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MADOC TOWNSHIP, ONT. — Carol Paranuik once loved to bake. “I used to bake pies and tarts and cakes and cookies all the time,” she said. “I rarely bake now.” This grandmother’s problem is not her health, but rather her hydro bill.

Forty years ago, she and her husband, Dave, built a modest brick bungalow on a winding road north of Madoc, Ont. — about 225 kilometres east of Toronto. At the time, the government offered them a $1,500 grant to wire their home for electric heat.

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“Fifteen hundred dollars was a lot of money back then,” recalls Carol, drinking coffee at her dining room table. She adds bitterly: “They’ve gotten their money back since.”

And then some. On May 1, 2014, she received a Hydro One bill for $2,389.28.

“It’s ridiculous,” Carol said. She refused to pay, so Hydro One sent her a new bill: for $1,793.22. “How did they come up with that?” she asks. “It’s a wonder they haven’t sent the cops around to see if we are running a grow-op.”