Ontario’s balanced budget promises billions in health care
TORONTO — Ontario’s Liberal government is promising to inject billions of new dollars into health care in its first balanced budget in a decade, a fiscal plan designed to appeal to nearly everyone in the province ahead of an election next summer.
Crafted by a party in power since 2003 that has been faring poorly in recent polls, the $141-billion budget tabled Thursday has measures targeted at both young and old, people who access the health-care system and anyone who owns or rents a home and pays an electricity bill.
The centrepiece of the plan is a $465-million-a-year pharmacare program for children and youth, which would cover prescription medications to treat most acute and common chronic conditions for people 24 and under, with no deductible or co-payment. It would start Jan. 1.
The plan will be most beneficial for youth who currently are not covered under private plans or the Ontario Drug Benefit program for social assistance recipients, but government officials weren’t able to say how many people that captures.
In total, the government is promising $11.5 billion in new spending on health care over three years, including money to address hospital overcrowding, funding for mental health and addiction services, cash for hospital construction projects and home-care funding.
The budget also includes funds for new child-care spaces, money to build schools, measures aimed at seniors and previously announced cuts to electricity bills and plans to cool the housing market.
Much of the projected spending, however, is spread out over multiple years, well past the June 2018 election. But Finance Minister Charles Sousa said his “socially progressive” budget is not a ploy for votes.
“These decisions that we’re making today are not based on election cycles, they’re based on long-term benefit for the people of Ontario,” he said.
Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown said the budget is not, in fact, structurally balanced, because of a one-time asset sale money — such as the sale of shares of Hydro One — and accounting “tricks,” such as counting public pension surpluses as assets, against the advice of the province’s auditor general.
“This budget is a patchwork attempt by a desperate government to fix the mess they’ve created before the next election,” he said. “If they lose this next election, this is spending they’ll never have to be accountable for.”
The price for the pharmacare plan was not in the budget itself and was provided only verbally.