THUNDER BAY, ONT.— Bloated bureaucracies, the Liberals’ $1.1 billion gas plants scandal and sweetheart deals are making electricity more and more unaffordable, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says.

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Speaking in the crowded living room of a party supporter, Horwath told reporters her partial solution to skyrocketing costs would be to eliminate the provincial portion of the HST from hydro bills, which on average would trim about $120 a year to household bills.

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That would be over and above a previously announced $100 rebate.

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“Today I want to talk about a simple, achievable step we can take to make life just a little more affordable,” she said, reading from a Teleprompter.

“A NDP government will take the HST off of hydro bills starting‎ in 2016,” she said.

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In Smithville, Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak said it’s a bit rich for NDP Leader Andrea Horwath to be complaining about soaring power rates.

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“They’re really just the great pretenders,” Hudak said Monday.

“They say they care about hydro rates but they voted with the Liberals each and every time. Your hydro bill has gone up $630 a year with the NDP supporting that legislation,” he said.

“Quite frankly, I put $315 of those costs on the backs of Andrea Horwath and the NDP.”

Horwath told the Thunder Bay press conference that after 10 years of Liberal reign, Ontario has among the highest electricity bills in Canada.

Horwath said the Liberals are more worried about saving their own political careers than tackling electricity costs, which both consumers and industry complain are far too high.

She pointed to the Liberal government decision to scrap and relocate two gas-powered plants at a cost of $1.1 billion.

‎And she said Hudak offers the same hydro privatization schemes “that drove up bills the last time Conservatives were in power.”

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Among other things, the New Democrats are proposing to merge different electricity agencies, cap CEO salaries in the electricity sector, have the auditor general review the private power contracts and assess the cost of exporting surplus power‎.

“We have a number of plans to try and get those rates under control‎. But in the meanwhile we want to see the rates come down with the removal of the HST off of hydro,” Horwath said.

With files from Robert Benzie

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