Breaking ranks with former premier Dalton McGuinty, former energy minister Brad Duguid said it was a bad idea to scrap a Mississauga power plant late in the 2011 election campaign.

The decision — which has left the minority Liberal government in turmoil over the $275 million cost to taxpayers — was short-term gain for long-term pain, Duguid suggested Tuesday.

He was testifying under oath before a legislative committee investigating the cancelled plant near Sherway Gardens and another in Oakville a year earlier — moves that new Premier Kathleen Wynne has admitted were “politically motivated” to save Liberal seats.

“I advised them . . . I’m not in favour of doing that,” Duguid said, surprising MPPs about his advice on the Mississauga plant cancellation amid community opposition less than two weeks before the vote on Oct. 6, 2011.

“The energy file had been going well during the election. It wasn’t a good time to bring it up.”

Duguid thought he had short-circuited the cancellation plan when the Liberal re-election team called him for input earlier in the campaign. But then came a final call from Sean Mullin, who had been an energy policy adviser campaign in McGuinty’s office, informing Duguid of the top-level decision.

The admission from Duguid — minister of Training, Colleges and Universities under Wynne, who will appear before the committee next week — took opposition MPPs by surprise.

“This was news to me. The Liberal campaign team was pretty clear: ministers of energy are nice things to have around but not things you use,” said New Democrat MPP Peter Tabuns (Toronto—Danforth).

The revelation is “a bit embarrassing for him (Duguid) . . . he was kept out of the loop,” added Vic Fedeli, the Progressive Conservative MPP for Nipissing.

Earlier, Duguid’s successor as energy minister, former London West MPP Chris Bentley, tried to blunt charges the Liberals covered up the full cost of scrapping Mississauga, pegged at $275 million in a report$275 million in a report by Auditor General Jim McCarter last week.

Bentley said he revealed a $265 million figure last July in a press release detailing a deal reached with the plant’s builder.

“We did have the numbers in the window,” insisted Bentley.

Tabuns took exception to that, noting the Liberals repeatedly used the $180 million figure before boosting it to $190 million after lumping in related costs.

Neither Bentley nor Duguid would provide a figure for cancelling the Oakville plant to update the government’s claim of $40 million, which has been cast in doubt by critics. Estimates start at $600 million and soar to almost $1 billion.

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After maintaining last week that no figure will come until the auditor general’s office presents a report on Oakville in September, Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli was suddenly eager to have Ontario Power Authority chief executive Colin Andersen report the latest interim figure before the committee Wednesday.

But opposition parties voted against that, saying the Liberals must wait their turn to call another witness.

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