When the Ontario Liberal government of Kathleen Wynne was reduced to unofficial party status in last year’s provincial election, it left an enormous legacy in its wake.
Unfortunately, that legacy was out-of-control spending.
Premier Doug Ford and the Progressive Conservatives inherited a balance sheet from the Liberals, in power for 15 years, in which Queen’s Park was spending $40 million more per day than it was collecting in revenue, and paying $34 million per day to service the interest on the province’s $350 billion debt.
That $34 million per day payment — about $13 billion per year — doesn’t reduce the principal amount owed, and every annual deficit the Liberals recorded and the PCs inherited, adds to the total amount of the debt.
Despite this runaway spending — turning the Ontario government into one of the world’s most indebted non-national borrowers — municipalities, school boards and other recipients of provincial funding now complaining about spending restraints under Ford, weren’t happy under the Liberals, either.
To the contrary, they complained the Liberals were underfunding them.
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See Also:
(1) Monte McNaughton: A message to Ontario’s labour — let’s work together
(3) Doug Ford’s Classroom, Part 2: On campus, a tough new landscape
