An overnight fire destroyed Don Dodds’ Southwestern home and everything he owned three months ago.

The Jan. 8 blaze left the Glencoe man homeless and with burns on his upper body.

Then came the slap in the face.

Dodds was shocked when provincial electricity distributor Hydro One sent him a $35 bill in February for power delivery.

But it was about to get worse.

The 52-year-old received a second bill the next month — this one for $193.55 — saying Hydro One had read the electricity meter on Feb. 8, almost two months after the fire.

“They’re a bunch of crooks,” Dodds fumed Friday about the utility.

Dodds’ story made its way this week to the floor of the Ontario legislature, where a London-area opposition MPP said the case underlines the broken state of Ontario’s energy system.

“I think this just demonstrates why people have a lack of trust

in Ontario’s electricity system today,” Progressive Conservative MPP Monte McNaughton said Friday.

Hydro One came under harsh public scrutiny a few years ago when Ontario’s ombudsman was flooded with more than 10,000 complaints after the company moved to a new billing system.

Some customers were double- and triple-billed, while others had no bills for months.

Hydro admitted its errors and sent out about a million letters of apology to customers.

McNaughton, who represents Lambton-Kent-Middlesex, said he learned of his constituent’s plight after coming across the story on social media.

He raised Dodds’ billing woes during question period on Thursday, grilling Ontario Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault on how it happened.

“The house no longer existed. How can people trust their energy bills when distributors are reading meters that don’t exist?” said McNaughton, who called the bills “salt in the wound.”

A few hours after the day’s legislative sitting had ended, Dodds said a Hydro One representative called him and offered to credit his account for the charges.

Dodd’s said he isn’t satisfied, saying “they’re accepting responsibility” only because of the attention the bungled billing received.

A Hydro One spokesperson declined to speak about the case on Friday, citing a company privacy policy.

Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government has come under fire for soaring electricity rates that have nearly doubled in the past decade.

Costly delivery charges — the fee to bring power to homes that ­typically makes up between 30 and 40 per cent of bills — have been singled out for contributing

to the problem, especially in rural areas.

In response to the increasing backlash, Wynne has pledged to reduce energy bills by 25 per cent, most of that coming this summer and the rest by taking the provincial portion of the HST off hydro bills, a move that took effect Jan. 1.

McNaughton estimates that 90 er cent of the calls he gets from his riding are energy-related, ranging from hydro bills to concerns about electricity-generating wind turbines.

Dodds, a father of two, said he’s worried others might be overcharged for electricity and aren’t doing anything about it.

“If they did it to me, how many other people are they doing it to that aren’t piping up and saying anything?” he said.

dcarruthers@postmedia.com

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