The Throne Speech was delivered this week in the Legislative Assembly at Queen's Park. And although the Ernie Eves govern-ment stuck the right notes by pro-mising more tax relief, the more interesting policies were found in the Ontario Liberal party's platform on democratic reform.

It was released by Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty and unlike some of his other election documents; this latest plank is innovative and strikes a reform-minded theme to improve our democratic system.

The plan is packed with some good ideas to make government more open and responsive. If elected, McGuinty's Liberals promise to establish fixed four-year election dates; ban partisan government advertising (those maddening ads that tell people what a wonderful job the government is doing); include all campaign spending as election expenses, like polling which is now exempt; and hold a referendum on voting reform.

To make lawmakers more account-able and effective Mr. McGuinty will allow more free votes; em-power lawmakers to question the heads of government-owned agen-cies, and dock the salary of any cabinet minister who repeatedly fails to attend Question Periods.

And to make government more transparent, the Liberals will expand the powers of the Provincial Auditor to scrutinize the spending of arms-length agencies funded by taxpayers; make all government agencies subject to the Freedom of Information Act; and disclose the annual payments to all individuals sitting on agencies, boards and commissions.

Regrettably there are several bad ideas in the Liberal report. For instance, the proposal to name Citizens' Juries to review policy proposals is a silly idea. It is an unnecessary duplication of the proper role of elected officials and risks increasing the power of special interests by appointing an unelected body to weigh in on public policy. We currently elect 103 MPPs to examine policy ideas and vote on them. Let them do their job and if they don't we can vote them out. Juries, however, are beyond the reach of voters.

The idea to limit how much money individual citizens can contribute to political parties is similarly fraught with danger, particularly for taxpayers. Up in Ottawa, the Chrétien Liberals are set to replace voluntary donations to political parties with a taxpayer subsidy. This change will erode democracy and accountability, not improve it.

Despite these obvious drawbacks, Mr. McGuinty's manifesto is, on balance, an impressive list of proposals that, if implemented, will improve government. Mr. McGuinty has raised the bar by including policy ideas that status quo parties normally avoid. More-over, other provinces are already pursuing some of them. The B.C. Liberals have set fixed election dates and are planning a referendum on voting reform.

Pleasantly, the plan also re-commits the Liberal party to balanced budgets. Mr. McGuinty has again promised to abide by the Taxpayer Protection Act, an initia-tive spearheaded by the CTF to hold politicians accountable. This law, passed in 1999, prohibits governments from raising most taxes and deferring scheduled tax cuts without first holding a province-wide referendum.

Good news for taxpayers often comes prior to an election and it remains to be seen whether the Liberals will keep these promises should they win government. That being said, Mr. McGuinty and his fellow Liberals are promising to subject themselves to the Taxpayer Protection Act and reform how the Ontario government operates - that's an important starting point.