Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne is doing the unthinkable: privatizing Ontario's Hydro One.

The valuable crown corporation brings in hundreds of millions of dollars per year for Ontarians -- revenue that is used to support essential public services like schools and hospitals. The deal could also hurt consumers, since the privatization of utilities often leads to higher electricity prices as private companies jockey for their share of the profit.

Worst yet, the deal is shady -- the Ontario Liberals paid their own friends nearly $7 million to draw up a biased, pro-privatization report. Let's call on Premier Wynne to stop the sale of one of Ontario's most important public assets.

Keep Hydro One public! Kathleen Wynne, scrap your privatization plans now.

Hydro One returns a profit to the public purse every year and provides reliable electricity services to Ontarians in all parts of the province, including rural and northern communities. Selling Hydro One off is short-sighted -- Ontario would be give up billions of dollars of future public revenues if this quick sell-off goes ahead. We've been down this road before. Back in 2001, Mike Harris tried to sell off Ontario Hydro, but he backed off when the people of Ontario banded together and blocked the privatization deal.

Time and time again, SumOfUs members have been calling out governments who sell off public goods to private corporations, making access to crucial services harder for people who need it most. Politicians are hearing us loud and clear -- when over 130,000 of us signed a petition to the BC government demanding that it stop letting companies like Nestlé extract our precious groundwater for just $2.25 per million litres, political parties were forced to respond because the story was all over the front page of BC's newspapers.

For the past 30 years, governments around the world have been selling off power, telephone, railway, and water and sewage systems to corporations. The result? Overwhelmingly worse services getting delivered to citizens, often at increasingly higher prices. This is why we need to speak out now to stop this outrageous sale now.

Ask Kathleen Wynne to stop the plan to privatize -- keep Hydro One public!

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More information:

Got a problem? Privatize it (and pay the price for selling off Hydro One later), Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Apr 16th, 2015

In selling a chunk of Hydro One, Wynne is forgetting Ontario's history, Globe and Mail, Apr 27, 2015

Ontario government defends paying millions to consultants for report urging Hydro One sell-off, Toronto Star, Apr 28, 2015

Why Kathleen Wynne's Hydro One sell-off is a sellout: Cohn, Toronto Star, May 18, 2015