, add incompetence to that. And you have a middle management mediocrity. And you probably have somebody who just didn't care and just didn't know and just forgot to check a box. Like I, to me, I think that's the most likely scenario and reason here.

I think you're probably right. And I was going to say to add ignorance to that list of problems because probably someone's like Arthur, me, and I don't know who that guy is. No one's going to even notice if we drop the name of a dead white prime minister from a building. Exactly. No, no knows. Oh, he was a he was a prime minister in the 1920s, probably some white guy. And they just, they cast it asunder.

And I think, J.D.M, I think one of the, some, some further evidence to bolster this theory is the picture of Arthur Mien's grave site. Yeah. If you look at this picture, it is, it's in disrepair. It's got a discoloration to it. Now, I don't know the rules around. I don't know if his grave site is run by Parks Canada. I know that my fathers, we have some sort of partnership with Parks Canada, and I believe that it's upon their responsibility to tend to it, to care for it, to make sure that it's kept in good standing. I don't know if Arthur Meehan's family has that.

But again, if we cared about our history, if we elevated it, exalted our history, if we respected our history, even if we disagreed with our history, if we respected our history, it would be incumbent upon a government to put money into a department to ensure that every single grave site of every single Canadian leader looked different than Arthur Means does right now. Exactly. So I visited Arthur Means' grave.

That's probably the photo you saw is I took a picture of his moss-covered grave site. And interestingly, I was also at Charles Tupper's grave in Halifax a couple of weeks ago, and there was a tattered Canadian flag flying there. So I've been meaning to post a picture of that, too. And it is, it is Parks Canada that is in charge of, running all the grave sites of former prime ministers, and they need to step up their game and fix these things, because it's again, someone's like, oh, wait, no one's going to care about this. No one's going to notice. Well, people like you and me notice, Ben.

Yeah, well, I've gone hard on Parks Canada before, so I want to make sure that I'm fair here. And I'm not sure about this, but I'm pretty sure the families have a say as to whether or not they partner with Parks Canada. Oh, that's interesting. I bet you would know better than I would I'm trying to remember conversations after my dad died, but obviously I was a little bit emotional, and unfortunately, I have family members who are far better at this sort of thing. And so this was not my lane. But I somehow remember that, that there were conversations, there were negotiations. And if that's the case, and what, look, did Parks Canada have that dominion over this sort of thing back when Arthur Me and died? I don't know. But perhaps this is an opportunity. for us to recognize a failure in our system. I'll tell you when it came to be. There was an MP from Sarnia, Roger Galloway, who went to Prime Minister Jean Crechan and said,

the Alexander McKenzie grave site in my writing is in disrepute. I can't even read what's on it. And so Jean Crechen said, okay, guess what? There's a new program now, and it's going to be run by Parks, Canada, and they will be in charge of all the Prime Minister's graves. And so they fix them all up. But now they obviously haven't been doing their checks.

to see what needs to be done. And so, you know what? I choose to believe, JDM, that we're actually doing a public service here. I'm not trying to, like I said, I'm not looking to attack anybody or tell someone to do your job. Sometimes stuff happens, right? And let's use this as an opportunity to say, hey, there is a new guy at the top. There's a new prime minister at the top. And he wants to do things differently.

And he has committed to our military in a way that I have been yearning for a leader to do. for years. So maybe this can be part of that, a reevaluation and a recommitment to the values that we share. And part of those values are cultural common touchstones. And our prime ministers are that. You know, we all experienced them. We all lived in a country that was run by them. We have those things in common. And we owe it to ourselves to take better care of this aspect of our history. And so if this is a sort of a crack in the system, let's use today as an opportunity to close that crack. Yeah, let's hope that this is, maybe I'm going to be on your show six months later or less, and we're going to be talking about how they fix some of these things

because you're absolutely right. And the other thing is when it's, when you don't look after the smaller things in your Canadian culture and history, then the bigger things implode. Yeah. So you've got to do the little things to make sure that it all builds up to to a robust culture at the top level. So these things are really important. J.D.M. Stewart, author of the prime ministers, I want to thank you very much. We appreciate it. And yes, if you hear any new updates about this,

if you hear back from Parks Canada, please let us know. Let's keep this story going. Like I said, this is not an attack on anybody or an institution. This is a desire for us to extol our institution. So thank you very much. Thanks, Ben. All right. Up next, take a close look at your bills. One of them is about to go up big time. Welcome back to The Ben Mulroney Show.

