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Page 6 OctOber 24, 2016 • Law times www.lawtimesnews.com individuals being excluded from its benefit," she says. People seek lawyers for their expertise and knowledge, and offering online services will not necessarily close the gap when it comes to provid- ing informed, contextual care to clients. While useful, mere availability of knowledge does not a lawyer create. LT COMMENT ©2016 Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted or stored in a retrieval system without written per- mission. The opinions expressed in articles are not necessarily those of the publisher. Information presented is compiled from sources believed to be accurate, however, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions. 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Hughes — the founding executive director of the Law Commis- sion of Ontario — created the guidelines in order to ensure that, in the push for digitization, society's most marginalized do not get left behind. "If you've assumed that these technological mechanisms are allow- ing those people to access whatever they need, these people are going to be left behind even more," she told Law Times. "Perpetuating the digital divide is a problem." In her guidelines, Hughes sagely writes about improving the goal of improving "access to justice, not only access to the legal system, for individuals who are otherwise excluded through socio-economic factors such as race, gender, economic status, disability, place of resi- dence or other similar reason." I think Hughes is right on the money. For example, the guidelines stress the need to consider technology not solely in terms of technical elements such as hardware or software but also its design and how people actually use it. "Any point along the continuum of designing, developing, imple- menting, applying and using technology can result in marginalized Waiting on promise of affordable energy T he Ontario Liberal government's bungling of the energy file is leg- end. An appalling example is the North American Free Trade Agreement tribunal ruling awarding $25 million plus $3 million in legal costs to Windstream Energy for the abrupt can- cellation of an offshore wind energy con- tract to appease a NIMBY crowd. When in trouble for these mistakes, Premier Kathleen Wynne has played the guilt card and pointed at others, calling Ontarians "bad actors" over their CO2 emissions and rationalizing the impend- ing carbon cap and trade regime. There is no free energy: Hydro dams disrupt the environment and wind tur- bines cause issues with both humans and wildlife. Those turbines are built with steel, which has a carbon cost. Even solar panels require components made from mined minerals. Natural gas — some- times hailed as a "sustainable, clean fuel" — is in fact a fossil fuel with a CO2 price tag, though its emissions are half that of coal. No matter which way they turn, the Liberals can't get it right on energy. Their confusion over whether natu- ral gas is really a green energy has stalled plans to bring affordable energy to thou- sands of rural Ontarians for three years. Announced in 2014, the program would offer loans and grants to rural homes, farms and businesses to ex- tend natural gas lines to their location. They announced it again in the 2015 budget, allocating $200 million for natural gas access loans and $30 million for grants. It's 2016 and we're still waiting and energy costs in rural Ontario are the highest in Canada. You see, unlike cities and towns, in rural Ontario, natu- ral gas lines don't run everywhere. It is expensive to bring a line into ru- ral areas, and some remote locations may never see natural gas lines. Therefore, the only choices are hydro that is ineffi- cient and expensive, or propane, which is also expensive. There's also the option of wood, which is cheap but dangerous and polluting. The rural gas program would bridge the cost and ultimately pay it off through the energy savings. Business, too, would benefit, especially the food processing sector, one of the fastest-growing sectors of the Ontario economy and critically important to our agricultural base. There's an added benefit for farmers. Many have bio- digesters on their farms to generate methane. If there's access to a natural gas line, the methane can be filtered and fed back into the main grid, allowing the farm to recap- ture some costs and boosting the natural gas supply. Yet, in deployment, the plan has been another disaster from the get-go. Eco-activists howled about prolonging de- pendence on fossil fuels and geothermal proponents demanded subsidies for their favoured technologies. It didn't help when gas companies ap- plied to jack up rates, saying adding new customers would cost them money and they came across as greedy opportunists. Faced with these arguments from their core constituents — the same core that led them down the rocky path to the Green Energy Act — the Liberals started dragging their feet and dogma took over and the rural gas program was delayed. It's the same dogma Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk says cost hydro customers $37 billion more between 2006 and 2014. She projected it will also cost another $133 billion over the next 18 years. Well, maybe not $133 billion. The can- cellation of a second round of renewable energy contracts, which would have add- ed 1,000 megawatts in wind and solar en- ergy, may cut $3.8 billion off that figure. Predictably, on the news of the can- cellation, the green lobby immediately demanded more investment in wind and solar and an end to nuclear generation — which supplies 60 per cent of Ontario's energy needs — a laughable option. The problem with those wind and solar con- tracts is they pay more for power than it sells for and have the added cost of pay- ing for natural gas generators to stand by in case the wind drops or demand picks up. Clearly, the political lunatics can't be trusted to run the asylum. Perhaps the politicians should actually take advice from their counsel, in this case, the en- gineers who have presented proposals to bring the energy file into order and who have been brushed aside by a dogmatic agenda. LT uIan Harvey has been a journalist for more than 35 years writing about a diverse range of issues including legal and political affairs. His e-mail address is ianharvey@ rogers.com. Queen's Park Ian Harvey

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