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Before Ontario’s Five-Year Climate Action Plan was officially released Wednesday, it had already stirred up considerable furor thanks to leaks about initially leaked plans to ban natural gas heating for new houses and mandating electricity instead. The so-called “ban” against natural gas didn’t make it into the official document, but confidential cabinet minutes obtained by The Globe and Mail suggest the plan is still very much alive, with orders to various ministries to plan ways to get every new home and building to “zero” carbon emissions in the next nine years, and to “phase out” fossil fuels for heating entirely by 2050. The original furor may have been well founded: The CEO of Enbridge estimated the conversion from gas to electric heating “would more than double electricity rates in a province with (already) very high electricity costs.”

Well, doubling prices sounds like a tall order. Maybe too tall for some amateur energy-market meddlers. So, can Ontario’s Liberals pull it off? Actually, as history shows, when they set their mind to it, they can do that in just a matter of years. They already did it once. Surely they can do it again.