A year ago Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty solemnly pledged to Ontarians in prime-time TV election ads that he would make Ontario a better place - without raising taxes.

One year later, Ontarians who voted for the Liberals' "choose change" motto and believed that the party would follow through on its election commitments face a harsh and opposite reality.

Instead, over the next four years Ontarians will be paying $9 billion more in taxes thanks to a hefty health premium that now-Premier McGuinty continues to insist he had to implement because a huge deficit left him with no choice.

"You bet that put a crimp in our plans," McGuinty said, still blaming the derailing of the rookie government's plans on the multibillion-dollar deficit left behind by the previous Conservative government.

"We made a very difficult decision, not a popular decision," McGuinty acknowledged in an interview as the Liberal government arrives at its one-year election victory anniversary on Saturday.

"It wasn't the kind of thing designed to boost our political popularity," he said with a smile of resignation after facing months of relentless criticism for breaking his marquee election promise.

"It was designed to get more money so we could invest and improve the quality of our health-care system for Ontarians," he explained.

"I'm proud to report we're making some real, measurable progress."

Raising taxes after explicitly promising not to "was a very unpopular move" and left some voters feeling "deceived" by the Liberals, said John Shields, a politics professor at Ryerson University in Toronto.

That move was a low point in "an up and down" year for the Liberals who were on a high after winning a landslide victory in the Oct. 2, 2003 election amid promises to reinvest in public services while being prudent managers of the public purse, said Graham Murray, publisher of Inside Queen's Park, a political newsletter.

"They have gone from being enormously popular and feeling positive to feeling very much concerned about how badly things have gone," particularly since pundits predicted the Liberals would stay in government for two terms and now that's "iffy," Murray said.

"They've run into much more serious trouble than most governments run into."

Furthermore, calling the new tax a premium "went over like a lead balloon with people and significantly damaged their credibility," he said.

The Liberals have endured more than just regular chiding and have been labelled by the opposition and other groups as "promise breakers" for reneging on election commitments.

The Liberals have come across "as a party that promised a great deal and delivered very little of it," said Paul Nesbitt-Larking, a politics professor at Huron College in London, Ont.

New Democrat Leader Howard Hampton goes further. He says McGuinty's TV ad promise not to raise taxes "was clearly not an honest statement."

"Mr. McGuinty really doesn't haven't any credibility on these issues anymore," he said.

After last fall's election victory, the Liberals' honeymoon was brief and the first few months set a negative tone for the year.

Soon after being sworn in, the government backtracked on crucial election promises. The Liberals failed to halt construction on the Oak Ridges Moraine, failed to roll back tolls on Highway 407, failed to cut auto insurance rates by 20 per cent, and then raised the electricity rate price cap after committing to keep it.

But the most detrimental and enduring decision came with May's budget when the government instituted a health premium -- basically a new income tax -- that would take $60 to $900 a year from people's paycheques at total of $9 billion over the next four years.

To add to that misery, the Liberals also retracted their promise to balance the budget immediately, instead planning to put the books in the black by the last year of their mandate.

At the same time as the government began pulling in extra cash to fund health-care spending, it cut most coverage for three health services: chiropractic, physiotherapy and eye exams.

Some voters found that move "galling," Shields said, and felt it was more reminiscent of the kind of action taken by former Conservative premier Mike Harris than following the new vision laid out by McGuinty.

"There's nothing worse then when people have that feeling that they're paying more and getting less," said recently elected Conservative Leader John Tory, who pledges to hold the Liberals to account for their "incompetence and mismanagement" in the fall session of the legislature.

McGuinty's strategy of blaming the previous government for his financial woes "is going to start to ring pretty hollow" after the one year anniversary milestone passes, Tory said.

"They are now the masters of their own situation and can't blame us anymore," he said.

The Liberals' first year in government wasn't all broken promises, though. Soon after being sworn in on Oct. 23, 2003 the newly minted government scrapped, as promised, a slew of personal and corporate tax cuts and other tax breaks committed by the previous government.

The government also unravelled Conservative policies such as the 60-hour work week and teacher testing.

The Liberals also focused on promises with cheap price tags including setting fixed election dates, banning partisan ads, expanding the powers of the provincial auditor, increasing family medical leave and pledging its commitment to medicare.

Then the purse strings were loosened as the province hired more meat and water inspectors, raised the minimum wage and froze university tuition.

The province also began doling out cash for health care and education initiatives, the two areas of focus for the Liberals during the election campaign. There was more money for home care, long-term care, reducing class sizes, and hiring more nurses and teachers.

"I think, in time, people will begin to get a better understanding of the changes that we're making through their own human experience," McGuinty said.

Ontarians will know improvements are being made since they'll be measurable through shorter waiting times for medical services and fewer kids in the early grades, he added.

"We're determined to get results," McGuinty said. "Things are already getting better in Ontario."

McGuinty also won kudos for his leadership role as the provinces negotiated a new health deal with the federal government, which includes billions in new cash, Nesbitt-Larking said.

Still, the government has only made "baby steps" in terms of reinvesting in social services such as health care and education, Shields said, and will have to show major improvements in these areas or be stuck with the "promise-breakers" label.

McGuinty also faced his first scandal as premier when Finance Minister Greg Sorbara was accused of conflict of interest and hiding his knowledge that the Ontario Securities Commission, the provincial securities regulator that he oversaw, was investigating a company on which he had been a director.

McGuinty stood by his right-hand man and rejected calls from the opposition for Sorbara's resignation. Sorbara insists he did nothing wrong but to diffuse criticism handed oversight of the OSC and other securities bodies to Management Board Chairman Gerry Phillips.

The first chance they had to pass judgment on the government's half-year in office, voters spurned the Liberals during the Hamilton East byelection. The New Democrat, Andrea Horwath, easily won the seat despite running against Liberal Ralph Agostino, the brother to the late Dominic Agostino who had held the riding.

Looking ahead, if the Liberals want a chance to remain in power following the next election in 2007 then "they're going to have to regain the public trust," said Nesbitt-Larking.

The "broken promises" label "is something that's going to dog" the Liberals into the next election, Murray said.

But with three years before voters head to the polls it is possible for the Liberals to turn sentiment in their favour, he said.