Anti-hydro advocacy group aims to educate and empower

Take Back Your Power Ontario’s Facebook banner pledges an interactive and empowering view of Hydro One business. Photo courtesy Take Back Your Power Ontario

By Justin Medve

BANCROFT – Two Ontario women are leading an effort to help Hydro One customers who feel helpless in the face of skyrocketing bills through their free service online.

Take Back Your Power Ontario is a volunteer-run Facebook page and website, combining the skill sets of Hydro One customers across the province that aren’t happy with how much they’re being charged to help anyone else in the same situation.

Hydro One rates have drastically increased over the last few years, and rural residents have had to pay significantly more in hydro delivery costs and related taxes. Ontario now averages for the highest hydro bill in North America:

Ontario currently has the highest hydro bill in all of North America. Courtesy CBC News

“We’ve got people who are spending over $1,000 a month on hydro,” said Catherine Leal, the group’s marketing specialist, who has tracked this issue more closely since moving to the rural area of Bancroft almost two years ago.

Mary Bates, another member, began studying the inner-workings of Hydro One after a 2013 billing error left her and 100,000 others from across the province overcharged. This experience left her feeling qualified to look over the bills of people who feel something isn’t quite right.

“I got involved and tried to learn everything I could about Hydro One,” she said, after dealing with Hydro One. “I wanted to help other people with their billing issues.”

Bates compares bills to previous daily usage and residential rates to make sure customers get what they pay for. She once saved a family who was overcharged by $2,500.

“If I look at that and I see all of a sudden their usage doubled or tripled in some cases, then there’s obviously something wrong,” she said.

Estimated billing is also an issue, as customers sometimes pay more or less than what they owe, Bates said. But sometimes an estimate is all that’s available in rural areas where Hydro One is the only electricity provider.

Bates explained that Smart Meters play a large role in how Hydro One charges its customers. The meters track how much electricity is being used to Hydro One, but if the meter’s connection to Hydro One servers doesn’t work properly or the meter breaks, users are often stuck with an estimate until a proper reading can be taken sometime later.

Leal said of 160,000 meters that don’t function in Ontario, 9,000 of them are in Bancroft: the lowest rate of working meters in the province.

She explained that problematic meters and high delivery charges are primarily a result of geography.

“We’re sitting on the Canadian Shield, and we’re surrounded by forest,” she said.

When their meter is in working order, customers can take advantage of using electricity at off-peak hours for a lesser cost. Leal said waiting for the off-peak hours to start at 7 p.m. can be an issue for families with children to feed after school or for businesses operating as usual.

Hydro One offers lower rates for electricity if it is used within certain hours. Courtesy Take Back Your Power Ontario

If the bills people send to the group are correct, Take Back Your Power Ontario also offers an explanation as to why customers are being charged an alarming amount.

“We educate people as well as just sharing the stories that are out there that a lot of Facebook pages do. We try to kick it up a notch,” Leal said.

Debt is playing a large role towards higher costs. Leal said the province would be paying for the Green Energy Act and debt issues associated with it for the next 20 years.

Leal said the effect of high hydro bills had been felt by individuals and by Ontario as a whole: industry and agriculture are the top two contributors to Ontario’s gross domestic product, and rural businesses of both varieties have felt pressure to move to the states for a reduced operating cost, she said.

“If rural Ontario collapses, Toronto is going to pay a huge price. So it’s to the benefit of everybody that we find a solution that is conducive to both the urban centres thriving as well as rural Ontario,” Leal said.

Take Back Your Power Ontario is pushing for the first step in that solution to be universal delivery charges for rural and urban centres.

Some argue that extra hydro charges for rural residents are evened out by housing costs in the city, so the group plans to use its gathered bills and the help of MPPs to show the public how bad it can get.

Leal said Canada’s major political parties sitting down and reviewing the issue as a whole would be most helpful, rather than the majority government coming up with their solution.

The Ontario Liberals have made some steps to lower costs and prevent connections from being cut, but Leal said there isn’t a lot they can do with debt and non-negotiable contracts at hand.

“The things that they put forward might save people $10 or $5. That’s a drop in the bucket when you’re paying a $1,000 a month,” she said.

Leal said Take Back Your Power Ontario will continue to help keep its users aware of budget assistance programs and strategies to make sure they are being charged fairly.

“But it’s getting that story out there so that all of these people understand that’s something they can do,” she said, praising social and traditional media for propelling the issue as far as it has.

Take Back Your Power Ontario has gained over 5,000 Facebook likes in four months and has been visited over 1 million times, which Leal called significant growth.

“I’ve never seen something where so many Ontarians are so well-versed in what’s going on in one particular political issue,” Leal said.