The saga of the “Six Million Dollar Man” has spilled over into the Hundred Million Dollar Manhole.

That’s how much money has gone down the drain at Hydro One thanks to Doug Ford’s costly campaign stunt, culminating with a botched takeover bid and a $103-million kill fee. Never have Ontarians paid so heavy a price for such cheap sloganeering, with the meter still running on lawyers’ bills.

That our fearless, feckless premier could fire the (admittedly overpaid) CEO of Ontario’s electricity transmission utility without financial consequences was always the stuff of television fantasy. When you mix business risk with political recklessness, and personal arrogance with governing incompetence, you are on the hook for what happens.

It begins with the costs (and opportunity costs) of sidelining CEO Mayo Schmidt, who surrendered his munificent $6 million annual compensation but walked away with generous stock options at our expense. That’s a massive transfer of wealth for which we received nothing beyond the fleeting satisfaction of issuing a pink slip.

Revenge is no remedy for past grievances. Envy is no substitute for strategy.

After winning the June 7 election on a promise to decapitate Schmidt for his tin ear, Ford vowed to sideline the entire board of Hydro One. The utility’s directors sensibly offered to resign voluntarily (avoiding the tumult of termination), but the premier’s office opted for paralysis.

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Ford’s chief of staff, Dean French, severed all lines of communication between both sides, I’m told. Bad enough that it was rendered a lame duck board headed by a doomed CEO, our provincial transmission utility was transformed into a zombie corporation for weeks while the Ford team sat on its hands.

By pushing out Schmidt, Ford set off a chain reaction in the U.S. northwest, where regulators were examining Hydro One’s proposed $4.4-billion takeover of regional utility Avista. Written promises that Ontario’s government acted only as a passive investor in Hydro One were flagrantly contradicted by Ford’s meddling, prompting the regulator to step in.

Hence the kill fee Hydro One must pay, plus commissions to investment banks involved in the deal’s financing, adding up to more than $150 million. Not to mention massive legal bills.

Retreating into damage control mode, the premier’s office issued a written statement laced with campaign-style rhetoric, six months after the election ended: “I will never apologize for keeping my promises to the voters. We are reducing hydro rates.”

Except that cutting Schmidt’s supersized salary won’t shave more than a fraction of a penny off monthly bills. Paying out more than $150 million in kill fees and lawyer’s bills will cost the company far more.

All for what? The satisfaction of cutting off our nose (or Schmidt’s tin ear) to spite — or incite — ourselves?

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It is tempting to blame the premier alone for our hydroelectricity folly. But that would pile one more oversimplification onto the heap of hyperbole surrounding Hydro One.

Ever since the start of its privatization misadventure, led by former premier Kathleen Wynne, the utility has been bizarrely cursed. While I argued against it — too much risk for too little reward — I never lost sleep over the partial sale of our transmission lines (a largely passive asset) while maintaining effective control with a 47-per cent stake.

But I never anticipated the success of the New Democratic Party in whipping up public antipathy to the sale, thanks largely to brand contamination: Most people conflated Hydro One with the old Ontario Hydro, long since split up into the transmission utility and the more strategic Ontario Power Generation (still fully owned by Queen’s Park).

The Progressive Conservatives, who had long demanded privatization, conveniently reversed themselves ahead of the election to join the NDP crusade for full public ownership. On the campaign trail, Ford emerged as the province’s populist-in-chief by pouncing on Schmidt’s excessive compensation with his artful rhetoric that struck a chord with voters — and pulled the rug out from the NDP.

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But Ford’s bumper sticker slogan mocking the “Six Million Dollar Man,” and his new roadside signs proclaiming Ontario “Open for Business,” belie the reality that this Progressive Conservative government is bad for business, and bad for Hydro One’s balance sheet. Ford’s pro-business rhetoric hasn’t fooled the business press, which is panning his government’s intervention in corporate governance, its interference in the hiring and firing of top managers, and its readiness to tear up signed commercial contracts to score political points.

If a Liberal or NDP government had attempted half of the upheaval undertaken by PCs so far, the private sector would be raising cries of banditry and Bolshevism. Happily for the Tories they are buffered by their historical affinity with right wing rhetoric.

But the more maladroit their performance, the more glaring the distinction between conservatism and competence. Meddling with management is no way to run a corporation, just as mismanagement is no way to govern a province.

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