Toronto Star's Attempt at White Wash

This appeared in the Star today:

Any government’s employment projections depend rather a lot on the assumptions behind them, so it’s little surprise that from time to time people have questioned Premier Dalton McGuinty’s assertion that his green energy policies would create 50,000 jobs in three years.

But now Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak is going much further, claiming that provincial investments in green energy will actually cost jobs — possibly as many as 345,000.

Fortunately for Ontarians (and unfortunately for Hudak), this conclusion is based on a flawed Spanish academic study and a subsequent paper from an Italian think-tank. The 2009 study has been widely and thoroughly discredited.

“The primary conclusion made by the authors — policy support of renewable energy results in net job losses — is not supported by their work,” states a white paper produced by an arm of the U.S. Department of Energy.

The critique goes on to note that the study “lacks transparency and
supporting statistics and . . . fails to account for important issues.” That
could easily be a reference to Hudak’s own energy statements.

He says, “we must create a strong, reliable and affordable energy plan that puts consumers first.” But Hudak has yet to indicate what he means by any
of that. He condemns rising hydro bills but has not explained how he would pay to bring new power on-line (or even where it would come from) and upgrade transmission lines.

Instead of recycling discredited studies to launch yet more attacks on
McGuinty’s government, Hudak would better serve Ontarians by telling us all how he proposes to keep the lights on.

Too bad the Star did not allow comments on that opinion piece. They do that when they know they will get bad comments.

First, that study is only flawed to those who did not like the message that was in it. 2.2 private jobs lost for every green job created.

That I will get to later, what I want to do here is show something different. How many other jobs are required to support those 50,000 green jobs? All the money for their salaries has to come from hydrobills.

Assume that each of those green jobs pays $50,000 per year. Times 50,000 jobs and we get $2.5 BILLION. Yep, BILLION. Now if your hydrobills increase by $1000 per year, how many people does that take to pay that $2.5 billion? 2.5 million people.

How many people are there paying hydrobills in Ontario? About 2.5 million.

So that means for the Liberals to create 50,000 green jobs, your hydrobills need to increase by at least $1000 per year.