I am going to move out of my focus the electricity industry today as I am very troubled by what I am seeing south of our border with respect to freedom of expression. Of course, there is much going on south of our border that I am troubled by, but I recognize the difference between policy decisions and fundamental rights. While I think much of the current US policies on things such as tariffs, gun control and international co-operation are unwise and ill-informed, this is just my opinion. These are all issues on which any country has the right to make their own decisions. When it comes to fundamental rights like freedom of expression, free and safe elections, the primacy of law and freedom of movement, there are standards that should be maintained by all countries that profess to be democracies.
Governments should never be using their authority to curtail freedom of expression other than the obvious exceptions such as hate speech, threats and endangerment of safety.
I have been writing this blog for over three years now and before that NOTL Hydro issued a number of press releases. These blogs and press releases have often been about what we see as errors or deficiencies in the administration of electricity policy in Ontario. I have never been concerned that there might be retribution to either myself or NOTL Hydro. In fact, I have often been complimented by government officials. This advocacy is something we have discussed at the Board level and with our shareholder. Both have been comfortable with it as long as the advocacy is responsible. I fervently hope it will always be this way.
Freedom of expression comes with responsibility. We do our best to ensure that anything I or NOTL Hydro publishes is factual and respectful. We may disagree with policies or courses of action and will articulate this, but we never denigrate the officials or organizations involved. The positions we take are always grounded on a simple question: Is this the best thing for our customers? We will only advocate if the answer is yes.
Freedom of expression does mean you sometimes hear things you do not want to or should not have to. We recently had a customer who had a sizable number of outages and was very unhappy about it. He had communications with us and eventually discussed this with our council. We later met with him and explained what had happened with each outage and what we were doing about it. At all times the communications were respectful. Respectful communications deserve a respectful response. At other times we have had communications from customers that are disrespectful. We ignore those.
I always remember the quote which is incorrectly attributed to Voltaire. “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”