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Premier Doug Ford's Ontario

Thinker said:
So Last year's deficit was $7.4 billion? Well folks, rest assured it will tripled by the time he leaves office.
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After voting in every provincial election since 1995, I’ve never seen a government pay down the debt, and I don’t care. It’s a false debate, no Ontario government has paid down the debt since the 1980s. And I don’t care. If the world wants to loan Ontario money, we’ll take it. Should I worry that interest payments on the debt will increasingly degrade the ability of tax funds to pay for services? Not one premier since the 1980s has, why should I?
 
Admiral Beez said:
After voting in every provincial election since 1995, I’ve never seen a government pay down the debt, and I don’t care. It’s a false debate, no Ontario government has paid down the debt since the 1980s. And I don’t care. If the world wants to loan Ontario money, we’ll take it. Should I worry that interest payments on the debt will increasingly degrade the ability of tax funds to pay for services? Not one premier since the 1980s has, why should I?
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If nobody has lowered the debt, the next best thing is to lower the debt to GDP. This has occurred under both Conservative (Harris) and Liberal (Peterson) in the past.

203807
 
BurlOak said:
If nobody has lowered the debt, the next best thing is to lower the debt to GDP. This has occurred under both Conservative (Harris) and Liberal (Peterson) in the past.

View attachment 203807
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How does Harris look if we exclude the sale of the 407? I’m sure Doug could balance the books if he sold Algonquin Park to developers and resource extraction firms. But pawning off Ontarian's assets in one time firesales is not financial prudence.
 
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You would think Doug would know how to make this work...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-cannabis-loss-1.5282994

Ontario Cannabis Retail Corp. lost $42 million in the latest fiscal year, according to newly released public documents.

The provincial Crown corporation tasked with online sales and wholesale distribution of recreational pot reported revenues of $64 million for the year ended March 31, 2019.

However, Ontario's consolidated financial statements show the OCRC, which operates as the Ontario Cannabis Store, racked up expenses totalling $106 million during the period.
 
Admiral Beez said:
How does Harris look if we exclude the sale of the 407? I’m sure Doug could balance the books if he sold Algonquin Park to developers and resource extraction firms. But pawning off Ontarian's assets in one time firesales is not financial prudence.
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  1. Harris selling 407 was the stupidest thing he did.
  2. Harris sold 407 for $3.1B. (Using the charts, the debt was then about $120B, and the Debt/GDP ratio was about 30%. Thus, the GDP was about $400B). The $3.1B could have added an extra $3.1B of debt, or 0.8% to the Debt to GDP. Even with this debt increase, the overall record for Harris would have been a reduction of Debt/GDP, but instead of 29.6% reduced to 27.3%, it would have been 29.6% reduced to 28.1%.
  3. Wynne sold Hydro One for about $9B - which is a larger number in terms of GDP by 50% (i.e. it's about 1.2% of the GDP).
 
BurlOak said:
$3B for Ford. $9B for Wynne.

I suppose as long as he sells assets valued at less than $15B (assuming linear extrapolation) - he will be the best of the group.
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You (and others) seem to think that having a balanced budget is an ideal we should aspire to. I think you need to look at things in a bit more detail. Some expenditure is 'operating' and some is 'capital' and, just as with personal budgets, it is generally not a good idea to go into debt for regular operating costs. Going into debt to build or improve one's capital stock is usually a good investment (especially, as now, when interest rates are low). Though it is certainly simplistic to compare governments with people, if I borrow money to go on vacation it makes far less sense than borrowing money to buy a house or to repair my car and get to work easier/faster.
 
DSC said:
You (and others) seem to think that having a balanced budget is an ideal we should aspire to. I think you need to look at things in a bit more detail. Some expenditure is 'operating' and some is 'capital' and, just as with personal budgets, it is generally not a good idea to go into debt for regular operating costs. Going into debt to build or improve one's capital stock is usually a good investment (especially, as now, when interest rates are low). Though it is certainly simplistic to compare governments with people, if I borrow money to go on vacation it makes far less sense than borrowing money to buy a house or to repair my car and get to work easier/faster.
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The deficit calculation specifically excludes government spending on capital items. However, it does include a line for depreciation of existing capital stock, more or less the same as a private sector corporation’s income statement. So when people call for a reduction in the deficit, they’re advocating for a reduction in borrowing used to pay for current consumption. The province could report a balanced budget while borrowing to fund capital spending under our accounting rules. I think most people would agree with you that borrowing to fund capital investment makes sense, provided the investments themselves have a valid economic rationale.

As for Ontario’s debt management, we’re spending just under $13 billion a year in interest. It would be nice to think that all that debt was accumulated to fund productive investment, but that’s not the case. In past years, we collectively chose to shift consumption from the future to the (then) present, much like your analogy of borrowing money to go on vacation.
 
BurlOak said:
So it looks like Ford reduced the deficit projection from $15.0B to $7.4B. A reduction of $7.4B in 9 months. Its a good thing the PCs had an independent commission determine the deficit value early in their mandate.
Thanks to the independent verification of these numbers, it is quite clear that Ford is doing a much better job economically than Trudeau.
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Sort of like the old mark the price up by 50% and then put the item "on sale" by taking the price back down to where it was before, except in this case it's the deficit. Much of the increase and reduction was related to the ongoing pension fund assets accounting issue rather than Doug's expert financial management.
 
tiffer24 said:
As the long-term care list in Ontario gets longer... and hospital wait times grow.

The number of seniors waiting to move into long-term care homes in Ontario has hit a record high, climbing to 36,245, according to the province's own data.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/20...a&utm_campaign=&utm_campaign_id=&utm_content=
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And seniors will be denied adequate care and family & neighbours are forced to step in. Banging my head against the wall when I heard subsidy for a walker, which is available through the Ontario Govt was denied because the patient was terminal with less than a year to live. He bought it anyway because it allows him to stay at home and go for short walks on the street. That's 500 dollar out the pocket from a person who is getting minimal assistance from the govt. He does qualify for a palliative care facility but opts to stay at home with support of his family thus saving the province thousands of dollars a month.
It's become very clear that in this province that "folks" who cannot pay their way through health care or special education of any sorts, they will be dismissed and minimal care will be handed out with great conservative fanfare.
 
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