What we could do with $11 billion

On Sept. 21 Victor Fedeli, the minister of finance for the government of Ontario, spoke at a breakfast and gave Ontarians the grim news. The independent commission auditing the provincial finances came to the same conclusion the financial accountability officer, the PC Party and just about anyone with a calculator knew: The Liberals were cooking the books.

We aren’t talking about moving some money around or a rounding error, we’re talking abut a multi-billion-dollar effort to hide the truth about the state of our province’s finances. Fifteen billion.

That’s more than Ontario spends on its justice system. It's more than what we spent on colleges, universities and job training programs. It's just about as much as the government spends on social assistance, ODSP, unemployment programs and children’s services.

Some would argue “These deficits are investments in our future, we’re building a better Ontario!”

This is not to say that building good roads and bridges, affordable transportation and state of the art schools and hospitals is a bad thing. It’s not. Is infrastructure better today? Can you tell me education scores are higher than 15 years ago? Can we honestly say that wait times are shorter? Are long-term care lists smaller or are they longer?

So how was that an investment in our future, if it wasn’t an investment in our present?

Let’s set the $15-billion deficit the Liberals left us this year aside for a minute and talk about interest on our debt. Last year, Ontario taxpayers spent $11 billion dollars in interest on the debt alone.

We spent roughly $52 billion on healthcare and $24 billion on education. Our third-largest expense was $11 billion in interest. Eleven billion that went to bondholders and investors and that didn’t go towards education, health care or mental health.

Remember, the interest we pay is based on the historically low rates given to the Ontario government. When interest rates go up, and they will, more money that should be spent on services will instead be spent on interest.

We need to rein in our rate of spending. In our Planning for Prosperity consultations, we have heard from tens of thousands of Ontarians about ways we are wastefully spending, ways we can improve and how we can deliver services more effectively. Our plan will reduce the burden of debt that threatens the future of our province.

In summation, we cannot continue the path that the Liberals put us on for the last 15 years. Something must change. A $15billion-dollar deficit is unacceptable and irresponsible. We need to think about how to pay for things now, so we don’t pay dearly for them in the future.