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Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne is shown outside her office at Queen's Park in Toronto on March 27.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press

The Ontario Liberals' electricity policy hangs like a millstone around the re-election hopes of Premier Kathleeen Wynne, amid high expectations for a spring vote.

So it was no surprise that the Premier dispatched Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli earlier this month to pre-announce measures in Thursday's upcoming budget that aim to ease the burden on consumers, and more to the point, ease the drag on the fortunes of the Ontario Liberal party.

The long-in-the-tooth Liberal government has two distinct problems on the power front:

The botched cancellation of planned gas plants that has cost taxpayers a fortune and prompted a criminal investigation into the deletion of records by aides to former premier Dalton McGuinty. While that's troublesome, Ms. Wynne likely faces more trouble from rising electricity prices, which hit voters in their wallets.

Mr. Chiarelli's job is to address the latter issue.

His message, however, is almost wholly defensive: We're still cleaning up a mess left by the former Progressive Conservative government – which is a tough sell when your party has been in power for 10 years. And, we will provide some very modest relief to the ever-rising prices that the opposition PCs gleefully blame on our green energy policies.

Last Friday, Mr. Chiarelli delivered a speech at the Economic Club of Canada at the Chateau Laurier in his hometown of Ottawa, where he once served as mayor. The lifelong politician cuts a reassuring, workman-like figure – perfect for playing defence but not the best person to inspire voters with full-throated advocacy of a controversial policy.

In the course of a 25-minute speech on the province's energy policy, the minister never mentioned the phrase "climate change." He spoke of greenhouses, but not greenhouse-gas emissions.

That's a curious omission, given that the province's elimination of coal-fired power is lauded as one of the largest and most successful efforts by a government in North America to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions that cause climate change. Mr. Chiarelli sought credit for his party for that policy on "dirty coal." But he focused on local impacts like the reduction of smog days.

Presumably, the Liberals have plenty of focus group responses and polling that suggest voters don't care much about climate change, or not nearly as much as they care about higher electricity bills or even smog days.

The party's campaign director, David Herle, is a pollster who understands what it takes to take a new leader of an old government across the electoral finish line. He was intimately involved in Paul Martin's 2004 campaign in which the former star finance minister held on to power – though with a minority government – after taking over from Jean Chretien.

While Prime Minister Stephen Harper faces frequent criticism for his failure to lead on climate strategy by imposing a price on carbon emissions, Ontario's Premier Wynne cedes any presumption of climate leadership that suggests the Liberals have indeed put a price on carbon through the elimination of coal-fired power and embrace of renewable, a cost that has to be paid by consumers.

For two days this week, energy and environmental economists debated how to drive policy action that would spur the development of a green economy, as the world struggles to confront climate change. (Remember: This spring, the United Nation's International Panel on Climate Change issued a report warning that the world is headed for devastating disruptions to the climate that will cause flooding, crop losses and extreme weather.

Political leadership is essential and a price on carbon is a necessary start: that was the broad consensus among the economists brought together by Sustainable Prosperity, a think tank affiliated with the University of Ottawa. But governments need to find a way to sell climate policy as effective economic strategy, and trumpet the "co-benefits" like smog reduction, the cost savings and productivity gains that come from efficiency measures; and protection of the natural environment that voters do value.

Elections represent a laboratory for the theories of the economists and political scientists that good climate policy can be fashioned into winning political strategy, though it's extremely difficult to isolate "energy and climate" from other issues in the campaign. A looming test for Ms. Wynne is whether she dares to show leadership on a critical issue that is admittedly a tough sell.

Shawn McCarthy reports on energy from Ottawa.

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