Ontario´s deficit balloons to $15 billion due to Liberals´ `stashed´ spending, finance minister says
(The Star Travel)

Ontario’s deficit has ballooned to a “sobering� $15 billion this year because of expenses the defeated Liberal government “stashed� off the books before the June election, new Finance Minister Vic Fedeli said Friday.While the previous Kathleen Wynne administration pledged to run a deficit of $6.7 billion this year, the actual number is more than twice that because of the accounting improperly used to include teacher and civil service pension plan money — over which the province has no control — as assets, Fedeli told a breakfast meeting of the Economic Club of Canada at a downtown hotel.That was against the recommendation of auditor general Bonnie Lysyk, who disagreed with bureaucrats and Wynne’s Liberals over whether $11 billion in the pension plans co-sponsored by the government can be counted toward the bottom line as they had been with auditor’s office approval until two years ago.Read more:Ontario finance minister expected to embrace accounting change that almost doubles the deficitFord government sets up online ‘suggestion box’ on how to cut spending“The Liberals pursued a reckless spree of deficit-financed spending and then deliberately deployed a series of accounting tricks,� Fedeli charged.“They deliberately hid the evidence of this fiscal hole and they attempted to undermine the auditor general when she called them out.� Fedeli called the $15 billion discovered by a commission of inquiry the new government appointed early in the summer a “crippling hidden deficit.�A panel of independent experts led by the chair of the Canadian Actuarial Standards Oversight Council concluded last year that Lysyk was wrong.Opposition parties have warned Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives will use the deficit figure to justify deeper spending cuts than the $6 billion he promised in the spring election campaign.“Nothing is safe in Ontario,� NDP ...