Premier Doug Ford is touting his Progressive Conservatives’ first budget, insisting the new government has “got your back.”In a message emailed to Conservative supporters after Finance Minister Vic Fedeli tabled the record $163.4-billion spending plan Thursday, Ford said the document proves Queen’s Park is under new management.“The McGuinty-Wynne days of high taxes and endless deficits are officially over,” the premier said, referring to his Liberal predecessors, Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne.“We are going to take Ontario back to a balanced budget and bring our provincial debt down.”By comparison, last year’s Liberal document was a $158.5-billion budget, meaning the Tories are spending $4.9 billion more than their predecessors.That’s in part due to accounting changes the new government adopted last fall that make the fiscal situation appear more dire than it actually is. Read more:Winners and losers of the 2019 Ontario budgetHealth-care superagency will save $350 million a year, Fedeli says in Ontario budgetOpinion | Martin Regg Cohn: In Ford’s first budget, the good times are back — even if they never leftReversing a trend that dates back to when Tory Mike Harris was premier in 2001-02, the province is no longer counting around $11 billion in government co-sponsored Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union Pension Plan and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan as assets on the books.That accounting revision — and a decision to move hydro subsidies for electricity customers off the rate base and onto the province’s books — increases the annual shortfall by as much as $5 billion.Ford’s missive neglected to mention that his Tories will be awash in red ink through to the 2022 election and beyond and will add tens of billions of dollars to the $343 billion debt before beginning any repayment.Fedeli, whose budget has a $10.3-billion shortfall, does not project ...
|
