Grits hold perverse view of rising provincial debt

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne put her finger on her government’s greatest weakness last week.

The premier’s spin on Conservative Patrick Brown’s platform for the next June’s election described the Opposition leader’s promise to cut

$12 billion from the province’s budget as “ridiculous.”

Therein lies the issue. The weakness of Wynne’s government and that of her predecessor Dalton McGuinty is their addiction to spending and debt.

The province’s debt is projected to be $312 billion this year, or roughly $22,000 for every person in the province. It is expected to grow to $336 billion in 2019-2020.

When McGuinty was first elected premier in 2003, the debt was about $110 billion. That’s a $200 billion increase in 14 years.

Brown’s election platform says the savings could be found during three years: $6 billion from cancelling Ontario’s cap-and-trade program and another $6 billion from a value-formoney audit.

Cap and trade is a complex issue for another day, but a value-for-money audit might be the best thing to happen to Ontario in years.

Such an audit would find efficiencies.

Not so, says the premier. “In my experience ... efficiencies have always been code for cuts with Conservatives,” Wynne said.

In effect, the premier is arguing that every single branch of government is working to maximum efficiency, as is every employee of the public service.

To be fair, Wynne says her government has done its own program spending review.

The premier claims that review is one of the reasons the province was able to eliminate the deficit and balance the budget last summer.

The so-called balanced budget resulted from the one-time sale of Hydro One — a decision that will go down in history as Wynne’s biggest boondoggle — and increasing the debt.

We all could accomplish the same thing with our household budgets by using our credit cards to pay our expenses.

Every elementary school pupil in the province understands what Wynne seems to ignore. All that debt has to be paid back someday.

Another revealing comment about the Liberal view of debt came at budget time from Charles Sousa, minister of finance.

He said the net debt in the province is improving and the Liberals are borrowing $30 billion less than they had anticipated.

In the alternate universe where this government seems to operate, apparently borrowing less is good news.

Deb Matthews, deputy premier, said Brown’s cuts will come from health care and education, because they take the lion’s share of Ontario’s budget. Perhaps she was arguing that the health-care bureaucracy that has ballooned under this government can’t be cut because it is critical to front-line care in the province.

Or that the closing of rural schools is efficient, instead of working with communities to find ways in which to make full use of them.

On a regular basis the province lectures the great unwashed about sensible use of debt. Perhaps those being lectured will have a reply at the ballot box.