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TORONTO - Ontario's governing Liberals or whichever party succeeds them should work with the private sector to deliver public services at less cost, former Liberal finance minister Dwight Duncan said Thursday.

The cash-strapped Liberals are running an $11.3-billion deficit and have doubled the debt to $272 billion since they took office in 2003.

Duncan, who was treasurer from 2007 to 2013 when the province racked up record deficits, said all three parties will be compelled to look at more efficient ways to provide services.

Ontario has a "staggering" debt, insufficient infrastructure, gridlock in the Toronto area and an aging population that will drive up health-care costs, he said.

But this isn't the "same old tired mantra of privatization," said Duncan, who left politics last year for the private sector.

"The idea is to save money while delivering the same services and being able to apply the savings to those priority areas, whatever priority areas the government of the day identifies," he said.

Many countries have saved money by working with private companies on prison management, health and administrative services, according to an Ontario Chamber of Commerce report that Duncan helped put together. But the province is lagging behind, it said.

Teranet, a private company that has a licence to provide electronic land registration services, is a success story, Duncan said. The Ontario government got $1 billion and 50 years of royalty payments in the deal and still controls fee increases, the report said.

But other deals were massive failures, such as Ontario's Ornge air ambulance service, a not-for-profit entity that ended up under police investigation for financial irregularities. The auditor general rapped the Liberals on the knuckles for failing to oversee Ornge, despite giving it hundreds of millions of dollars.

"I concur Ornge did not work out that well and there are bad deals done," Duncan said.

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Duncan urges Liberals to look to private sector