On November 1st, you might not have noticed it yet, but it's going to hit your bank account pretty hard. Electricity rates for Ontario households rose, not by a little bit, by a lot. 29%. According to the Ontario Energy Board, the increase is attributed to higher than anticipated nuclear energy costs and a budget shortfall from the previous year. I don't know what that means. So we've got somebody here who's going to help us. Francis Sims from Humber College. Welcome, my friend.

Thanks so much for coming in. Happy to be here. Explain what I just read because those are just words to me. Okay. So the Ontario Energy Board, which is a arm's length entity, predicts what energy is going to cost everybody in the province, electricity in the coming year. And so they set what's called this price at the beginning of November,

which is what we expect to pay. And it has gone up now from about 10 cents per kilowatt hour to about 13 cents in their prediction. Now, what that would translate to is for an average household, probably about $200 to $240 more a year. Now, the Ontario government is going to offset that. They're going to increase their subsidy that they provide, and it'll roughly translate to probably about $80 to $100 more a year.

80 to $100. You know, but in the economy that we're living in, Francis, some people can't afford that. Like, that's going to break the bank. and I don't, but this is part of, this is how we're paying for this ambitious expansion of our energy grid by 2050. The Ontario government's got this massive plan to expand SMRs and Darlington and solar and all that stuff and turn us into an energy superpower by 2050 and we've got to pay for it somehow and this is how we pay for it. Yeah, so the way they decide the price is they figure out what the market rate for energy is going to be. so maybe, I don't know, five or six cents per kilowatt hour. And then they figure out how much they have to charge Ontarians for the capital costs,

which is like the refurbishment of Darlington, what we do with hydro, the builds we might do around solar and wind. And then they also, you know, they incorporate market fluctuations, and they have to pay for any debt from the previous year. Now, what we realized is that we had a debt about $600 million that Ontarians didn't pay because they didn't predict properly. And likely why that happened was because we started to run out of cheap energy and we had to rely more on the more expensive energy, which at that time was nuclear. And so the bottom line here is it's highlighting the fact that we don't have enough energy in Ontario yet.

And these new builds are extremely, extremely important. So they are important and it's a really ambitious plan. Let's live in a world where government gets it all right, okay? The predictions, the plan, the grid, everything works exactly according to plan. 2015, what was written on the page in 2025 has come true, has been manifested into reality in 2050. Does energy become cheaper for Ontario at that point? Like for the people who live here?

Are we paying, are we finally living in a world where as a net energy exporter, we are finally reaping the benefits of that? I sure hope so. And I think there's reason to hope because the thing about nuclear is Canada has done nuclear for a long time. We're experts in nuclear, especially with Can Do. And, you know, 80 to 90% of all the parts are sourced here in Canada. Where as opposed to other renewables, there's a lot of argument like if you buy new solar or you'd buy new wind, it's cheaper to install and it's cheaper, the energy cost is cheaper.

That's true. But a lot of those parts come from places like China. And we don't control the capital costs for those things, whereas we may be able to better control our own destiny. And every time we do a refurbishment, where it's basically we're re-invigorating the nuclear facility, we're figuring on how to do that more cheaply, and we're not only doing it in Canada, but we're leading those, that was refurbishments around the world. And of course, we're leaders in small modular reactor technology, and that's a big part of this energy plan, because you could pop one of those pretty much anywhere in remote parts

of the north, and you could, that's it, you've got, you can power a town of 50,000 people. 100%. And the ones that we're building at Darlington, the four reactors that we're building, will be enough power to cover Toronto and maybe a little bit more. But you can imagine they could make them super small that they would fit in this studio and power town in Nunavut, right? Or something like that. That's the future path. And Canada is developing that expertise for the first G7 to do it.

