Utilities donating to Ontario Liberals
ONTARIO - Ontario's New Democrats want to know why publicly owned electrical utilities are donating to the governing Liberal party.
Elections Ontario documents show local utilities, including Essex Power and Oakville Hydro, have donated thousands of dollars to the Ontario Liberal Party in the past few years.
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says with electricity bills soaring, municipally owned utilities should not be using ratepayers' money to make political donations.
The documents show Oakville Hydro gave the Liberals $8,500 for a 2009 byelection in the Haliburton area, hundreds of kilometres away.
Newmarket-Tay Power Distribution, which is over 150 kilometres from Haliburton, gave the Liberals $1,350 for the same byelection and another $1,000 for the central party.
Essex Power Corporation donated $1,700 to the governing Liberals to help them win a byelection this year in Toronto-Centre, nearly 400 kilometres away from its base in southwestern Ontario.
Other public utilities donating to the Liberals included Thunder Bay Hydro, Greater Sudbury Hydro Plus, St. Catharines Power Generation and Niagara-on-the-Lake Hydro.
Related News
'Unbelievably dangerous': NB Power sounds alarm on copper theft after vandalism, deaths
FREDERICTION - New Brunswick's power utility is urging people to stay away from its substations, saying the valuable copper they contain is proving hard to resist for thieves.
NB Power has seen almost as many incidents of theft and vandalism to its property in April and May of this year, than in all of last year.
In the 2018-2019 fiscal year, the utility recorded 16 cases of theft and/or vandalism.
In April and May, there have already been 13 cases.
One of those was a fatal incident in Bathurst. On April 13, a 41-year-old man was found unresponsive and later died, after breaking into…
