Ontario Finance Minister Rod Phillips, once a top executive in the hard-hit newspaper business, just laid out the province’s fall economic outlook where numbers in the red ink side of the ledger are in the billions.
Inside the update is the cost of services that the taxpayers both need and demand, so they will be there forever.
The numbers will go up, but rarely down.
Among the must-pay items, of course, is health care, complete with all its complaints and challenges, which comes with an annual tab of $64 billion, yet is still fighting hallway medicine and unconscionable wait times.
Then there’s education, rife with union-led demands and strike threats, which cost the taxpayer $30 billion; and social services at $17 billion, which is never enough and will get only worse as the population swells.
And then, as the last of the big-ticket items strapped to the taxpayers’ back, is the $13 billion that annually buys nothing — not a single school or hospital bed, not a single bridge or roadway — because it goes to pay the lenders’ interest charges on a provincial debt that is pushing a staggering $350 billion.
Every year, it is there, waiting to be flushed away for the sole purpose of keeping the lenders both happy and richer.
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See Also:
(1) Balancing Ontario’s budget is important. Here’s why
(2) Ford shows flexibility, but still they gripe
