Ah, the campaign promise.

So many of these hasty and uncosted pledges made in the heat of an election campaign wind up causing untold grief to the promise-makers, not to mention taxpayers, down the line.

Premier Doug Ford has made it clear that, come hell or high water, he intends to keep just such a promise.

Last week Ford said his government still plans to lower hydro rates by 12 per cent. That 2018 campaign commitment has received so little attention from the relevant ministers that they might well have felt they’d succeeded in burying it forever. Alas, Ford has revived it.

“We’re going to keep our promise,” he told a news conference on Friday. “It’s a very, very complicated, complicated issue.”

No, premier, it’s not complicated. It’s just a very, very expensive bad idea.

The 12-per-cent promise made little sense when Ford made it on the campaign trail, looking to capitalize on the affordability concerns that contributed to the demise of the Wynne Liberals. It makes even less sense today given all we know now.

The Ford government is already spending $5.6 billion a year — 40 per cent more than it anticipated — just to maintain the existing subsidy brought in by the Wynne government to reduce hydro rates by 25 per cent.

With these soaring costs it’s financial madness to spend billions more to subsidize a further rate cut. Especially at a time when the government can’t seem to find the money needed to keep up with Ontario’s current health care and education needs, let alone properly prepare for the future.

A recent report by the provincial fiscal watchdog makes it even clearer that an additional expensive subsidy is not needed.

According to the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario, the average spending on home energy in Ontario is among the lowest in Canada. The typical household spent 2.6 per cent of its after-tax income on energy in 2019. That’s actually lower than it was in 2010, thanks in large part to the existing subsidy.

That’s not to say there aren’t families who struggle to pay their bills, including hydro, because there certainly are.

But an across-the-board rebate that gives the biggest savings to the richest and most energy-consuming households is not the best way to help them. In fact, it’s the worst of all systems.

From an environmental perspective rebates should be based on reducing consumption. And from an affordability perspective they should be based on income.

And yet Ford wants to double down on this flawed and increasingly expensive program.

His government seems to excel in short-term thinking that carries prohibitive long-term costs. That’s been repeatedly demonstrated on the energy file.

Ford promised to fire the pricey head of Hydro One and cancel green energy contracts, which he said would help him slash electricity bills by 12 per cent.

Instead, his ham-fisted move to get rid of Hydro’s top executive, whom he dubbed the six-million-dollar man, set in a motion a chain of events that cost the half-publicly owned corporation more than $130 million.

The government scrapped hundreds of renewable energy projects and, as a consequence, has set aside more than $230 million of taxpayer money to cover the financial penalties.

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Electricity bills have not come down. Indeed, they’ve gone up slightly. The government’s subsidy costs have gone up dramatically. And there’s still no real plan for Ontario’s energy future.

The Ford government has been forced to backtrack on everything from autism services to the colour of license plates because what it tried to do simply didn’t work. It would be nice if, for a change, it would see the problem before it makes a mess — and then has to fix it.

Some election promises are just so bad they’re not worth keeping. The 12-per-cent cut to hydro rates is one of them.

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