The PlanOffers Canada Energy Blog provides information for Canadian consumers on home natural gas and home electricity rates comparisons, plans, and providers in Canada. In addition we may provide blog posts / articles on home energy topics which you may find to be of interest. We might also mention topic on Canadian utilities. If you would like to contribute a high quality, human written, 'on topic' article to this blog please email us, and we will consider it. Similarly, if you have questions regarding this Energy Blog, or suggestions for future topics to be covered, please email us. Thanks!

Canadian consumers might be interested in knowing that the Province of Alberta has deregulated its home natural gas and home electricity rates. This has allowed most Alberta residents the opportunity to change energy providers (which is optional), and if they choose to do so, to save a significant amount of money on their Alberta electricity rates and Alberta natural gas prices. More information on this topic can be found on the Alberta Energy page of our site. This is a model which other provinces could choose to follow, and some do currently have a degree of deregulation in their provincial energy markets.

In the Province of Ontario, deregulation has followed a more convoluted path. Due to a high population growth, much of the 1950's energy grid was now overloaded, and now serving a customer base that was far larger than it had been built for, and each of those customers was now using far more power than had been envisioned in the 1950s. Not enough investment had been made in the provincial electrical grid since the 1950's and things were at the breaking point, and in many places things often 'broke', at times leaving Ontario residents in the dark. The construction of nuclear reactors had created a lot of debt, which 'somebody' (read the Ontario residents / taxpayers) were going to have to somehow pay off, plus the cost of fixing and expanding the electrical grid, plus planning for continued rapid population growth. Yeah, 'expensive' was the optimal word. This and other factors led to the beginning of deregulation in 1999. The major power blackout of 14 Aug 2023 helped to further focus attention on energy issues, leading to further legislative attempts to fix the market place and the grid, in part with private investment, and in part though restructuring ownership and administration of the electrical grid. Some companies involved seem to have made out quite well, while most Ontario consumers seem to paying far more than they may be comfortable with.