KITCHENER, Ont. -- Doug Ford is promising to cut hydro rates by 12 per cent if he wins Ontario's spring election, saying the reduction would be on top of the Liberal government's electricity rate cut plan, which he has repeatedly criticized.
The Progressive Conservative leader said Thursday that he would cut rates through a variety of measures that would save the average ratepayer $173 a year.
"I think that's a pretty good start," he said. "Putting $173 back in the taxpayer pocket."
The Tory plan would see the government give ratepayers the dividends it gets from its share of the partially privatized Hydro One.
It would also shift the cost of energy conservation programs from hydro customers to the tax base. And Ford said he would place a moratorium on new energy contracts and renegotiate existing deals where possible.
The plan comes as Ford continues to bemoan the fact that the governing Liberals will borrow billions to lower hydro rates by 25 per cent in the short-term. But he said their plan will remain in place, at least initially, if he's elected this spring.
"We're going to be reviewing that," Ford said of the Liberals' Fair Hydro Plan. "That was, as far as I'm concerned, the wrong thing to do, borrowing down the future and the only people who are going to pay for it is our children, our great-grandchildren."
The Liberals' hydro plan came after bills in the province roughly doubled in the last decade, and widespread anger helped send Premier Kathleen Wynne's approval ratings to record lows.
The plan lowers time-of-use rates by removing from bills a portion of the global adjustment -- a charge consumers pay for above-market rates to power producers -- for the next 10 years.
In the meantime, producers will continue being paid the same, so Ontario Power Generation has been tapped to oversee the debt used to pay that difference through a new entity called OPG Trust.
That financing structure will cost an extra $4 billion, according to both the auditor and the financial accountability officer.
Ford said Wynne "hoodwinked" taxpayers by creating the plan, but said he'd maintain it, with his own proposed 12 per cent rate cut being over and above the Liberal 25 per cent rate reduction.
Tory energy critic Todd Smith said the party may have a difficult task ahead if it wants to alter the Fair Hydro Plan because of the complexity of the borrowing vehicle created to finance the reduction.
"This was a very convoluted, confusing plan that the Liberals put in place," he said. "They concocted this for one reason and that was to hid it from the province's books, to make it seem like they had more money than they actually have."
Earlier this week Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk said the government's deficit projections over the next three years were understated by billions, in part, because of the Fair Hydro Plan and financing that is not included on the province's financial statements.
"This was done to hid the actual cost of their program for a very, very short period of time," Smith said. "It hasn't done anything to reduce the generation costs of electricity. What we're proposing here today will do that."
Ontario heads to the polls June 7.
