Why should anyone outside Ontario be interested in the annual report of that province’s Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk? Because Ms. Lysyk’s report, released Wednesday, foreshadows Canada’s energy future under Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta’s electricity future under NDP Premier Rachel Notley.

Lysyk found that since Ontario’s eco-obsessed Liberal government began to phase out coal-fired power plants eight years ago, that province’s consumers have overpaid for their electricity by $37-billion. That’s nearly $5 billion a year sucked out of the pockets of families and businesses just to fund the government’s “green” dream of replacing coal with wind and solar power.

The average family has paid an extra $165 a year on their electricity bills, while the typical business has paid an average 70% extra for “green” power.

During this same period, Ontario has lost nearly a quarter of a million manufacturing jobs. Since electricity is one of the largest input costs for manufacturers, it’s hardly a surprise that this spike in power costs has compelled hundreds of manufacturers, large and small, to pull up stakes and move to the States and elsewhere.

Also, according to Lysyk’s calculations, the overpayments will jump to nearly $8 billion annually beginning this year through to 2032.

That’s an additional $133 billion sucked out of the Ontario economy over the next decade-and-a-half – a huge impediment to economic growth – all because Ontario’s Liberals are stubbornly determined to shut down coal-fired power plants in the name of saving the planet.

On top of a nearly doubling of electricity prices, Ontario has also seen a drop of nearly 10% in it electrical supply.

The biggest reason for all this chaos? Political decision-making and interference trumped market forces.

According to Lysyk, the Liberal cabinet first of Premier Dalton McGuinty and now Premier Kathleen Wynne, “made a number of decisions about power generation that went against the (Ontario Power Authority’s) technical advice and did not fully consider the state of the electricity market.”

The same is about to occur in Canada and especially in Alberta.

Just three weeks after winning an upset majority in Alberta’s provincial election last May, NDP Premier Rachel Notley said she wanted to follow Ontario’s lead on electricity. Then two weeks ago, Notley confirmed her government would be shuttering all of Alberta’s 18 coal-fired generators and replacing them mostly with wind power.

Just as the Ontario Liberals have done, Notley claims this transition can be achieved with little cost to consumers and no disruption in the provincial power grid.

Sure, she admits, her government will be implementing a carbon tax expected to bring in somewhere between $3 billion and $4 billion a year, but Notley insists most of that will be quickly returned to consumers in the form of rebates for 60% of Albertans, especially First Nations.

But by some estimates, relying on wind to replace the 60% of Alberta electricity generated by coal will require the construction of 28,000 turbines. That alone would cost up to $4 billion, not counting the cost of land purchases and leases for turbine sites.

Lefty politicians and think tanks will tell Canadians and Albertans over and over that Trudeau’s “green infrastructure” plan and Notley’s scheme will not cost consumers or taxpayers extra. They will insist it will create jobs, not kill them. They will maintain shifting from coal to wind will be seamless.

Despite the evidence glaring them in the face, Ontario Liberals continue to make the same claims.

But wishing and hoping (and self-delusion) doesn’t make it so.

Because of government meddling and huge subsidies to alternate power providers, Ontarians now pay double the market price for wind power and triple the price for solar.

Since Alberta is more than twice as dependent on coal as Ontario ever was, the costs here could be even greater.