Most Canadians who pay for natural gas or electricity can expect their bills to rise by between 50 and 100 per cent on average this winter, according to one energy analyst.
Some consumers could see their bills rise by as much as 300 per cent while others could see minimal increases, but the overall trend is clear, says EnergyRates.ca founder Joel MacDonald.
“In general, Canadians join the global community in seeing exceptionally high electricity and natural gas bills,” MacDonald told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview on Friday. “There are a few provinces where some of those increases are muted by the structure of the marketplace, but in general the answer is very high energy bills.”
Most of what will drive up the cost of home energy this winter is the rising price of natural gas, which generates 8.5 per cent of Canada’s electricity.
According to Statistics Canada, most Canadians – 61 per cent – use traditionally gas-powered systems, such as furnaces and boilers, to heat their homes. A smaller proportion – 29 per cent – use electric baseboard and radiant heating systems. The rest use heat pumps, stoves and other heating systems.
Right now, MacDonald said, natural gas prices are being driven upward by a combination of geopolitical strife in Europe, the global transition to renewable energy, seasonal demand, the federal carbon tax and the cyclical fluctuation of gas prices over roughly 20-year periods as supply and demand try to meet and overcorrect.
Some of these factors are predictable. Some, like the war in Ukraine, are not. The war reduced the global supply of natural gas, generally driving prices up. It has also reduced Europe’s access to the resource. As a result, the U.S. has increased its natural gas exports to Europe, and Canada has increased its exports to the U.S., further reducing Canada’s supply. Natural gas is currently five times more expensive in Europe than in Canada, MacDonald said, but as our supply drops, that will change.
“We’re sending more and we’re going to start to see the Canadian marketplace and the price of natural gas in Canada trend closer to the global price than it has done historically,” he said.
Further driving Europe’s demand for natural gas is a gap in its energy supply generated by the continent’s transition to renewable energy. It’s in a phase, MacDonald said, where neither its slowing fossil-fuel sector nor its burgeoning renewable sector can meet its energy needs.
So international demand for natural gas is rising. As the days become shorter and colder heading into the winter months, domestic demand is rising, too. Heftier energy bills are something Canadians expect each winter, but some years are costlier than others. This winter is shaping up to be a costly one, explains Michelle Leslie, senior manager of infrastructure and capital projects at Deloitte Canada.
“Forecasts indicate it’s going to be cold and snowy, especially for the central parts of the country and in the maritime provinces,” Leslie told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview on Friday. “If the forecast pans out…that will drive demand on heating systems. When you look at supply and demand, as the demand goes up, depending on what your supplies look like, you could be looking at increased prices.”
Then there’s the federal carbon tax, which applies to both natural gas and electricity generated using combustible fuel. Putting a price on carbon pollution is widely recognized as the most efficient method to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and drive innovation, but it can translate to heftier home heating and electrical bills.
Finally, MacDonald explained, natural gas prices tend to rise and fall over years-long cycles as the market overcorrects gaps between supply and demand. For example, the cost of natural gas in Alberta this July was $5.44 per gigajoule (GJ). In mid-2008, it peaked at $9.84 before falling again. In late 2005 and early 2001 it temporarily surpassed $11.
“Natural gas from 2000 to 2010 regularly traded around $6 per GJ,” MacDonald said. “Then we had a period of extreme lows from 2015 to 2020, and we’ve been seeing over the last year a return to the $6-per-gigajoule mark.”
All of these factors – domestic, international, predictable and unpredictable – spell increasing energy costs.
How much and how quickly residents’ home energy bills reflect these increases will depend on which province or territory they live in. This is because marketplace mechanisms within some provinces and territories act to mitigate or delay increases. Provincial energy retail marketplaces are either regulated or unregulated. Unregulated marketplaces tend to be more volatile, while price changes in regulated retail marketplaces tend to be more controlled.
“Everyone’s prices will be going up with time,” MacDonald said. “I think one of the biggest regional differences right now is the speed at which they are going up, and the regulated marketplaces are a little slower than the unregulated.”
Ontario’s marketplace is technically deregulated, but most consumers purchase from entities whose rates are regulated by the province, like Enbridge Gas and EPCOR Natural Gas Limited Partnership. The Ontario Energy Board announced in June it would allow Enbridge to increase natural gas prices by 20 per cent, but MacDonald said that increase actually reflects debt Enbridge was asked to absorb when the market price of natural gas rose during the pandemic, to avoid passing the increase to consumers at a time when many people were unable to work.
“Ontario asked Enbridge to take on $527 million in debt to cover the increases, so up until recently, the bills weren’t increasing,” he explained. “But now they have to start to recapture (that) debt.”
Regional nuances aside, MacDonald and Leslie both agree that Canadians aren’t likely to see home energy prices fall again soon.
“As of right now, there’s not a lot of reason to think prices will be going down in the next two to three years,” MacDonald said.
Leslie elaborated, adding that all signs point to domestic and global demand for natural gas continuing to rise for the foreseeable future, driving up prices if supply can’t keep up.
“With the forecast that’s in the cards for Canada and North America this winter, with everything that’s going on with Russia and Ukraine and Europe’s energy woes, I don’t expect the demand for natural gas to decrease,” she said. “In fact I expect it to increase.”
