Ontario’s independent fiscal watchdog is sounding the alarm.

Noting the previous Liberal administration spent $16.5 million on what she considers to be “partisan” ads last year, auditor general Bonnie Lysyk wants the Progressive Conservatives to strengthen the Government Advertising Act.

The Liberal government watered down that law in 2015, and that change “took the discretion away from the office, taking away our independence pretty much from this process and requiring us to pretty much be a rubber stamp,” Lysyk said.

The result is that her office now must “approve an ad even if it’s factually inaccurate,” she said.

“From my office’s perspective, that is just a paper-pushing exercise that has created additional work versus a value-add for the taxpayer.

“The act creates the optics that we are performing a useful function to save taxpayer dollars being spent on partisan advertising, but we are not doing that.”

While in opposition, the Tories promised to return the auditor’s power to veto advertising by amending the legislation.

But after 11 months in office, Premier Doug Ford’s government has no immediate plans to tighten the restrictions.

Instead, the Tories have gone on a multimillion dollar advertising blitz attacking the federal Liberal carbon-pricing measures with TV and radio commercials that Lysyk warns would not pass muster under the previous law.

“The reason we’ve continued the practice of commenting on the old rules is because ... the public ... would be assured that we would consider the issue of partisan and have discretion over that,” she told the legislature’s standing committee on public accounts Wednesday. “That’s the way it had functioned for many years.”

Lysyk said she advised the PC government that its new carbon-pricing ad, which hit airwaves last week, would not have been compliant under rules that were in place until 2015.

“They are well aware of our views, but they’ve continued, obviously, to issue the ads in compliance with the current legislation and are using that as a basis of publishing it,” she said.

On Wednesday, Treasury Board President Peter Bethlenfalvy would only say the Tories are “reviewing” the advertising act.

“There’s a lot to review. We’re busy,” he said.

The TV commercial depicts nickels pouring out of a gas pump nozzle, heating vents and supermarket shelves to show how carbon-pricing affects fuel and food prices.

But it does not mention federal tax rebates designed to offset higher fuel costs. For a family of four, those will rise from $307 this year to $718 annually by 2022. That’s a net gain of $70 per household that year.

The program, which is designed curb greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say contribute to climate change, is being bankrolled by big industrial polluters.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said “it’s absolutely disgraceful” the Tories are not keeping the promise they made in opposition to curb such publicly funded partisan ads.

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“It’s not in their interest to make the change that they promised they were going to make,” said Horwath.

Former premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals loosened the act four years ago, stripping the auditor of a veto for factual accuracy, tone, context, and whether an ad was politically partisan.

The rules originally came into effect in 2004 under Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty.

Robert Benzie is the Star's Queen's Park bureau chief and a reporter covering Ontario politics. Follow him on Twitter: @robertbenzie

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