Ontario to ban door-to-door energy marketers

Good news, almost fell for it once..

About damn time. These losers show up at least once a month on my doorstep. Had to threaten calling the police for the asshat to leave.

I'd ask if I could move in permanently just so I could hang out all day with those big fuzzy babbies. Awww....

Been a long time coming.

Yet another disgusting Mike Harris legacy that we're still cleaning up more than a decade later.

For the Conservatives who say we should stop bringing up Mike's name, I'll be more than happy to once were' done fixing all the shit that he busted up. Probably another 12 year from now.

And people wonder how the Liberals keep winning provincial elections. Simple: we've seen what fuck-ups the Conservatives and NDP were when given the chance to govern. Sad that we're left with no choice but the lesser of three evils.

The problem with that kind of thinking is that the lesser evils eventually grow into greater evils, as that McGuinty/Wynne regime has been proving over the last decade. What's the worst thing about a door-to-door marketer? That they're annoying? That they use crooked hard-sell tactics? That's bad, but you're being told that 'it's bad, mmmm-kay?' by a government that's rung up a $300 billion debt for you guys and apparently doesn't care at all about it in the slightest. Where does that kind of thing fall on the lesser vs. greater evil axis anyway?

As Opus from Bloom County unfortunately summed up, there's no more good guys.

Well, it just emphasizes how utterly fucking awful Mike Harris and Bob Rae were that this group of Liberal fuckups, as bad as they are, pale by comparison to Harris and Rae.

That kind of thinking led to Alberta nearly getting Stelmached/Redfrauded/Prenticized to death.

Harris did the same austerity type cuts that the federal Liberals did under Chretein and the people who applaud Chretein loathe Harris. Fucking leftie hypocrites.

Harris and Chretien are not anywhere near the same. And I'm not sure any Liberals "applaud" the Chretien cuts as much as reluctantly accept them (and the NPD doesn't even do that).

None of that has anything to do with rampant deregulation and corporate give-aways.

And as far as I know, Chretien never drove a pregnant welfare recipient to suicide after deciding to make an example out of her for breaking one of his newly-created welfare rules that she never knew about.

Well its not just "hard sell" tactics but outright lies....dressing in official-looking uniforms and badges that say things like "Utilities agent", and saying that they're from the public utility, that all residents must sign up for an electricity contract now,etc.

Not only that but the laws were so loose, there was no recourse in the Harris days. Under the Harris regime, any person of age who answered your door could sign the multi-year contract (whether it was your 18 yr old child or your 99-year old senile grandparent) and legally bind you, even if they are not the bill payer. Consumer complaints went no where.

People were put on contracts even when they told the salesperson no and never signed anything - and these energy retailers replied by saying just because they can't locate a copy of your supposedly signed contract doesn't mean you didn't sign it; the fact that they're billing you must mean you did sign one, so you'll have to hire a lawyer to try to get out of it.

And then there was the secret 'ever-greening'. These contracts were for 5 or 10 years, after which, you had a non-communicated 30 day window to get of out it before the contract automatically renewed for another 5 or 10 years. It was up to completely up to you to keep track of that tiny window over the years as the Energy retailers said it wasn't their job to remind you and after all "whatever happened to individual responsibility?" as the Conservatives loved to say.

Never mind that anyone on these contracts never saved a penny vs. the actual public utility rate.

The Harris government legislated door to door energy marketers?


They created the industry as part of their deregulation of the energy sector and "free market" reforms and they refused to regulate the activities of the business even as scandals grew. See my post above.

They tried it differently in Alberta. They sent out the big-boobed midriff girls wearing tight tank tops under the successful assumption that that the signee would be distracted by the tig ol' bitties. Kind of a hybrid grafting of Enmax meets Hooters. I think the PC's tightened the rules up and put a stop to some of the nonsense, which proves the AB PC's were merely good ol' boys with dumb ideas while the Ontario ones were as bad as one would expect some Bay Street yuppies led by a former golf pro would be.

Not much of an excuse though for letting McGuinty/Wynne build up a debt for a province of 11 million people equal to that of a couple of dozen third-world countries combined. Harris' indifference & cruelty vs. the Libs compiling a debt that will soon consume 100% of Ontario's GDP? Like Opus said, there's no more good guys. Ontario's about the only place I can think of offhand, aside from the United States, where all the politicians from all the parties literally deserve to be lined up against a wall and shot for all the damage they're deliberately causing.

Well, Even with some tax increases under the Liberals, Harris-era tax cuts still stand for the most part and leave us with $17 billion less per year on average than if he had just left the tax system alone.

For those who think that we should live with the Harris cuts under permanent austerity measures, just look to Europe where austerity doesn't seem to be doing anything to turn their economies around. That's the whole conservative ploy, don't you see? They want to force everyone into a neo-con free market fantasy land where a small and impotent government exists in name only and the private sector and the financial class rule unchallenged.