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“If you think about how bad it was in September and November 2002, it is worse now by ten points,” Greg Lyle, a pollster and president of Innovative Research Group, told the Ontario Energy Association conference in Toronto last month. He said people are “as angry as they’ve ever been” and it’s Wynne who’s bearing the brunt of the fury.

The government loves to blame its Tory predecessors, saying the decision to break up Ontario Hydro and years of neglect are what consumers are paying for now.

Donald Dewees, an economics professor at the University of Toronto, said much of what customers are paying for is the result of necessary upgrades — but that the Liberals made enough mistakes along the way to share a good chunk of the blame. “You can’t just blame the current government, but you can ask them what’s your plan in the future,” he said. In some ways, he added, people also have to “just accept that Ontario is not and will never be a low-cost jurisdiction again.”

The government’s short-term moves are more symbolic than transformative: a new energy minister, Glenn Thibeault, removing HST from home hydro bills, offering rebates first to rural customers and eventually to all users, and just recently announcing a deal to buy electricity from Hydro Quebec.

But when it comes to permanent fixes, solutions are harder to come by. Energy ministers past and present, bureaucrats, utility owners, academics and activists all agree the system is bloated and costly. They just can’t agree how to fix it.