Pressure is building on Ontario’s Liberal government to recoup millions more from nine power plants caught filing up to $260 million in ineligible expenses, including staff car washes, parkas, scuba gear and raccoon traps.

With only $168 million in repayment orders issued by the province’s Independent Electricity System Operator, opposition parties insist the remaining $92 million must be recovered.

“This has to go further,” Progressive Conservative energy critic Todd Smith said Thursday in the wake of a damning auditor general’s report into lax oversight and weak investigative capacity.

“These are the types of things that drive people crazy when they’re struggling to pay their own hydro bills.”

New Democrat MPP John Vanthof accused the government of allowing the electricity suppliers in question “to defraud hard-working families” through rates they pay for power.

Adding to the angst is a refusal by the IESO, which arranges day-to-day electricity supplies to keep the lights on across the province, to name eight of the nine offending companies, the critics said.

Only one, the Goreway power plant in Brampton that was fined $10 million and hit with a $100-million repayment order, has been identified because it was named in an investigation by the Ontario Energy Board.

Economic Development Minister Brad Duguid said the repayments ordered were subject to settlement negotiations and told reporters “I don’t have a problem” with the names of offending companies being made public.

But Duguid, standing in for Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault who had a death in the family, said those decisions are up to the IESO.

Factors in the settlement negotiations included disputes between the agency and companies as to how many expenses were ineligible, he added.

“There may not be certainty to that.”

IESO vice-president Terry Young told the Star the agency believes the ineligible costs are closer to $200 million, meaning about 85 per cent of the monies have been recovered.

“We thought the $260 million was extreme,” he said, referring to the figure in auditor general Bonnie Lysyk’s annual report issued Wednesday.

The IESO decided the costs of litigation to recover more funds was not worth the financial risks, Young added.

“We aren’t going to be taking any further action.”

Names of the other eight companies facing repayment orders cannot be released under the rules established for participants in Ontario’s energy market, Young said.

That needs to be changed, Vanthof said.

“The system should be much more transparent.”

Thibeault’s office issued a statement Thursday saying the repayment orders hinge on the definitions of eligible and ineligible expenses that could be claimed by power producers in a program that has since been changed.

“Since IESO now pre-approves eligible costs, this risk has been corrected,” said Thibeault spokesperson Colin Nekolaichuk.

In her report, the auditor general also faulted IESO for having executives from some of the companies on a panel of 23 members studying ways to modernize Ontario’s electricity market and no consumer representation.

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“Some of the members that are on the working group are representing companies that have been found . . . to have misused market rules,” Lysyk wrote.

Goreway executive Rob Coulbeck and Paul Dottori of Rayonier Advanced Materials resigned as co-chairs last week.

Consumer advocate Francesca Dobbyn, executive director of the Bruce Grey United Way in the Owen Sound area, has since been appointed to the panel.

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