Hold the Celebration: A Balanced Budget Won’t End Ontario’s Fiscal Challenges finds that Ontario’s debt is expected to continue to grow—increasing by approximately $9 billion next year—despite the government’s promise to finally balance its budget next month. Currently, Ontario’s debt relative to the size of the provincial economy stands at approximately 40 per cent and is expected to hover close to this historically high level for the foreseeable future.

Quebec’s Daycare Program: A Flawed Policy Model finds that the province’s 20-year-old subsidized daycare program has produced skyrocketing costs along with worrying child development outcomes without eliminating wait times. Spending on a per-child basis—after adjusting for inflation—jumped 101.6 per cent since the program’s creation, from $4,874 in 1997 to $9,823 in 2016 (amounts in 2016 dollars).

The Sustainability of Health Care Spending in Canada 2017 finds that health-care spending by provincial governments has increased by 116 per cent since 2001 and is projected to keep growing over the next 15 years. In fact, by 2031, health-care spending is projected to consume 42.6 per cent of all provincial program spending (on average), up from 40.1 per cent in 2016 and 37.6 percent in 2001.