Despite the talk of painful austerity, Ontario’s recent budget continues to bleed red ink. Finance Minister Charles Sousa projects a deficit this year of $8.5 billion, and doesn’t predict an actual balancing of the books until 2017-18 fiscal year.
ontario debt
January 25, 2015
9:00AM
How governments manage their finances matters a great deal. Spend and borrow too much and the result is a spiral of increasing deficits that create ever higher debt. Then, ever-more tax dollars end up spent on debt interest—not on education, health care, administering provincial courts, or other areas in which provincial governments are involved.
July 21, 2014
6:00AM
We’ve seen this script before. Higher spending. Tax increases. Persistent deficits. Growing debt. Warnings from credit rating agencies. A government unwilling to make the tough choices to turn things around.
July 19, 2014
6:00AM
The other day former Ontario Premier Bob Rae, fumed at a column by economist Jack Mintz who noted the similarities between the current Kathleen Wynne government and Rae’s reign as premier of Ontario, specifically the “high deficits, debt and taxes.”
May 27, 2014
2:00AM
A new report on provincial debts and deficits by Moody's, the international credit rating agency, is another piercing reminder of Ontario's serious fiscal challenges.
March 21, 2014
3:00AM
It has been more than two years since an independent commission submitted its report to the Ontario government on the provinces poor public finances and high government debt.
November 9, 2013
2:00AM
Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa called his updated financial plan a new direction but in truth it had a nostalgic feel. With his government facing considerable fiscal challenges including an $11.7 billion deficit and growing debt, Ontarians desperately needed a new direction. What they actually got was more of the same: increased spending and a government reluctant to deal with core problems.
February 5, 2013
2:00AM
I do not want Ontario to become like California Finance Minister Dwight Duncan once proclaimed. And it's not hard to understand why, California is a fiscal nightmare. It has the lowest bond rating in the United States and its own Treasurer, Bill Lockyer, referred to the state budget as "a fiscal train wreck." Yet, despite all that is said about California's finances in the media and financial markets, there is a Canada province that is in much worse shape. Welcome to Ontario.
February 5, 2013
2:00AM
Even Greece, the poster child for rampant debt, carried an Ontario-style debt load as recently as 1984
Don Drummond (2012) Commission on the Reform of Ontarios Public Services
February 3, 2013
2:00AM
Kathleen Wynne celebrated this week after winning the Ontario Liberal leadership and the premiers job. But now comes the hard part, finding a way to return Ontarios finances to a stable, sustainable path.
Part of the challenge facing Ms. Wynne is Ontarians indifference to the provinces deficits and debt. If the citizens of the province arent concerned about the over-spending, the deficits, and the accumulated debt that emerges from such spending, then we shouldnt be surprized to see politicians ducking hard decisions.