Ontario's Progressive Conservatives need to inject some optimism into a leadership campaign that has gone badly off track, and the governing Liberals suddenly are providing it.

The Conservatives' race has produced a few policy ideas worth considering, but been dominated by unnecessary backbiting over an issue that cannot help, but only hurt their party — a push by two candidates to scrap or severely restrict powers of the Ontario Human Rights Commission and tribunals that investigate alleged abuse.

Extreme right-wingers have been worked up over this, but few in the public care about it.

The Commission, starting half a century ago, and tribunals with a few aberrations, have done worthwhile jobs protecting against discrimination and the party needs to move on quickly to other issues and hope voters forget that it flirted with this one.

The race also has struggled because of widespread feeling that the Liberals under Premier Dalton McGuinty, despite the economic recession, have enough support (47 per cent) in polls to win a third successive election, and whoever the Conservatives choose will not matter anyway.

But the Conservatives are fortunate in having an issue that could help invigorate them dropped in their lap — revelations that the health ministry has spent hundreds of millions setting up a still unfinished electronic records system, and wasted money spectacularly at a time it lacks money to fund real health care, including reducing hospital wait times.

The ministry paid $2,700 a day to individual consultants who were mean enough to charge the taxpayer an extra $1.39 every time they bought a muffin and $1.59 for a can of pop, this at a time when many residents are particularly hurting through losses of jobs. It's the sort of waste taxpayers easily relate to when overspending millions is so remote from their lives it sometimes goes over their heads.

Parallels were seen in the uproar over nannies, hired to look after children, being forced to work unpaid overtime washing an MP's car, and an environment minister building Ontario's biggest garage at her home for her family's gas-guzzlers, for which she lost her job — these are down-to-earth failings people can recognize and do not accept.

Most residents had not blamed McGuinty for the economic recession that has cost tens of thousands of jobs in Ontario, because they saw this happening elsewhere and attributed its start particularly to financial institutions pushing credit on people in the United States who had no hope of repaying.

But the waste on electronic health information has started to focus attention on the whole issue of Liberal spending, some aspects of which have been overlooked.

The Liberals first said their deficit this year would be $14 billion and most residents appeared to accept this extraordinary shortfall was necessary to preserve jobs, but it has jumped to $18 billion and prompted a wave of charges that they cannot be relied on and are dithering.

The Conservatives have an opportunity to remind everyone that the Liberals lost more than $100 million investing in the shaky sub-prime mortgages forced on U.S. residents — a huge error of judgment that's never been fully explained by them on any level.

The Tories will be able to recall that the Liberals were caught letting children's aid societies pay for top-of-the-line, gas-guzzling SUVs for employees to drive in their jobs, and $2,000-a- year gym memberships to relieve their stress, while they did not have enough to pay for programs children need.

The Conservatives can remind us that David Caplan, the health minister responsible for making sure those overpaid consultants got free muffins, not long ago was the minister in charge of lotteries, failing to protect ticket buyers from cheating retailers.

The Conservatives are demanding that McGuinty fire Caplan this time and the premier, struggling to defend the indefensible, must wish he had done so earlier and may have to put him in a less visible role when the heat cools down.

The Conservative leadership that once seemed to be a booby prize is looking more like a job worth having.