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TORONTO — Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak has seized on an issue sure to be a linchpin in Tuesday’s leaders’ debate with a pledge to slap strict accountability rules on cabinet ministers if his party wins the June 12 election.

Hudak says all cabinet members would have to sign an “oath to Ontario” guaranteeing they will respect taxpayer dollars, reduce red tape and never raise taxes.

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If they don’t make good on those promises they’ll see their pay docked, Hudak said, or be fired outright if tripped up in a scandal like those under the Liberal government.

He said the accountability pledge is needed in the face of the “dishonest” governing Liberals who have abused the trust of taxpayers during the gas plants, eHealth, ORNGE and MaRS scandals.

“Nobody is ever held accountable. And when nobody is ever held accountable that means things keep happening over and over again — bad decisions, scandals, nobody’s ever watching the till anymore,” Hudak said Tuesday morning at a printing business in Markham, north of Toronto.