Budget gives Ontario choices

THE SPECTATOR’S VIEW

The latest fiscal plan from Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa should be called “the keep-your-fingers-crossed budget.”

Ordinary Ontarians will keep their fingers crossed that, with its hefty spending increases and balanced bottom line, the 2017-18 budget unveiled this week can improve their lives, affordably.

As for the Liberals, their fingers are crossed that Sousa’s offering will raise their dismal public approval ratings and keep them in power after the June 2018 provincial election.

While only time can resolve this uncertainty, Sousa has crafted an eye-pleasing financial blueprint that combines important new social service expenditures with a welcome, if overdue, end to deficits for the first time in a decade. Social progressives and fiscal hawks can both cheer. When it comes to new spending, the Liberals’ priorities are right: An additional $7 billion will be injected into Ontario’s health-care system over the next three years, with much of that money — $518 million in this year alone — going to hospitals, which have struggled with frozen budgets for several years.

Just as notably, the government is making its first foray into pharmacare, offering free prescription drugs for everyone 24-years-old and younger, at an estimated annual cost of $465 million.

So far so good. Yet some economists and Ontario’s Financial Accountability Office have raised doubts over whether provincial deficits have been truly banished, suggesting that only the one-time sales of government assets made possible the balanced books.

That debate will be hard to resolve, but the Liberals surely deserve high marks for exerting a greater control over spending in recent years.

What is more worrying is the issue of sustainability. The Liberals are betting Ontario’s increasingly robust economy will keep packing on muscle and effortlessly pay the government’s bills.

The shadow hanging over this optimism comes from south of the border and U.S. President Donald Trump.

His wrecking-ball approach to trade could curtail Ontario exports to the United States and leave the government, as well as the province, poorer.

What’s the Liberals’ Plan B for avoiding more deficits?

Ontario’s long-term prospects would also be better if the Liberals were more aggressive about dealing with the $311-billion provincial debt.

It has more than doubled since they took office in 2003 and, despite this week’s balanced books, provincial debt will grow by a further $26.4 billion this year.

By 2019, it will cost the province $12 billion annually merely to service that debt. The public needs to see some indication of a debt repayment strategy to change this trajectory.

That said, beyond its important commitments, this budget is significant for providing Ontarians with a clearer view of their options in the next election.

The Liberal pharmacare plan, for instance, can now be compared with this week’s proposal by the New Democrats to provide a more limited number of drugs but to more people.

As for the Progressive Conservatives — who have been riding high in public opinion polls — what will they offer?

Love or hate this Liberal budget, it will help Ontarians make their choice when they answer the poll that matters most 14 months from now.