Excerpt from Public Ownership and the Hydro-Electric Commission of Ontario: Being a Reprint of a Series of Articles Which Appeared in the Financial Post of Canada, Toronto, Between July 15 and December 23, 1916

Under the hypnotiw¿i¿ces which have been mentioned the Government se cured the passing of legislation which established the hydro-electric Commis sion with extraordinarily wide powers. The members of the Commission were appointed by the Government in Janu ary, 1906, and the construction of a transmission line was commenced after the Commission had made an inquiry which extended over about two months, a rather inadequate period for such an undertaking.

The Acts by means of which the On tario Government embarked upon the distribution of power in competition with its own licensees, to whom it had immediately before granted exclusive licenses, created much uneasiness among those who had invested their money in these enterprises, as well as among in vestors in Canadian enterprises gen erally. Attempts were made to _pla_c_ate these investors by solemn. Assurances that interests which had been'created by the Government would be protected by it, but these generalities were ac companied by others in which the people were told that power must be as free as air and the power should be sun plied at cost, altogether contradictory and inconsistent propositions.

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