VANCOUVER – A B.C. Supreme Court judge says it has jurisdiction to order the disposal of thousands of pieces of evidence seized from serial killer Robert Pickton’s pig farm decades ago, whether it was used in his murder trial or not.
A ruling issued online Wednesday said the RCMP can apply to dispose of some 15,000 pieces of evidence collected from the search of Pickton’s property in Port Coquitlam, including “items determined to belong to victims.”
Police asked the court for directions last year to be allowed to dispose of the mountain of evidence gathered in the case against Pickton, who was convicted of the second-degree murder of six women, although he was originally charged with first-degree murder of 27 women.
Pickton died in May after being attacked in a Quebec prison.
Some family members of victims disputed the disposal because they have a pending civil lawsuit against Pickton’s estate and his brother, David Pickton, Yand want to ensure that the evidence they need to prove their case is not dispersed or destroyed.
The court dismissed their bid to intervene in July this year, and the court has now ruled it has the authority to order the disposal of the evidence whether it was used at Pickton’s trial or not.
The ruling says police plan to “bring a series of applications” for court orders allowing them to get rid of the evidence because they are “legally obligated to dispose of the property” since it’s no longer needed in any investigation or criminal proceeding.
Justice Frits Verhoeven says in his ruling that there may be reason to doubt if the court has jurisdiction over items seized from the farm that had not be made exhibits.
But he said that will be a decision for later, noting “the question as to whether the court retains inherent jurisdiction to order disposal of seized items may remain to be considered, if necessary, in some other case.”
Jason Gratl, the lawyer representing family members of victims in the civil cases against the Pickton brothers, said in an interview Wednesday that the latest court decision doesn’t mean exhibits will be destroyed.
“Any concern about the destruction of the evidence is premature. Just because the court will hear the application to allow the RCMP to destroy the evidence does not mean that the court would grant the application,” he said.
Gratl said that if the RCMP brings an application to get rid of evidence that could be useful in proving the civil cases, he would ask the court for the evidence.
“We would be seeking to take possession of any evidence that the RCMP no longer wants in order to prove that civil claim,” he said.
Gratl said no date has been set for when the civil cases will be heard.
The court’s earlier ruling says the RCMP has agreed to allow some of the civil case plaintiffs “limited participation” in the disposal application process, agreeing to notify them if police identify an “ownership or property interest in the items” that they’re applying to destroy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
Supporters of Vice-President Kamala Harris say they are devastated the Democratic party leader lost the United States presidential election. Harris was set to address Democrats at her alma mater Howard University in Washington, D.C. after conceding the race in a phone call with Donald Trump. (Nov. 6, 2024)
DETROIT (AP) — Democratic U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin has won Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat, giving Democrats a bittersweet victory in a swing state that also backed Republican President-elect Donald Trump in his successful bid to return to the White House.
Slotkin, a third-term representative, defeated former Republican congressman Mike Rogers. Democrats have held both Senate seats in Michigan for decades, but this year were left without retiring incumbent Sen. Debbie Stabenow.
Michigan’s was among a handful of Senate races Democrats struggled to defend. They lost their U.S. Senate majority despite Slotkin’s narrow win.
The race was incredibly close. Just minutes before it was called for Slotkin, she addressed supporters in Detroit, acknowledging that many voters may have cast their ballots for her while also supporting Trump, who won the state’s electoral votes over Democrat Kamala Harris.
“It’s my responsibility to get things done for Michiganders. No matter who’s in office, just as I did in President Trump’s first term,” said Slotkin. “I’m a problem solver and I will work with anyone who is actually here to work.”
Slotkin’s win provides some solace for Democrats in the state, many of whom entered Election Day with high confidence following sweeping victories in the 2022 midterms. Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer still controls the executive branch and Democrats held onto the Senate, but their state House majority was in peril.
And Republicans also captured a mid-Michigan seat vacated by Slotkin, considered one of the most competitive races in the country.
Slotkin, a former CIA analyst and third-term representative, launched her Senate campaign shortly after Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow announced her retirement in early 2023. With a largely uncontested primary, Slotkin built a significant fundraising advantage and poured it into advertising. Her high-profile supporters included former President Barack Obama and Stabenow, who helped her on the campaign trail.
On the Republican side, Rogers faced multiple challengers for the party’s nomination, including former Reps. Justin Amash and Peter Meijer, the latter of whom withdrew before the Aug. 6 primary. Rogers served in the U.S. House from 2001 to 2015 and chaired the House Intelligence Committee.
Trump won Michigan in 2016 by just over 10,000 votes, marking the first time a Republican presidential candidate had secured the state in nearly three decades. This time, he expanded that margin to about 80,000 votes.
Slotkin and other Michigan Democrats focused much of their campaigns on reproductive rights, arguing that Republican opponents would back a national abortion ban, although Rogers said he wouldn’t. How effectively the issue motivated voting in a state where reproductive rights were enshrined in the constitution by Michigan voters in 2022 remained to be seen on Election Day.
About 4 in 10 Michigan voters said the economy and jobs is the top issue facing the country, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 110,000 voters nationally, including about 3,700 voters in Michigan. About 2 in 10 Michigan voters said immigration is the most pressing issue, and roughly 1 in 10 named abortion.
Slotkin used her funding advantage to establish her narrative early, aiming to connect both with her base and disillusioned Republicans.
“For the Republicans who feel like their party has left them over the last few years, you will always have an open door in my office,” Slotkin said during their only debate.
