Provincial auditor Erik Peters hopes to know by year's end whether taxpayers got a good deal when the Bruce Nuclear generating complex was leased to a foreign company for millions of dollars a year. ``We are now starting it (a special audit) full bore . . . and we really hope to have it done this calendar year,'' Peters said yesterday. The audit is the only way the public can hope to get a peek behind the wall of secrecy that has surrounded the multimillion-dollar private sector deal, the first of its kind in Ontario. Any details of the deal between Ontario Power Generation and British Energy PLC of Edinburgh have been blocked by the Tory government. The deal was announced a year ago but regulatory licensing was required. ``It's the biggest lease arrangement of a public asset in the history of the province and that alone should be worthy of determining whether or not there's value for money in this arrangement,'' New Democrat MPP Shelley Martel (Nickel Belt) said yesterday. Ontario Power will receive about $150 million a year from British Energy, plus a one-time payment of $625 million. The Bruce nuclear plant is capable of supplying about 30 per cent of the province's electricity needs. It was Martel, a member of the Legislature's public accounts committee, who originally called for a special audit last fall. Because of delays, including the government withholding funding for the audit, it's really just getting under way now. The official request for the audit came from the committee. Besides her suspicions that British Energy got a ``sweetheart deal,'' Martel said she felt it important that taxpayers be protected in future deals while Ontario Power divests itself of 65 per cent of its generating capacity during the next few years. Martel is particularly interested in the liability costs the public may be on the hook for, once the lease expires.
`I want to know whether the (British Energy lease) deal allows for enough revenue to be generated to cover the liability 25 years from now when we get the Bruce back and have to deal with decommissioning cost.'
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``I want to know whether the deal allows for enough revenue to be generated to cover the liability 25 years from now when we get the Bruce back and have to deal with decommissioning cost,'' she said. Liberal critic MPP Sean Conway (Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke) said the public has a right to know whether the deal between Ontario Power, a government-owned agency, and British Energy is in the public interest. Conway was part of a select committee that looked into the future of Ontario's aging nuclear reactors, particularly those at the Bruce complex, and the various options for keeping them running, including having private companies operate them. ``These are big dollars. There is no question about that, and I think the public has a right to know that these arrangements are in the public interest, both in terms of safety and in terms of financial arrangements,'' he said. Conway said skeptical taxpayers need look no further than the Tory government's sale to private owners of 407 ETR, the toll highway north of Toronto in the 905 belt, to how Ontario's consumers took a beating on that deal. The highway was sold by the Conservatives just before the 1999 election campaign for $1.6 billion. Since that deal, tolls have increased by more than 57 per cent and the 30-year limit on toll collection has been extended to 99 years. |