By Tom Rakocevic At the beginning of this month, Ontarians had to endure yet another increase to our hydro bill.Hydro wasn't our only bill to go up. According to the Sunshine List, Tom Mitchell, the President and CEO of Ontario Power Generation made $1.71 Million in 2013, making him the highest paid public sector employee in the province. A $10,000 increase from what Mitchell earned in 2013.This doesn't even mention the $1 Billion Ontario taxpayers paid by selling excess electricity to other states and provinces for significantly less than what it cost to produce it. This translates to roughly $220 a year out of each of our pockets. Nor does it mention the Liberal government's $1.1 Billion gas plant fiasco where they cancelled an unpopular power plant in order to get re-elected, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill.Currently, an average Ontario family pays approximately $125 a month for electricity. According to Kathleen Wynne's “long-term energy plan,” we can expect a 42 per cent increase in our hydro bills over the next five years. Under this plan, it is projected that Ontario families will pay an average of $178 a month on our hydro bills. Residents living in homes with electric furnaces and/or baseboard heating already face incredibly high bills and the situation will only get worse. Some individuals have seen bills approaching $1,000 in the coldest months.This will put a major squeeze on many Ontario families, including those living here in Downsview. Under the Liberal government, our hydro bills have increased by almost 50 per cent and show no signs of slowing down.Despite the price increase, hydro service has not increased, it has actually decreased.Recently, Ontario Ombudsman André Marin, has launched “a systemic investigation into complaints about serious problems with billing and customer service at Hydro One.”Some of the most common complaints have been that customers have only received estimated hydro bills, or none at all, only to later be served with large cumulative bills that don't give people a reasonable amount of time to pay them.This hurts the most vulnerable people in our society, and bogs them down with interest payments that are extremely difficult to keep up with, and places them under threat of having their hydro cut off.All of this would be bad enough even if people were able to contact to get a proper explanation. However, many of the complaints that Marin has received about Hydro One has been about the government corporation's lack of customer service.“In the past few years, we have seen more and more complaints from Hydro One users about bills that seem to have no bearing in reality – and about the lack of answers they get when they ask why,” Marin said in a Feb. 4 press release.According to Marin, he was “alarmed” when his office tried to contact Hydro One regarding this matter, they too got “stonewalled,” and that this experience reflected the concerns he been hearing from regular Ontarians who wrote in their complaints.How did the Liberal government respond to this colossal mismanagement of our provincial hydro utility? By giving raises to the hydro executives who were in charge of this, paid for by us, the taxpayers.There have been serious problem at our public hydro utility for years. Not only is it one that the provincial Liberal government has failed to do anything about, the problem has gotten significantly worse under their watch.