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The news Wednesday that the top aide to a former Ontario premier was going to jail for trying to hide evidence of a scandalous policy was shocking enough.

But the case highlights an arguably more remarkable sequence of events around Liberal electricity policy, one expected to put a drain on Ontarians’ wallets for years to come.

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Time and again, successive Liberal governments have needlessly added billions of dollars in costs with hydro policies designed partly to enhance their political fortunes, the province’s financial watchdogs have documented.

At $1 billion, the politically motivated gas-plant cancellations under former premier Dalton McGuinty — leading to chief of staff David Livingston’s four-month jail term Wednesday — was actually one of the less expensive decisions.

A plan to reduce high electricity rates, the sale of Ontario’s power distributor and assorted mismanagement of the system have cost billions more, say the auditor and the province’s Financial Accountability Office.