Ford gives up on fiscal responsibility

The Ontario government’s new budget and its projected $9.8-billion deficit is final proof that Premier Doug Ford’s government has no interest whatsoever in fiscal responsibility.

The Ford government was first infected with spending disease during the pandemic. Perhaps that was justifiable, but when tax revenue shot up after the pandemic, it spent all that money and more.

Now, faced with a slowing economy and lower than expected tax revenue, Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy is doing what any irrational person would do: find new things to spend money on. It’s the equivalent of someone saying, “Inflation is high and I didn’t get the raise I was counting on. Let’s buy a boat.”

Or in Bethlenfalvy’s case, police helicopters — four of them. The boots-in-the-air plan is part of a promised $46 million over three years, intended to improve policing in the Greater Toronto Area. How, exactly, is unclear.

Then there is the $200 million to build or upgrade community recreation and sports buildings. This will provide many happy photo ops for Progressive Conservative MPPS, but was it a priority when facing such a large deficit?

These are relatively small items, but indicative of this government’s inability to say no. It’s the big picture that is more concerning. The Ford government would have us believe its spending spree is “rebuilding the economy.” Just last week, the premier said “we’re an economic powerhouse.”

And yet, this budget projects that real GDP will grow by just 0.3 per cent over the next year and the unemployment rate will rise to 6.7 per cent. Some powerhouse.

Bethlenfalvy blames Ontario’s problems on “economic uncertainty due to high interest rates and global instability.” The PC government still refuses to connect the dots between rapid population growth and the two biggest problems facing the province: a shortage of both housing and medical care.

Ontario has grown by 765,000 people over the past two years due to the federal government’s enthusiasm for immigration, temporary foreign workers and foreign students. Those two categories are finally being reduced a bit, but for Ontario, rapid population growth has made existing problems far worse.

This budget demonstrates the government’s inability to deal with either issue. One of the budget’s bigger promises is $546 million over three years to connect 600,000 people to primary health care. That sounds like something, but it’s barely treading water. Ontario has an estimated 2.2 million people without a doctor and the Ontario College of Family Physicians estimates the number will increase to four million by 2026 as doctors retire and fewer choose to take up family medicine.

On housing, this budget continues to rely on Ontario’s optimistic plan to build 150,000 housing units a year. The latest figures show the number is going down, not up. In 2023, there were 89,297 housing starts, down from 96,100 the previous year. The budget gooses the number up by including 9,835 new or upgraded longterm care beds on top of that.

Hey, can’t find an apartment? Have you considered long-term care? What will they include next, tent sales?

The biggest new item in this budget is $1.8 billion to help municipalities build more roads and sewer and water pipes. This is pitched as “housing enabling” money, but how much good will it do as long as housing costs and interest rates remain high?

Ontario hasn’t got a hope of overcoming its health care and housing shortages without a dramatic reduction in immigration, a point it should be hammering home with the federal government. Instead, the Ford government is complaining about lost revenue from a modest reduction in the number of foreign post-secondary students.

SINCE COMING TO POWER ... THE PCS HAVE INCREASED SPENDING BY 35 PER CENT.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing in this budget, especially for PC supporters, is the Ford government’s unwillingness to make any difficult choices. Bethlenfalvy refused to pass along the real cost of services through higher taxes. He also refused to cut spending, preferring the easy route of a higher deficit.

If the government had any interest in balancing its budget, it could have pared back the absurd $7.3 billion it spends on electricity bill subsidies. That’s up from $6.1 billion last year.

Since coming to power six years ago, the PCS have increased spending by 35 per cent. They have also added $116 billion to the provincial debt. It’s the kind of financial mismanagement that Ontarians have traditionally turned to the PC party to fix, but now they are the perpetrators, and the other parties would certainly spend even more.

Just don’t blame Bethlenfalvy. The poor man is simply driven by the tide of events, with no more control than a leaf in a stream — a stream heading straight down the drain.