TORONTO - The first major campaign policy unveiled by Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak targets two of the Liberal government's most vulnerable areas -- soaring electricity bills and the controversial HST.
If the Conservatives win the Oct. 6 election, they will remove the eight per cent provincial portion of the HST from electricity and all home heating bills, including natural gas and oil, Hudak said Thursday.
"The HST has made life unaffordable for many families, particularly when hydro rates were already soaring," Hudak said at a Toronto home where hydro bills jumped 50 per cent in three years. "We will also remove the HST from the cost of home heating. We live in Canada, and heating our homes is not luxury."
The New Democrats said they were flattered the Tories had matched their earlier promises to remove the HST from home heating and hydro bills.
"We're accustomed to Liberals stealing our ideas," said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath. "Now we have Conservatives stealing our ideas. But if people want the real deal, they should vote for the NDP."
The Tories would also remove the controversial debt retirement charge from hydro bills if they're elected this fall, said Hudak.
"This debt retirement charge has become nothing more than a permanent tax grab by the McGuinty government," he said. "The full amount of the stranded debt that was supposed to be paid down was all collected by 2010, but the McGuinty government has extended the charge until at least 2018."
The HST changes and eliminating the debt retirement charge, which would be introduced in the first budget of a new Conservative government, would save a typical household $275 a year, said Hudak.
This is just the first tax relief proposal the Tories will offer before the election, he added.
"An Ontario PC government that I lead will give families relief and will offer broad- based tax cuts as well," said Hudak. "This is simply the first stage, the first part of our plan for tax relief."
However, Hudak ruled out scrapping the HST completely because of a $4.3-billion "poison pill" in the form of money that would have to be paid to the federal government if the tax was totally eliminated.
Finance Minister Dwight Duncan lashed out at Hudak's announcement during question period, saying it was "completely false" to claim that it would save families $275 a year.
The $1.2 billion in lost revenue from the HST cuts will cost the province thousands of jobs and force the Tories to fire nurses and close hospitals and schools like Mike Harris did, added Duncan.
"This reckless plan will cost jobs, raise the deficit and raise the debt," he warned, "and they refuse to say what hospitals they will close."
The Liberals and Tories have vastly different views on the amount of stranded debt left over from the old Ontario Hydro, with the Liberals claiming it's $14.8 billion while the Conservatives talk about a "residual" stranded debt of $7.8 billion.
Duncan said it was irresponsible for Hudak to move the outstanding bill from hydro ratepayers to Ontario taxpayers.
"The electorate will see through this reckless, phoney plan," he said. "This is shifting things around and increases the debt that will have to be paid off of the province's books."
The New Democrats said it was a bit rich to see the Tories who introduced the debt retirement charge now promising to scrap it.
Greenpeace Canada also questioned Hudak's move to scrap the debt retirement charge, calling it a shell game.
"Eliminating the debt retirement charge doesn't make the debt go away, it just means we'll have to pay for it somewhere else," said Greenpeace's Keith Stewart. "Given that it is there to cover the mostly nuclear debt from building our electricity system, we should pay for it out of rates, not by increasing the provincial deficit in an effort to buy votes with the voters' money."
Last week, Hudak promised to scrap the Liberal government's $7-billion green energy deal with South Korean giant Samsung and to stop offering huge premiums for wind and solar power.
Hudak had already promised to let people opt out of time-of-use pricing for electricity if the Conservatives win the Oct. 6 election, calling so-called smart meters nothing but tax machines.
