Browse "Public Utility"

With the current almost religious belief in privatization and the recent debate about selling off Ontario Hydro, it is timely to look back at a time when there was a very different view of what constituted the public good.

For statistical and administrative purposes, the federal government has divided the Canadian airport system into 5 major classes of airports: international, national, regional, local commercial and local.

Electric utilities are private or government organizations involved in the production, transmission, distribution, marketing and sale to consumers of electric power. Canadian electric utilities account for approximately 92% of the total production of electrical energy in Canada.

Hydro-Québec, a provincially owned corporation based in Montréal, is Canada's largest electric utility and, judged by assets ($30.6 billion in 1986), Canada's second largest corporation.

This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on February 12, 1996. Partner content is not updated.

It was a sight to behold: men and women who have dumped all over the province's public electrical utility from the dawn of political time, running in rhetorical circles in an effort to persuade worried voters and nervous consumers that Ontario Hydro's decision to write $6.