News last week of more problems with Hydro One’s smart meters — 36,000 of them in rural areas can’t transmit data because of poor Wi-Fi connections — set me to thinking.

How did we get into the mess Ontario’s electricity file has become under Ontario’s Liberal government, first under Dalton McGuinty and then Premier Kathleen Wynne?

To be fair, Ontario’s hydro system was in need of major repairs when the Liberals won power in 2003. Hydro rates were going up no matter who won that election.

Also, to their credit, the Liberals ended Ontario’s use of polluting coal-fired electricity generation, albeit seven years later than the 2007 deadline McGuinty promised in 2003.

However, they did this not with wind and solar power, as they imply, but with conventional nuclear power and natural gas.

Indeed it was their ideological blunder into so-called “green” energy, mainly wind but also solar and biomass, that put hydro rate increases on steroids

This to the point where the electricity portion of the hydro bills of residential consumers and small businesses increased 80% from 2004 to 2014, according to Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk, with no end in sight.

Indeed, when you examine the annual reports by the auditor general on Ontario’s electricity system, you find the Liberals repeatedly making the same mistake.

That is, failing to do basic due diligence and ignoring or sweeping aside regulatory safeguards in promoting green energy.

Here’s former Ontario auditor general Jim McCarter, commenting on the Liberals’ renewable energy plan in his 2011 report, after their passage of the Green Energy Act in 2009.

“Under this legislation, the government created a new process to expedite the development of renewable energy by providing the Minister (of Energy) with the authority to supersede many of the government’s usual planning and regulatory oversight processes ... As a result, no comprehensive business-case evaluation was done to objectively evaluate the impacts of the billion-dollar commitment. Such an evaluation would typically include assessing the prospective economic and environmental effects of such a massive investment in renewable energy on future electricity prices, direct and indirect job creation or losses, greenhouse gas emissions, and other variables.”

McCarter’s language is eerily similar to the conclusions his successor, Lysyk, drew in her 2014 report examining how the Liberals’ smart meter program ended up costing almost $2 billion, double what the Liberals said.

Lysyk wrote: “The Ministry (of Energy) did not complete any cost-benefit analysis or business case prior to making the decision to mandate the installation of smart meters. This is in contrast to other jurisdictions, including British Columbia, Germany, Britain and Australia, which all assessed the cost-effectiveness and feasibility of their smart-metering programs.”

Even when the government did belatedly do a cost-benefit analysis, Lysyk found, it overestimated savings by at least $512 million while underestimating costs by $400 million.

In her 2015 annual report, Lysk again pointed to the Liberals’ lack of due diligence on the electricity file.

As she put it in a media release: “The government had a process in the Electricity Act and regulations for drafting and approving a long-term technical plan for Ontario’s electricity system, and then didn’t follow that process ... The process called for the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) to draw up a 20-year technical plan, with updates every three years, and for the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) to review and approve the plan ... The process could have offered protection to consumers because the OEB would have been able to review and approve any technical plans over the last decade for cost-effectiveness. Instead of following the legislated process, the Ministry of Energy itself effectively assumed responsibility for electricity planning. Between 2004 and 2014, the Ministry issued two policy plans and 93 ministerial directives or directions that did not fully consider the state of the electricity market, did not take long-term effects fully into account and sometimes went against the OPA’s advice. Neither the Ministry’s plans nor its directives are subject to OEB approval. Ontario electricity ratepayers have had to pay billions for these decisions ... In particular, the Global Adjustment fees, covering the excess payments to generators over the market price, cost consumers $37 billion during that period (2006 to 2014) and are projected to cost another $133 billion from 2015 to 2032.”

So, now you know exactly how we got into this mess.