Everything you need to know about Doug Ford’s latest unbalanced budget

The Ford government unveiled its latest provincial budget on Thursday — a record $244-billion fiscal roadmap (with a projected deficit of $13.8-billion).

Joining us on tonight’s Closer Look podcast to break down all the numbers is Jessica Smith Cross, editor-in-chief of our Queen’s Park team at The Trillium.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What the government is doing with this law is they're going to take away our access to and like records held by ministers and the the premier's office, um, which is a big blow to transparency.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

Back on closer look on this uh Friday. Love Fridays. Yes, let's go. Yes. Baseball season. Uh the snow is melting slowly but surely. Yeah, yeah, no, I'm excited. Uh baseball, Dan Schulman yesterday, great uh interview. Um it's funny, you know. I was watching uh some of the clips from the World Series uh this morning and listening to Dan call the plays and then watching the interview again. It's kind of cool, you know, the people that uh that we get to have conversations with.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Yeah, it's it was great. I thought the same thing, and he's uh he's as nice of a guy as I thought he was gonna be. Because again, if you listen to his story, the guy started from nothing. He was doing doing radio at the University of Western Ontario, got a job, I think, in Barry and Callingwood, he's working for the radio station. And and you don't forget that, right? You're you're you have to work your way up, people had to give you a couple breaks. You had to be a good person, obviously. And he did that. Um but I do regret that we didn't get him to read the phone book. I think it just would have been fun to be like, okay, uh we're on the bees. That's true. Um next time. Yeah, no, but he he was he was excellent. And I think it's amazing too when he talked about how the pressure he doesn't really feel it, right? Like an I don't know, I like you I know we didn't ask this, but imagine you're at the Rogers Center in game six, game seven. But the place is rocking. Yeah. Just raw, like filled to the brim. Yep. People are going crazy. And he's in that booth doing his thing. And how you don't feel like that pressure uh is pretty amazing. But I guess that's what makes him so good at what he does.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

He is good, and it it's it's a real art to know as a commentator when to speak and more importantly, when not to speak. When to shut up, yeah, that's right. And and he is just an absolute master at it. Yeah, it was great. Great conversation, really enjoyed it. All right. Uh big news yesterday uh at the ledge budget.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

We should have asked Dan about the about the budgets from that. Well, he's a math, he was a math. We should have got we should have had Dan to come on, but we have even better. We have Jessica S. Cross coming out today. She's our editor-inchief of the Trillium. Yeah. Uh her and her team, and with uh some help from some of our locals that went out there to Queen's Park, uh well, Taylor Pace and Santana, Bell and Tony from Guelph today were seconded to the great team at Queen's Park, uh helped in their reporting on what is a very busy day, budget day. Um their coverage was fantastic. Uh it ran on their site, obviously, in the Crosshart chain. If you haven't checked it out, uh it's the it's the most comprehensive stuff you're gonna find. Um and Jess is a master at explaining so many different details. And uh it's why she gets asked not to just come on this podcast. But she's on she's all over the place. You you'll find her everywhere. So we're uh looking forward to chatting with her about what's really behind the numbers.

SPEAKER_02 3:07

Ontario Finance Minister Peter Bethlinfalvey unveiled the province's budget yesterday, pitching it as a plan to protect jobs, grow the economy, and brace for an uncertain future. Behind the headlines and the billions of dollars, what's actually new here and what's just political framing? From deficits and debt to transit housing and health care. This budget touches just about every corner of life in Ontario. The question is, does it meaningfully change anything for you? Joining us now to break it all down. From Toronto is Jessica Smith Cross, our editor-in-chief at our Queen's Park Bureau, the Trillium. Jess, welcome back to the show. Always good to see you.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Thanks for having me on. I love doing this.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

Well, we love that you love doing it. All right, uh, Jess, let's start with the uh big picture numbers. Uh the budget, uh$244 billion, a record amount, but it also comes with a higher than expected deficit at$13.8 billion. Uh, can you kind of walk us through that? How is the Ford government selling these dollar figures to the public?

SPEAKER_00 4:08

So one thing that we found interesting about this is they they've been promising to balance the budget for a long time, since coming into office. And every year they have what they call a path to balance. Like, okay, in a few years, we're gonna balance the budget. And then that balance day, the year in which they say here's when we're gonna have a little surplus, gets moved back a year. And so that's happened again. We've got a$13 billion deficit this time, and the budget balance date has been moved back again. So when you see the projections and all of the stuff in the budget, you always have to take with a little bit of a grain in salt. These are projections, things that are based on what the economic circumstances are and what they expect them to be for the next year, because that depend that matters a lot to like how much revenue the government has. And it's also doesn't take into account every decision that good they're gonna make during the year. It's their best effort, but the the the number you get in the spring is not usually the number you end up with by the end of the year. So that's one thing to keep in mind. But overall, what what we learned and what I learned the most from having an economist sitting with me in the office on budget day. We had the province's former chief economist, Peter uh Brian, Brian Lewis sitting with us, and he broke it down in a nice column for it. And he basically said that the he talked about this pattern that the government has as pushing back its balance. Um, and can I criticize them a little bit for not being straightforward with about what needs to be done to get to balance and not yet doing those things yet? Um the promised restraint and spending that they've said they need to do to get to balance hasn't hasn't quite happened over the years. Um they have money to spend. The economy wasn't as bad last year as everyone expected it to be because of the tariffs. They didn't have actually as big a global hit um as the forecasters expected. So this deficit comes despite having more wiggle room than they could have had.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

