JAY GOLDBERG: Fake budgets hide debt spike

Published Aug 29, 2024  •  Last updated 0 minutes ago  •  3 minute read

Premier Doug Ford takes speaks during a press conference about police helicopter funding in Mississauga, Ont., on Monday, July 29, 2024. Photo by Frank Gunn /The Canadian Press

Remember that kid in high school who would change his report card before taking it home to his parents? 

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It turns out premiers, mayors and prime ministers have been doing the same thing for years. 

Take Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

Ford ran $46 billion worth of deficits over his first six years in office, according to Ontario’s public accounts. But those same public accounts show Ontario’s debt increased by $86 billion over the same period.

What gives?

Ford, like his predecessors before him, isn’t telling taxpayers the truth when it comes to the size of his budget deficits. 

Ford is only telling Ontarians about “operational spending.” He’s not talking about debt the government takes on for projects like highways, schools and roads. 

That’s like having two credit cards, but only telling your spouse about one of them. 

The government claims debt taken on to build highways, schools and roads is different. Since the government is building things with that borrowed money, it shouldn’t count against their fiscal performance.

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But that’s a load of baloney.

Debt is debt. Period.

When pizza restaurant owners take out debt to invest in new wood-fired ovens, they do that because it will help them make more money down the line. And, in a worst-case scenario, they can sell those ovens if things don’t go their way.

But the government can’t do that. Ford can’t put an old school or highway on Kijiji. Plus, anything the government builds, from highways to schools to roads, requires future maintenance and more bills. These aren’t money-makers that show up in the government’s budget. Far from it.

More importantly, the government could build these projects without borrowing money. These costs could simply be built into the budget the government presents to taxpayers. 

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But that would require prudence and common sense at Queen’s Park. Instead, premiers keep presenting taxpayers with fake numbers.

And even those fake numbers are dangerously reckless. 

Consider last year’s “operational budget.” The government overspent by $7.6 billion. And it overspent in every sector, from health to education to justice. 

Overspending in one area might be excusable. Overspending everywhere isn’t. 

Families need to make budgets and stick to them. Sure, slight adjustments happen during the year. But when they do have to be made, families usually cut back in one area to spend more in another.

That notion seems foreign to Ford and his finance team.

By the end of this year, the Ford government will increase the province’s debt to $439 billion. That’s $27,250 per Ontarian, kids and retirees alike.

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And that number is only set to go higher, as Ford has no plan to balance even the phoney operational budget until 2026-27. Next year, the Ford government plans to pile tens of billions of dollars more into Ontario’s debt tab.

That includes $4.6 billion in operational debt and $20.2 billion in hidden infrastructure debt. 

Racking up debt at a dangerous pace is nothing new in Ontario. The province’s budget has only been balanced twice in the past two decades. And both of those so-called balanced budgets were fake. Because of spending on infrastructure projects, debt went up in both of those years. 

That means there’s not a single year out of the past 20 where Ontario’s debt tab didn’t go up. Over the past 10 years alone, Ontario’s politicians have wasted roughly $124 billion on debt interest payments. That’s more than the combined health and education budgets this year.

It’s time for Ontarians to draw a line in the sand.

Governments need to stop putting forward fake budgets. No more hiding behind building schools and hospitals to pretend that debt isn’t piling up at a record pace. 

Ontarians deserve to see the real numbers and the province’s politicians should have to be accountable for them. 

Jay Goldberg is the Ontario Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation 

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