As Ontarians sit down for Thanksgiving dinner, farmers are prodding the government to move faster on a promise to serve something city folks take for granted.

Forget about mashed potatoes and apple pie — this is about natural gas that would bring the option of cheaper heating than the expensive electricity thousands of rural ratepayers rely upon.

Extending gas lines to more rural areas would save farmers, homeowners and businesses $1 billion a year with the added bonus of much-needed job creation, according to the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.

“The single best investment Ontario can make in our rural economy is expanded access to natural gas,” said federation president Don McCabe, noting fewer than one in five rural Ontarians have service.

“Natural gas is one quarter the cost of electricity and approximately one-third the cost of propane or fuel oil.”

McCabe compared “gasification” to the breakthrough that came with rural electrification a century ago.

But with rising hydro prices and delivery charges higher than in urban areas, rural Ontarians complain electric bills are knocking the stuffing out of their finances. Opposition parties have been roasting the government over it.

“The unfortunate thing is the really large pipelines that supply natural gas to cities go right under farmers’ fields and for years they haven’t been able to access it,” says Progressive Conservative MPP Jim Wilson (Simcoe North).

“It’s very frustrating for them.”

Infrastructure Minister Bob Chiarelli, who met with McCabe and gas executives this week, acknowledged the challenges and said that’s why the $230-million gas line extension program is coming soon. The Liberals have just a handful of seats in rural Ontario.

“There are more exceptional pressures on rural electricity customers than urban and suburban customers,” he told the Star.

McCabe said those pressures are debilitating, with the federation estimating a country homeowner could save $4,000 a year on fuel costs by switching to gas from electric heating.

For a poultry or hog barn, the conversion savings can hit $10,000 with savings of $20,000 for grain dryers.

That’s why McCabe and two leading rural politicians travelled to Toronto to talk turkey about the $230-million pledge in last spring’s budget to help municipalities and utilities like Enbridge and Union Gas extend pipelines to small towns and hamlets.

Farms and businesses along the way — such as greenhouses operating year-round to grow vegetables and flowers — could tap in.

While the government has promised details on the interest-free loan and grant program by the end of the year, Renfrew County Warden Peter Emon told a news conference it never hurts to keep the heat on.

“The soaring cost of hydroelectricity continues to be the number one concern of our rural residents,” said Emon, also chair of the Eastern Ontario Warden’s Caucus.

His western Ontario counterpart, Randy Hope, mayor of Chatham-Kent, said the stakes are high, citing an investor who bailed on the purchase of 200 acres for a massive greenhouse operation that would have created 300 jobs in the area.

But the $13-million cost to get a natural gas line to the site proved as prohibitive as the cost of heating the facility with electricity.

“Companies will not invest in rural Ontario without adequate and competitive access to natural gas,” Hope told reporters at a Queen’s Park news conference.

Chiarelli said the pipeline extensions are in addition to “significant steps” the government is taking to mitigate electricity bills across the province.

In the throne speech last month, Premier Kathleen Wynne said the government will waive the 8 per cent provincial tax on home and small business electricity bills starting in January.

As well, more remote rural residents will get up to 20 per cent off their bills to defray delivery charges and 1,000 more businesses will be able to take part in a program that offers lower hydro rates in return for shifting power use from periods of heaviest demand.

Aside from the pipelines, there are proposals to truck liquid natural gas to distant communities, where it can go into storage tanks and be fed through a small local pipeline networks, Chiarelli added.

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Industry sources said new pipelines to service rural Ontario can be built relatively quickly because they are small, with steel or plastic pipes of five to 20 centimetres (two to eight inches) in diameter buried in road allowances.

Union Gas, for example, is awaiting Ontario Energy Board approval for four projects in southwestern Ontario, including one that would run pipe off a main line to Milverton, a small community 27 km north of Stratford that was electrified in 1916.

“If we had a decision by late winter, we’d have gas in Milverton by fall,” said spokesman Jeff Okrucky, who added the company is “encouraged” by the prospect of government aid in reaching more communities.

Access to gas would give Milverton residents the option of switching to gas furnaces, at a cost of about $3,000 to $5,000, depending on the model.

“The concern is a lot of people are on electric baseboard heating, or oil,” said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.

Meanwhile, the propane industry, which serves about 100,000 homes, businesses and cottages in areas of Ontario without access to natural gas, disagrees with the proposition that natural gas is cheaper.

The commodity price does not take into account the huge cost of pipelines, which end up being spread across all natural gas ratepayers, said Greg McCamus, chief executive officer of Superior Propane.

“We believe natural gas is a very expensive long-term infrastructure build. We already have the infrastructure in place,” he added, referring to fleets of trucks that travel the countryside filling tanks.

Natural gas: By the numbers

$1 billion: Amount farmers, rural residents and businesses could save by switching to natural gas from electricity for heating.

20: Percentage of rural Ontario residents and businesses with access to natural gas.

60: Percentage of rural areas that could realistically be able to get natural gas service with extended pipeline networks.

50,000: Number of farms and businesses in rural Ontario.

700,00: Number of households in rural Ontario.