Wynne apology 'too little, too late,' opposition says

Ontario's opposition parties say a formal apology from Premier Kathleen Wynne for the estimated $585 million spent to cancel gas plants in Oakville and Mississauga is a case of "too little, too late."

Wynne apologized on TVO's The Agenda program Tuesday evening and repeated her apology onWednesday in front of reporters at Queen's Park.

"I'm sorry about the decisions that were made," Wynne said. "I'm sorry about the mistakes that the government made in locating the gas plants in the places that we did in the first place, and I'm sorry that it cost so much money, so many public dollars, to relocate them."

The Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats, however, were not impressed with Wynne's apology, which they say should have come sooner.

"She could have apologized as a senior [Dalton] McGuinty cabinet minister," said PC critic Steve Clark. "She could have apologized during her leadership campaign. She could have apologized on her first day on the job in the house."

"[We've] asked for a judicial inquiry, and I think she can look the judge in the eye and apologize to the judge too."

'A day late and a buck short,' Horwath says

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, who is scheduled to meet with Wynne Wednesday to talk about the budget, was also critical of the premier's apology.

"It is a day late and a buck short," Horwath said. "The money has already been wasted and the scandal has already happened, and now we need to make sure that it never happens again."

Wynne did not say what triggered her decision to apologize, but said she realized people wanted to hear her take responsibility for the gas plant decisions.

"I was hearing that there still needed to be my voice taking that extra piece of responsibility to apologize for the mistakes that we made, because we had said that there were mistakes that had been made," she said."I was hearing that call for an apology."

The opposition parties accuse the Liberals of intentionally misleading the public about the true cost of cancelling the gas plants.