"That became the "Stranded debt" and the Debt Retirement charge was meant to cover some of this."
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There was, of course, one big problem with this plan:  Mike Harris' PCs failed to fully limit the definition of "stranded debt".

... then along came Dalton McGuinty.

McGuinty saw the lack of transparency and limitation of "stranded debt" as an opportunity.  During his tenure he moved all kinds of general government debt onto the "standard debt" books.  In 2003/04, under McGuinty, the "residual stranded debt" jumped from $7.7B up to $11.5B.  Why?  No one really knows.  The Auditor General of Ontario looked into this a little while back and basically called the government out on being dishonest, but nothing much came from it.  Here is the report:

http://www.auditor.on.ca/en/content/annualreports/arreports/en13/404en13.pdf