Ontario Is Buying U.S. Electricity This Winter — Months After Ford Threatened to Cut America Off

File photo: Pickering Nuclear Generating Station in Ontario, June 2026. The plant's multi-year refurbishment is one reason the province needs imported electricity this winter. Photo: Dillan Payne, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

In August, Doug Ford said he was ready to shut off the electricity Ontario sends to the United States. Two and a half months later, his province signed a contract to buy American electricity instead.

The 600-megawatt deal, in plain English

Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator — the IESO, the body that keeps the province's grid balanced — announced on October 1 that it had locked in a six-month contract for 600 megawatts of firm electricity import capacity with Alpha Generation, a U.S. power company. The deal starts November 1 and runs through the winter.

The stated reason is "facility maintenance" beginning this winter and stretching through 2027 and 2028. The IESO didn't name the facilities — but one prime suspect sits on Lake Ontario: the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, where a multi-year refurbishment of four reactors began in September, according to CBC reporting.

A couple of things to keep straight. "Firm capacity" is not buying 600 megawatts of power every hour — it's a promise that the power will be there when Ontario's own plants can't cover peak winter demand. The price of the deal wasn't disclosed. Neither was which of Alpha Generation's 26 plants, scattered across six states and running on natural gas and oil, will actually supply it.

Why the timing stings for Ford

Because of everything Ford spent the summer saying. In August, with Trump's tariff war dragging on, the premier said Ontario was willing to cut off electricity and critical minerals to the U.S. "I will not hesitate to shut the electricity off completely," he said — echoing a threat he first made a year and a half earlier, when he slapped a 25 per cent surcharge on electricity exports and pulled it a day later. Ontario's power reaches roughly 1.5 million people in Michigan, New York and Minnesota.

Lewis Krashinsky, a Harvard postdoctoral fellow who studies U.S.-Canada politics, told CBC the import contract "undercuts" Ford's entire posture. "For all the tough talk, I think it doesn't look at all that good for Doug Ford," he said — warning that if this story reaches senior American officials, they might simply cancel the contract or stop taking Ontario's threats seriously.

The IESO is having none of the political reading. It told CBC that Ontario remains a net exporter — sending seven times more electricity to neighbouring jurisdictions than it imported in 2025 — and called the contract "normal system planning" for winter peak demand. The province's energy ministry declined to answer CBC's questions and pointed reporters back to the IESO.

Critics smell hypocrisy — and a real vulnerability

Jack Gibbons, who chairs the Ontario Clean Air Alliance, didn't mince words. "It's very ironic," he told CityNews. "The premier has been repeatedly threatening to cut off electricity exports to the United States. But now he goes and signs a contract to import power from the United States." His bigger worry is what happens if Trump flips the threat: "Potentially the lights could go out in Ontario," he warned.

Keith Brooks of Environmental Defence Canada went further, calling the situation the product of years of provincial mismanagement: the Ford government cancelled clean-energy projects when it first took power, he argued, and leaned hard on nuclear and gas plants that are expensive to maintain. He also flagged the dependency nobody likes talking about — most of the natural gas Ontario burns to make electricity comes from south of the border. "[The U.S.] could have shut off the gas, which meant we couldn't even turn our own lights on, let alone sell electricity to them," Brooks said. His answer: homegrown wind and solar, so Ontario never has to rely on Washington for either fuel or power.

The grid operator did its job — it bought insurance for winter. But the insurance is American, and it arrived in the middle of a trade war in which the premier's loudest weapon was the threat of flipping Ontario's power switch. Ford's office isn't answering questions. The lights will probably stay on. The politics are going to sting.

Sources

• CBC News (via NewsBeep) — "Ontario to import U.S. electricity this winter, months after Ford threatened to cut power exports" (Oct 17, 2026) — newsbeep.com
• CityNews (via EuropeSays) — "'Very ironic': Ontario signs contract to buy electricity from U.S. during winter months" (Oct 17, 2026) — europesays.com
• Chatsworth Banner — "Ontario to Import 600 MW of U.S. Power This Winter" (Oct 16, 2026) — chatsworthbanner.ca
• Hashtag Investing — "Ford Threatened to Cut Off U.S. Electricity — Now Ontario Is Buying 600 MW of American Power for Winter" (Oct 17, 2026) — hashtaginvesting.com