LONDON, Ont. - Progressive Conservative leadership hopefuls Frank Klees and Randy Hillier are promising to cut Ontario's eight per cent sales tax if the party wins the 2011 election to offset the impact of harmonizing the PST with the five per cent goods and services tax.

All four candidates for the Tory leadership agreed during a debate Thursday night that they oppose the harmonizing of the two sales taxes, which is scheduled to come into effect July 1, 2010, but none would eliminate it if the party wins the 2011 election.

The first question put to the leadership hopefuls in the debate at the University of Western Ontario was would they reverse the merging of the two sales taxes, which is scheduled to go into effect July 1, 2010.

All vowed to fight Premier Dalton McGuinty and his majority Liberal government's plan, but only Klees offered any hope of immediate tax relief for Ontario consumers.

"What I am calling on him to do is at the very least do what other provinces did when they introduced an HST, and that's the reduce the provincial sales tax rate," Klees said to loud cheers.

"Given the opportunity to lead this province as its premier, there is no choice for a Progressive Conservative government then to reduce the PST so that the harm done by this tax will in fact be alleviated."

Eastern Ontario's Hillier, who introduced himself as "not a lawyer, not an academic, but an electrician," claimed McGuinty was addicted to taxes and promised to gradually cut the PST to five per cent.

Whitby MPP Christine Elliott, wife of federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, called it "pure speculation" for any of her rivals to suggest they could undo harmonization until the party actually forms government and gets a real look at the province's fiscal situation.

Tim Hudak, considered the flag barrier for the right-wing supporters of former Premier Mike Harris, called harmonization a massive tax increase, but offered no promises of changing it after the 13 per cent tax is in effect.

There were no real conflicts or much verbal sparing during the debate, which also featured questions sent in by party members and from the audience on uniting the party, helping Ontario recover from the recession and two-tier medicine.

Hillier came out swinging at Elliott even before Thursday's debate for comparing his proposal to abolish the Ontario Human Rights Commission to the Tories' disastrous 2007 election promise to fund faith-based schools.

Elliot had said Wednesday that policy would be a gift to the Liberals just like faith-based school funding was in the 2007 election.

Faith-based funding remains extremely radioactive with Progressive Conservatives, many of whom are not happy Elliott brought it up publicly after it was seen as the key issue the party went down to defeat in 2007.

The question of funding private religious schools did come up from the audience during the debate, briefly taking most of the air out of the room.

Hillier said he believes in tax credits for people who want to send their children to faith-based schools, but did not want to extend public funding to those institutions.

Elliott was extremely wary of the idea, and said it was something the party would have to consult its members on before it could decide on what sort of policy to adopt.

Klees also said the party and voters had rejected faith based funding and it "was not on" under his leadership and would not be revisited.

Hudak gave a clear `no' to the idea of public funding for religious schools, other than for Roman Catholics who already enjoy public funding in Ontario despite United Nation's criticism that the funding is discriminatory.

If applause was any indication, Klees, a former cabinet minister under Mike Harris and Ernie Eves, received the most enthusiastic response throughout the evening from the crowd of about 400 in London at the first of four scheduled debates across the province.

Other debates will be held in Sudbury, Markham and Ottawa.

The party faced criticism for telling journalists they would not be allowed to record audio or video of the London debate, but relented Thursday morning and allowed the recordings after complaints from the media and the Elliott and Hudak campaigns.

The leadership candidates signed up about 32,000 new members to the party before the cut-off date, which means about 40,000 Tories will be eligible to vote for the leader June 21 and 25.

The successor to John Tory, who resigned as leader after losing a February byelection, will be announced at a June 28 convention in Markham, north of Toronto.