It’s a government that uses omnibus bills to ram through controversial new measures — and then limits debate on them.

Its leader says one thing during an election campaign and then, once in office, surprises voters with something entirely different.

It is routinely scolded by watchdog officials for its lacklustre approach to public accountability.

And no, it is not the federal Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the man critics like to call mean and reactionary.

Rather it is the Ontario Liberal government of Premier Kathleen Wynne, the personable grandmother who won office last year as a political progressive.

As she prepares to undertake the biggest privatization of public assets in Ontario history, Wynne finds herself increasingly channelling her inner Harper.

Her privatization target is Hydro One, the provincially owned monopoly that transmits virtually all electric power in Ontario.

Wynne wants to sell 60 per cent of it, thereby transforming this particular essential service into a private monopoly.

Oddly, and perhaps deliberately, the Liberal plan to privatize Hydro One took the province by surprise.

The government now points to a line on page 164 of its 2014 budget as proof that it had always been contemplating the sale. That’s where the Liberals said they would examine how to “get the most out of key government assets.”

But even the most suspicious reader could be forgiven for not understanding that this meant Wynne was open to privatizing one of the province’s crown jewels, a utility that provides the treasury with close to $1 billion a year in revenues.

She did not seek a mandate to sell off Hydro One prior to last year’s election. Nor did she receive one. The question simply never arose.

People can debate whether it makes much sense to sell, for $9 billion, 60 per cent of a utility that makes almost $1 billion annually.

But it seems they won’t be able to do so at great length in Ontario. In another Harperian move, Wynne has done two things.

First, she has placed the Hydro One privatization scheme inside a complex omnibus budget bill that proposes to amend 45 statutes.

Second, she has limited debate on this omnibus bill in order to assure quick passage by early June. The legislative committee studying the package has been allowed only six days to do its work.

Even if the committee focused entirely on Hydro One and ignored all other elements of the bill, this wouldn’t give it much time.

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In Ottawa, the Harper government has run afoul of various parliamentary watchdogs.

The latest is Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault. She publicly chided the federal government Thursday for trying to retroactively legalize unlawful interference with freedom-of-information requests.

Over the years, other independent watchdogs, including the federal privacy commissioner and parliamentary budget officer, have also weighed in against the Harper government’s high-handedness, its penchant for secrecy and its casual approach to human rights.

So it’s intriguing to see a similar pattern occurring in Ontario. On Thursday, eight provincial watchdogs signed a joint letter taking Wynne to task over the Hydro One sale.

In particular, the eight — including the provincial auditor general — chastised the Liberal government for measures in its omnibus bill that would remove Hydro One from public oversight even before it becomes 60 per cent privately-owned.

In particular, the utility wouldn’t be subject to freedom of information requests or provincial value-for-money audits. Those lobbying Hydro One for favours would no longer have to disclose the fact.

Salaries of Hydro One employees earning more than $100,000 annually would no longer be made public on the province’s sunshine list.

None of this is to suggest that Harper and Wynne are identical. In some (but not all) ways, the federal Conservatives are more straightforward about their plans than the Ontario Liberals.

Conversely, the Ontario premier is less obdurate than the prime minister.

Still, when it comes to promoting bad ideas, there are eerie similarities. Harper pulled out all the stops to ram through his new, flawed anti-terror bill. Wynne is doing the same with her ill-conceived plan to privatize Hydro One.

Thomas Walkom’s column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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