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TORONTO -- Ontario's governing Liberals -- or whichever party succeeds them -- should work with the private sector to deliver public services at less cost, former Liberal finance minister Dwight Duncan said Thursday.

The cash-strapped Liberals are running an $11.3-billion deficit and have doubled the debt to $272 billion since they took office in 2003.

Duncan, who was treasurer from 2007 to 2013 when the province racked up record deficits, said all three parties will be compelled to look at more efficient ways to provide services.

Ontario has a "staggering" debt, insufficient infrastructure, gridlock in the Toronto area and an aging population that will drive up health-care costs, he said.

But this isn't the "same old tired mantra of privatization," said Duncan, who left politics last year for the private sector.

"The idea is to save money while delivering the same services and being able to apply the savings to those priority areas, whatever priority areas the government of the day identifies," he said.

Many countries have saved money by working with private companies on prison management, health and administrative services, according to an Ontario Chamber of Commerce report that Duncan helped put together. But the province is lagging behind, it said.

Teranet, a private company that has a licence to provide electronic land registration services, is a success story, Duncan said. The Ontario government got $1 billion and 50 years of royalty payments in the deal and still controls fee increases, the report said.

But other deals were massive failures, such as Ontario's Ornge air ambulance service, a not-for-profit entity that ended up under police investigation for financial irregularities. The auditor general rapped the Liberals on the knuckles for failing to oversee Ornge, despite giving it hundreds of millions of dollars.

"I concur Ornge did not work out that well and there are bad deals done," Duncan said.

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Dwight Duncan says Liberals should involve private sector in delivering services

Cars Don #39;t Run On #39;Unicorn Tears #39; | Liberals Mocked
A Fox News guest on Monday encouraged President Barack Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline because cars do not run on "unicorn tears." After Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), chair...

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Cars Don't Run On 'Unicorn Tears' | Liberals Mocked - Video

Dr Ben Carson White Liberals Are the Most Racist People They Put You in a Little Box

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Dr Ben Carson White Liberals Are the Most Racist People They Put You in a Little Box - Video

Thomas Piketty poses in his office in Paris on April 11, 2012. The economist may prove to be the most influential French thinker on America since Alexis de Tocqueville.

Photo by Charles Platiau/Reuters

It sounds like a bad joke: Americas liberals have fallen for a Marx-referencing, Balzac-loving French intellectual who has proposed a worldwide tax on wealth. If Thomas Piketty (pronounced Tome-AH PEEK-et-ee) were not traveling around the United States on a triumphant book tour, you might think Rush Limbaugh had made the man up in one of his more blustery rants.

Jordan Weissmann is Slate's senior business and economics correspondent.

But no, he is quite real. Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Pikettys 685-page tome about the history and future of inequality, has improbably climbed to No. 1 on Amazons best-seller list. (The books title is only its first Marx allusion.) As of this writing, Capital is beating out such fare as the young adult hit The Fault in Our Stars and Michael Lewis Flash Boys. The rock-star economist, as New York magazine dubbed him, has also grabbed the interest of official Washington. While recently passing through D.C., he took a little time to meet with Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, the Council of Economic Advisers, and the IMF. Even Morning Joe, never exactly on the leading edge of ideas journalism, ran a segment about Capital Tuesday morning. I found out from my mother, who emailed to tell me the book sounded interesting.

Thats a tipping point.

Perhaps this shouldnt be surprising. Piketty, a professor at the Paris School of Economics, has been perhaps the most important thinker on inequality of the past decade or so. We can thank him and his various collaborators, including Berkeleys Emmanuel Saez and Oxfords Anthony Atkinson, for the research that uncovered the rise of the top 1 percent in both the U.S. and Europe. Now, with his book, hes handed liberals a coherent framework that justifies the discomfort that they probably already felt about the wealth gap.

Capital will change the political conversation by focusing it on wealth, not income.

Plenty of writers have already summarized Capital, but heres a very quick review. Whereas Pikettys past work has tended to focus on incomewhat workers and investors earnthe new book focuses on wealth: what we own. Using data reaching back to the 18th century, in the case of France, he argues that as economic growth slows in a country, the income generated by wealth balloons compared with income generated by work, and inequality skyrockets. This is because the return on wealth, such as a stock portfolio or real estate or even a factory, usually averages about 5 percent. If growth rates fall below that mark, the rich get richer. And over time, those who inherit great fortunes eventually come to dominate the economy. But the rest of us can respond, Piketty argues, by voting for redistributive policies. (Thats where his idea for a global wealth tax comes in. I think most of us Americans would be happy to see a hike on capital gains first.)

Some argue we shouldnt fret over inequality, because todays global elite are the working, meritocratic rich: They earn their outsized pay thanks to their enormous technical and business talent. But Pikettys research offers a simple retort. Todays rich may have worked for their success, but tomorrows wont have to. Already, Piketty argues, the very richest earn more income from their wealth than their labor. And just as the ruthless robber barons of the late 19th century gave way to F. Scott Fitzgeralds boozing heirs and heiresses, todays CEOs and hedge fund managers will give way to a generation of children who simply won the birth lottery.

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Thomas Piketty Capital: How Americas Liberals Fell for a French Economist

TORONTO - Residential consumers will still see their hydro bills go up, even though the governing Liberals are planning to remove the controversial debt retirement charge from their monthly statements in 2016.

The Ontario Clean Energy Benefit, which takes 10 per cent off hydro bills, will also expire at the same time. The majority of ratepayers will also be expected to bankroll a proposed program that would offset energy costs for lower-income families.

According to the government, a typical family consuming about 800 kilowatt hours per month would save about $75.60 a year after taxes once the debt retirement charge is removed on Jan. 1, 2016.

But those savings would be cancelled out by the loss of an $180 annual rebate from the clean energy benefit, which was introduced in 2012.

However, the Liberals are promising a support program for famillies with an income of up to $40,000 that would provide about the same savings as the clean energy benefit after it expires.

An eligible family could save on average $250 a year when combined with the removal of the DRC, Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli said Wednesday.

"We fully understand the electricity price pressures facing families, and that's why we're taking these steps," he said.

"This is real rate relief for those who need it most."

The program will add about 90 cents on the average monthly bill of the rest of the ratepayers, Chiarelli said.

"We feel that this is a very modest tradeoff to be made in order to accommodate those who are in significant need," he added.

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Liberals to kill charge on hydro bills