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Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown’s election platform presents his “guarantee” that his party “will fix Hydro.” His plan’s core is to reverse the PCs’ longstanding rejection of Premier Kathleen Wynne’s “Fair Hydro Plan,” which shifts 25 per cent of current household rates to taxpayers and future consumers.

Wynne’s electricity-rate deferral and cost-shifting program had been roundly criticized by both the legislature’s auditor general and financial-accountability officer. The PCs had hammered the government with this analysis. Just weeks ago, the PC’s energy critic, Todd Smith, attacked the Fair Hydro Plan, saying “It is deceitful, it’s dishonest and it’s shady.”

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Now, the new PC position is that the only problem with Wynne’s program is that it does not go far enough.

Brown’s Ontario PCs are promising they will “save” households 12 per cent on their rates over and above Wynne’s existing 25-per-cent cut. All the big-ticket items Brown calls cost “savings” are merely more cost shifting — removing costs from the ratepayer’s left pocket by taking from the taxpayer’s right pocket.