OTTAWA—Ontario’s hard-hit electricity ratepayers will receive additional relief on their hydro bills beyond an upcoming 8 per cent harmonized sales tax cut, vows Premier Kathleen Wynne.

In a surprise move Saturday, a contrite Wynne told 850 Liberal delegates at the party’s annual general meeting here that her “government made a mistake” by allowing rates to soar.

“It was my mistake and I’m going to do my best to fix it,” she said, adding the looming reduction will be over and above the province’s 8 per cent portion of the HST that is being removed from bills.

That measure announced in September — worth $130 a year to the average household — begins in January and will cost the treasury $1 billion annually.

“Standing before you today, I take responsibility as leader for not paying close enough attention to some of the daily stresses in Ontarians’ lives. Electricity prices are the prime example,” said the premier, who fought back tears during a speech in which she acknowledged “the polling numbers and the pundits … say many people in Ontario are not happy with me right now.”

“I get that. In the weeks and the months ahead, we are going to find more ways to lower rates and reduce the burden on consumers.”

Wynne blamed the skyrocketing prices on the fact that “Ontario’s electricity system was a mess” when the Liberals took office in 2003 so investments were needed in generation and transmission infrastructure.

“We had blackouts and smog days. The system was broken and we had to fix it. But the cost of the changes has burdened people in every corner of Ontario,” she said.

“People have told me that they’ve had to choose between paying their electricity bill and buying food or paying the rent. That is unacceptable to me.”

While the premier was short on specifics about what will be done to bring rates down, she suggested there could be streamlining of the more than 70 local electricity utilities operating in Ontario to find efficiencies.

Wynne also revealed that the government would like to see the 107-member Legislature expanded to 124 ridings – up from the 122 that had been expected under redistribution scheduled to take effect in the June 2018 election.

There would be two additional northern Ontario ridings along with 15 new seats for the Greater Toronto Area and Ottawa.

Although Wynne did not name — or even allude to — her main political rival, Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown, in her 27-minute speech to Liberal partisans, he was a hot topic in the back rooms.

In a closed-door presentation to delegates Friday night, Liberal campaign chief David Herle presented exhaustive internal research on Brown, a little-known former Conservative MP.

Herle’s polling of 1,717 Ontarians earlier this year found 74 per cent were less likely to vote for the PC leader if they knew he “voted in Parliament to repeal same-sex marriage in Canada.”

Similarly, 70 per cent would reconsider voting for Brown if they knew that in 2012 he wanted to re-open the abortion debate.

Two-thirds said they would be less likely to vote for him if they knew that an anti-abortion group once gave him “a perfect voting record” in the Commons.

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And 62 per cent said they would be less likely to trust Brown as premier if they knew he once opposed the updated sex-education curriculum and “has changed his position on many issues since becoming leader of the Ontario PCs.”

Even though Brown publicly broke with social conservatives in August — saying he supports abortion rights, same-sex marriage, and the modernized health lesson plan — Herle’s findings suggest the Liberals plan to paint him as one.

Bolstering the Liberals’ case is that the newest Tory MPP is Sam Oosterhoff, a 19-year-old home-schooled social conservative elected Thursday in Niagara West-Glanbrook to succeed retired former PC leader Tim Hudak.

Backed by congregants from his strict reform church, Oosterhoff bested PC Party president Rick Dykstra, a close Brown friend and fellow former Conservative MP, in a tough nomination fight last month.

In contrast, the latest Liberal MPP is Nathalie Des Rosiers, a dean at the University of Ottawa law school and a prominent civil liberties lawyer, who won Thursday’s byelection in Ottawa-Vanier to replaced former attorney general Madeleine Meilleur.

Des Rosiers defeated Tory Andre Marin, a former Ontario ombudsman and the kind of centrist candidate Brown is striving to bring into the fold.

Liberal research shows the PC leader is a blank canvas in the minds of voters. At one focus-group session more participants recognized Herle — from his panel appearances on CBC’s The National — than they did the leader of the opposition.

That means the Grits will try to use the next 18 months to define the rookie leader before the Tories can do so in the run-up to the election.

More on thestar.com

Kathleen Wynne insists she will lead party into next election END

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