COVID teaches Doug Ford hard fiscal lessons

More than two years after becoming Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford has discovered that necessity, not ideology, makes the best mother of invention.

Elected after repeatedly promising to slay Ontario’s deficit dragon, a monster he blamed on the Liberal regime that preceded him, Ford now accepts Ontario’s fiscal books will, of necessity, be drenched in red ink as long as the COVID-19 pandemic drags on. And he’s good with that.

The province’s Financial Accountability Officer announced last week that Ford’s Progressive Conservative government is on track to rack up a stunning $37.2-billion deficit for the 2020-21 fiscal year, for the most part because of COVID-19.

The premier didn’t blink, even though in those long-ago pre-pandemic days, his government insisted it would spend just $9 billion more than it took in for the year.

Nor did it faze him when opposition critics then accused the premier of holding back $9.3 billion that had been earmarked for the pandemic. They said he intended to use it to chip away at the deficit mountain confronting this province.

But a compliant Ford promised his government will spend every dime of that unallocated money wherever the deficit goes. That’s life.

For some of the premier’s hardcore fiscal conservative supporters who backed him because he deplored Liberal profligacy, pledged to root out billions of dollars in savings and wielded a knife that slashed into all kinds of programs in his first year in power, such talk will sound positively heretical.

Everyone else in the province should applaud the premier’s transformation. He’s learned the hard lessons COVID-19 has taught this province. His economic priorities have evolved. He’s playing the long game.

His previous obsession with deficits has been cast aside, certainly for the time being in this crisis situation. And in so doing, Ford is steering Ontario on a wise course.

To say this is not to suggest that governments should not strive to be frugal stewards of the public purse. It does not mean governments should never try to match their spending to their revenues, at least when the economy is humming, so they don’t amass a debt that will prove unsustainable if the economy tanks.

There is a time for such fiscal rectitude and discipline. It’s just not now.

When Ford imposed a lockdown on the province earlier this year because of the pandemic, he sent the economy into a nosedive. Just when the government had to spend billions of dollars more to guard the health and safety of Ontarians, it lost billions in reduced taxes and other revenues.

Now, although Ford’s PCs have made the right choices here, the province is headed toward a precarious future. The government has until Nov. 15 to introduce its budget for 2020-21.

Even before that budget sees the light of day, Ontarians know Ford’s previous promise to balance the budget by 2023-24 has hit the recycling bin. They know there is no longer any firm deadline for an end to deficits. They know only that Ford says he will “do it over a number of years and be thoughtful about it” as his “No. 1 priority is to get companies back on their feet, get families back on their feet.”

To be sure, Ford’s plans to dig Ontario out of its deficit hole by growing the economy makes some sense. But their shelf-life will last only as long as COVID-19’s second wave doesn’t slam the brakes on the current economic recovery.

For now, Ford has a pandemic fire to extinguish. The rebuild will have to come later.