There has been a lot of focus lately on Catherine Fife, who made history this month by becoming Kitchener-Waterloo riding’s first New Democrat MPP. She gets sworn in on Wednesday at Queen’s Park.

This week, though, the moment in the sun belongs to another opposition MPP, Rob Leone of Cambridge. He moved the government’s energy minister, Chris Bentley, to the brink of a contempt-of-parliament censure.

Leone and Michael Harris of Kitchener-Conestoga, both Conservatives, sit on the House estimates committee, where, for months, they have been aggressively demanding that the minister cough up hidden documents.

These relate to the Liberals’ controversial decision, in the dying days of the 2011 election, to move an unpopular gas plant out of Liberal territory in Mississauga. Another similar decision was made in 2010 to cancel another gas plant planned for Oakville — all at enormous and needless cost to the beleaguered taxpayers of Ontario.

Only a few facts have come to public light, and even those have added up to a sticky scandal that the Liberals just can’t seem to scrub off. The decision to relocate the Mississauga plant was made by the Liberal campaign team, not the government. The cost of relocating that plant to Sarnia will be $180 million.

That’s what we know. There are a lot of other things that we don’t know, such as the cost of the cancellation of the Oakville plant, or the rationale for both these decisions when both these cities badly need the power.

Leone says taxpayers deserve answers, and he is right.

“What citizens want is accountability and transparency in government,” he said. “They want information. It’s about getting to the bottom of the issue.”

The New Democrats and Conservative opposition have derided the government decisions as an expensive and cynical “seat saver” plan, which placated voters in Liberal ridings and kept them loyal to the Liberals. And on the surface, that’s what it appears to be.

Meanwhile, the Liberals have said it wouldn’t be appropriate to disclose the documents, because of concerns about legal confidentiality and they discuss “commercially sensitive” matters.

That’s partially because negotiations are ongoing to decide what compensation will be offered for the builder of the cancelled Oakville plant.

Leone made a lengthy argument that the committees of the Ontario Legislature have the same right to demand documents as the committees of the Canadian Parliament. He reminded Speaker Dave Levac that the federal government was held in contempt when it refused to provide documents two years ago regarding the transfer of Afghan detainees.

On Leone’s motion, the committee voted to ask Bentley to produce the documents or be held in contempt of the Legislature. Levac agreed. He has asked the House leaders of all three parties to work out a deal to release the information by Sept. 24, or he will make a decision.

Watching a newly energized opposition attack Bentley during the legislature’s Question Period this week, was like seeing hungry wolves on an injured deer.

Bentley wasn’t even the minister when these decisions were made. He’s taking the heat for the mistakes of others. As he repeatedly confirmed that he would respect the decision of the Speaker, you could feel his fatigue.

Premier Dalton McGuinty has warned that disclosing the information could make the removal of the plants even more expensive. But the opposition — their killer instincts tingling now, after Kitchener-Waterloo denied the Liberals a majority in last week’s byelection — would argue that McGuinty is the last person in the province who should be lecturing the rest of us about saving the public’s money.

The Legislature is back to business, and Leone is doing his job.