Ontario's big power expansion is portrayed by the Ford government as a good news story with little context on costs

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Ontario is “investing” billions of dollars in the idea of an all-electric future, one that features electric home heating and electric cars. The government’s approach involves both a massive expansion of the province’s electrical generating capacity and heavy subsidies for makers of electric vehicle batteries.

The Doug Ford government is approaching the electric future with gung-ho enthusiasm. When it comes to electricity, cost seems to be no object for this government, but who will pay for all the spending?

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Last week, Minister of Energy and Electrification Stephen Lecce was in Ottawa to announce that government owned Ontario Power Generation (OPG) would spend $1 billion to refurbish eight hydroelectric generating stations in Eastern Ontario. The aging generating stations can produce enough power for 1.6-million homes. The modernization, while necessary, adds only enough additional power to supply another 11,000 homes.

The announcement follows similar ones to spend $600 million on fixing up a hydro station in Cornwall and $1 billion to modernize the Niagara Falls power plant. Neither of those projects claim additional capacity. That’s $2.6 billion just to fix up aging infrastructure, not add meaningful capacity.

It’s a drop in the bucket compared to Ontario’s overall........

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