And the uranium that we need is coming out of Saskatchewan. 100%. So like, yeah, this is a self-content. We will be at the nexus of nuclear power for the better part of a quarter century. And so how do you choose to look at this? Because a lot of Ontarians are going to hear what we're talking about and they're going to go look at their energy bill. They're going to say, oh, my gosh, I'm getting gouged. How do, how, when you look at this 29% jump, what do you say? Yeah, I think if we want

to, um, protect the future of Ontario, this is a necessary investment. It's like if you know, if you, if you buy a house, you have to pay mortgage payments over the year, but you still have the house at the end. Premier Ford said he powers 1.5 million households in the United States. You know, we're positioning Ontario as an energy superpower. So it's not only about providing enough power to us, but it's actually selling it and then making money off of those sales. So I think 20, 30 years, I imagine the rate is going to be a lot less than what we pay now. And future generations are going to benefit, and Ontario is going to continue to be strong. And are we past the problems that we had a few years ago of the brownouts in the summertime

and the blackouts? Are we past that now? Have we patched up the infrastructure itself, the underpinnings of the grid? I think so. Yeah. Yeah. I sure hope so I know Minister Leche has worked hard and increased capacity and we'll have to wait to see. But it's a huge priority for the Ontario government. Yeah, oh, I know it is. I've talked with Minister Leche on this show quite a bit. He's very eager to get going with it, to get it moving, and to get us to where we need to be. And one of the most enthusiastic ministers I've ever met.

And the other thing that we'll start to see is we'll start to see leveraging AI to make real-time decisions so that the Browns, there's brownouts don't happen, right? Where AI can start to make these decisions. I know we like to say we're going to, but then we get risk-averse and we let somebody else try it first. Then we sit around waiting for, and meanwhile everyone becomes, every other country becomes more efficient and optimized.

Definitely, there's a human in the loop in Ontario in every decision that's being made. But when you think about where we acquire energy, those decisions, it's like the stock market have to happen in real time. And if we want to make the best decisions, they're prototyping AI. They're going to have to use AI.

Well, I want to go back to something we touched on really quickly. if this ends up being even with a rebate of $100 more per household, that's still, for some people, that's a bridge too far. And if you are worried, if you're listening right now and you're worried that if you don't pay your bill during the winter that you are going to have your power cut off, I wanted you know, electricity distributors are not allowed to disconnect residential customers for non-payment during the winter. That protection typically applies from November 15th to April 30th each year.

And instead of disconnection, utilities may install a load limiter. It drastically reduces available power but keeps minimal electricity flowing. So, yeah, it would be a worry. It would be a worry that come winter, some people might freeze to death because they can't pay. But that is, fortunately, we live in a, we live in a place where even the most conservative of us would never suggest to cut off somebody's power in the winter because they can pay. We want to take care of each other in Ontario. We want to take care of each other. And we're good at it sometimes, bad at it other times.

comes to life and death, and if you can't pay your bill, I don't think there's anyone that is so heartless. But yeah, I don't know why they didn't message this better, because I didn't know about this. Yeah, there wasn't any sort of release. Yeah, so that, that's the part that. But, you know, that's also the good thing about having an independent board reviewing this, is that it allows to highlight things that might just get missed in other messaging. Well, thank you very much, my friend. I really do appreciate it. And I hope you have a great weekend. Yeah, thanks, then.

Yeah, I'm happy that this is going to lead to more, to the goals that, the ambitious goals that the Ontario government has for the electricity grid and for our industry as a whole. And if it turns out that the cost that we as a generation will bear on building that for future generations, and then that's a gift that we can leave our kids. And that's a, that is a, that is the work. that we put in so that this province becomes the fullest expression of itself.

But again, that's only if you believe that the government is going to get everything right between now and 2050. And you'll also remember that one of the biggest problems that we seem to have in this province is when it comes to the energy file, as soon as there's a changeover in government, somebody decides the other guys were doing it wrong

and they know better. And we end up switching streams and going back and forth and losing some of the headwinds or the tailwinds that we had caught. So fingers crossed, we don't muck this up because we have an opportunity here to do something we've never done before on the energy file and turn. We like to say energy superpower all the time. We could actually do it here in the province of Ontario. So fingers crossed. Thank you.