Ontario government falls woefully short of balanced budget promises

The Ford government recently published Ontario’s official public accounts for the 2023/24 fiscal year, which show that the province wound up with a deficit of $647 million. According to Caroline Mulroney, the government’s Treasury Board president, this is very good news. “After 15 years of a Liberal government,” she said. “I don’t think people can even imagine getting this close to a balanced budget.”

But in reality, the Ford government has yet again moved the goalposts it uses to measure fiscal success.

Let’s first address the suggestion that, when Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government left office in 2018, it was difficult to “imagine” getting close to a balanced budget in 2023/24. While releasing the Ford government’s first fiscal update in November 2018, Finance Minister Vic Fedeli spoke passionately about the need to eliminate the deficit and reduce provincial debt. “This government believes balancing the budget and reducing Ontario’s debt burden is not only a fiscal imperative,” he said, “it is a moral one.” That update didn’t include a clear path to balance but it—along with campaign rhetoric—gave a clear impression the government sought a quick return to balance.

However, by the spring of 2019—before the pandemic—the Ford government’s urgency had already started to cool and the 2019 budget included a five-year fiscal plan that balanced the budget in 2023/24. So, contrary to Mulroney’s claim, a relatively small deficit in 2023/24 doesn’t represent a fiscal achievement that would have been hard to “imagine” when the Liberals left office. Rather it’s a failure, as the Ford government has failed to achieve budget balance despite the leisurely five-year path laid out in the 2019 budget.

The Ford government now says it will balance the budget by 2026/27, but given past experience it’s reasonable to be skeptical, especially if the government encounters any unexpected bumps in the road such as an economic slowdown. And to be clear, the government can’t blame COVID because annual provincial revenues have by now recovered from that shock.

And crucially, we’re only talking about the government’s “operating” deficits, driven by annual expenditures on day-to-day items such as employee salaries and debt interest. When you look at the bigger picture, which includes spending on long-term capital projects, Mulroney’s claim grows more dubious. The government’s net debt burden this year will reach a projected $408 billion—or 37.4 per cent relative to the size of the provincial economy, down slightly from 39.2 per cent in 2017/18, the Liberal government’s final full year in office.

This slight improvement since the Wynne years does not seem to reflect a government that believes debt reduction is a “moral” imperative.

To be sure, it’s good news that the deficit for 2023/24 is a little smaller than the government previously thought. However, contrary to claims from Mulroney and others in the Ford government, it’s nothing to celebrate. Far from exceeding expectations or simply delivering on its promises, the Ford government has fallen well short of its deficit-reduction pledges. Will they break their new promises and move the goal posts once again? That’s not hard to imagine.