Paying More for Power

Canadians are paying more for their power, on average, than our neighbors to the south. When outlier Honolulu is excluded, rates for small commercial electricity consumers are 8 percent greater in Canada than in the US, while rates for small industrial consumers are more than almost 30 percent greater. When the comparisons are based only on the rates in cities located in provinces and states that are not well endowed with developed hydroelectric generation capacity, the Canada-US differences are even greater. Canadian commercial and industrial electricity consumers appear to have a competitive disadvantage versus their US counterparts. The authors call on Canadian federal and provincial policy makers to focus on measures that could help to secure lower electricity costs for future generations and reduce the disparity between Canadian and US electricity rates.