It’s so easy to get sidetracked by the distractions.

Ontario Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne goes for a morning jog in Kitchener’s Victoria Park, leaving a reporter out of breath as he tries to follow. Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak gets kicked off a Toronto subway when he tries to make an announcement, because his team didn’t get permission.

These events grab the headlines because they’re anecdotes, easy to tell. But they have nothing to do with what a political party will or won’t do for you if it wins.

On the other hand, if you look at your hydro bill, and what each party will do about it, it tells you something significant about each of them.

The cost of electricity is a key issue. Ontario’s electricity rates have soared and are now among the highest in North America.

In part, this is because of the Liberal government’s “green energy” plan that offers subsidies to those that put up wind turbines and solar panels, then sell the power back to the power grid.

Expensive electricity is stressful. There’s evidence that it’s forcing manufacturing employers out of the province. Last week, Don Walker, CEO of auto parts giant Magna International, said: “I doubt we’ll add any more plants in Ontario” in part because of electricity costs.

Full platforms have not been released by the parties yet. But here’s what each has said so far about your hydro bill:

Greens: Conservation is their focus. They’d require utilities to provide grants and “affordable” loans for people to make their homes more energy efficient.

Liberals: Their latest announcement was billed as good news for consumers, but when you check the details, it isn’t.

Their plan is to relieve consumers of the debt retirement charge from the old Ontario Hydro (nearly $8 on my last household bill of $177 over two months).

That sounds helpful, until you realize that the “clean energy benefit,” which gives customers a 10-per-cent break on the bill ($19.35 in my case), is also being eliminated. And there’ll be a 90-cents-a-month hike for most homes to subsidize low-income customers. Total impact: I’m paying $13.15 more every two months, and that’s before the cost of electricity goes up again.

New Democrats: Piecemeal policy. There’s very little so far. Leader Andrea Horwath announced Monday that she will “take the HST” off hydro bills “to put money back into the budgets of middle-class families.” Further down in the press release, it’s revealed that actually it’s only the “provincial portion” of the HST that would come off. On my bill, that’s $13.70 in savings over a two-month period.

Conservatives: Shock therapy: The plan is to bring electricity prices down, and therefore keep industrial employers here, by ending those Liberal subsidies for wind and solar costs, cutting the hydro bureaucracy (Hudak says there are 11,000 people making more than $100,000 a year) and buying cheap energy from the United States and Quebec.

This election boils down to a choice: Do you like things the way they are, or do you want big changes?

The Conservatives offer radical change. The Liberals offer their record over the past 11 years. The New Democrats offer tweaks on the Liberal program. And those basic distinctions are true of a lot more issues than just your electricity bill.

ldamato@therecord.com