"Ontario is not, not, not going to phase out natural gas."
Member of Parliament Bob Delaney resorted to repetitive negatives to assure officials of Kincardine that the provincial government doesn't really plan to block the start of gas service in their municipality on Lake Huron.
"Reports of Ontario moving away from natural gas are nonsense," said Delaney, the minister of energy's parliamentary assistant, according to the Owen Sound Sun Times.
He referred to a May 16 Globe and Mail report about a climate-change action plan due sometime this month. The newspaper obtained a draft debated by Liberal Party Premier Kathleen Wynn's cabinet.
Targeting cuts in greenhouse gas reductions from 1990 levels of 15% by 2020, 37% by 2030, and 80% by 2025, the draft said homes built after 2030 would have to be heated without fossil fuels.
It called for spending by the province of more than $7 billion (Can.) during 4 years on climate mitigation and set targets for deployment of 1.7 million electric or hybrid cars by 2024 and a 5% cut in emissions from gasoline and diesel vehicles.
The spending would be funded by revenue from a cap-and-trade system.
News that the province might phase out natural gas provoked fierce opposition. Thanks to earlier Liberal energy initiatives, Ontarians are edgy.
The government proudly claims to be the first jurisdiction in North America to have eliminated coal from power generation and thus to have met a 2014 target for GHG emission cuts-6% against the 1990 baseline.
But electricity prices have soared, devastating businesses and raising heating bills painfully for citizens lacking gas service.
According to the Canadian Energy Research Institute, 76% of homes in Ontario rely on gas for space and water heating in a province where the cost of the light hydrocarbon now is less than a third that of electricity.
The government doesn't want anyone to worry, though. Any suggestion that it might ban gas use is a big misunderstanding.
Or not, not, not.