It's a great point because I think revenue was almost$7 billion higher than they expected. Um, yet the deficit still went up. And that's kind of the balancing. I think Brian's column was great. But can you speak a bit more to that, Jess? That's the I think people expected because it wasn't as bad as we thought it was gonna be with the tariffs, that we wouldn't have such a high deficit.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Yeah, and I don't want to minimize that that. And that's one of the things when the civil servants briefed us, they said, you know, the hit from tariffs wasn't as hard as we expected without wanting to minimize the local pain. Like I'm sure a lot of the readers in Sault Ste. Marie are gonna hear like, oh, the tariffs weren't as bad as they thought. Look at my job or you know, my it's it's not that's that that not to say specific local impacts uh that are bad didn't didn't happen. Yeah, the the the budget is always that balancing out. They have money uh to spend. How are they gonna spend it? How much do they end up having at the end of the year after everything's all said and done?

SPEAKER_01 6:56

The other thing, the figure that sticks over for me, and I've talked about this and I'm not an expert of this at all, but with that deficit now would bring the overall provincial debt to about$485 billion. And just eight years ago in 2018, it was around$337 billion. So that's a huge jump, and it keeps getting bigger and bigger. Can you speak to the ramification? I think I read somewhere that the interest alone that we're paying now every year on that is actually the same we're paying on uh post-secondary education. I could be wrong with that, but but it's like$16 billion just in interest payments. There's got to be a eventually where we can't keep doing this, right, Jess, or is that fair to say?

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Um, it really depends on who you talk to. When I'm not when I talk to them, um some would frame this as absolutely manageable, uh, not a risk for the the province of Ontario. We there's no reason that we can't keep this up. The the economy grows. Uh that's what matters is the size of the debt relative to the size of the economy. Uh, and the economy should hopefully keep growing uh so that it doesn't become an unmanageable problem. But some people are much more hawkish and concerned and and do think that this is a serious problem that needs tackling. The Minister of Finance for the province of Ontario is one of those people. He was very clear when he came into politics that this was his mission, was to write Ontario's fiscal ship, and he was gonna be the guy to do it.

SPEAKER_02 8:19

Uh, Jess, the government is accused of both spending too much and also for spending too little on things like health care and education. Can you speak to that a bit for us?

unknown 8:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's gotta be hard to be in government, right? You're gonna get it from all sides all the time. But that is actually a consistent criticism. So you'll have the same people in some cases um make both of those criticisms that the the the deficits, the debt is too high, um, the spending is overall too high, but this and the spend, but the spending on the things that people really need is too low. So I'll take those like one at a time on health care. We had some pretty strong words from the Ontario Hospital Association going into the budget saying that there's a billion-dollar structural deficit in the in the hospital funding. This is because the pressures on the hospital system are growing at like a 6% a year rate. There's a people who are getting older and needing more health care, things are getting more expensive, all of that. Um, but the government funding has only increased by 4% a year. Um, and so they only got their 4% this year again. Uh, the government's saying we've spending more on healthcare than we absolutely ever have, they've got to they've got to spend it right. All of those things are are true. Uh, you get similar uh concerns from the education sector that class sizes are too high, school boards are strapped, um, that the government the government's funding has not kept up with inflation, and the government will say we're spending records amount on education, and education advocates are saying it's still not enough. Uh, and then you have people who are the more fiscally conservatives warning that this conservative government is having too many deficits and too much debt, because they're of belief that it is heading towards somewhere that could be problematic or unsustainable, or at least wasteful, and how much you have to spend on interest payments. So they are getting it up from all sides. Uh, you do get the criticism from people who try to make both arguments at once that they're both spending too much and too little, is that they're spending too little on the things that matter and too much on the things like moving the science center or sort of unnecessary uh things. Uh that's a harder line to walk. Uh and I do, I would say to that criticism that all the frills that you want in that budget probably don't equal, don't definitely do not equal the healthcare budget, but it could make it make a dent.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

Just specifically on the healthcare budget, like you mentioned the hospitals and and they're they're advocating for so much more funding. How much more did they get? And are they happy with it or what are their what's been their reaction to it?

SPEAKER_00 10:53

I haven't seen a reaction statement out yet. I know that it it was the it was a 4% increase rather than the 6% they say necessary. Though how they will would phrase that and what they'll say has yet to be determined.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Yeah, I'd be interested to see that. Is there is a fair question to ask who the big loser is in this budget? Is there one one one organization or one uh sector that was fighting for something and is really unhappy with how this went? Or on the opposite, is there a big winner in the budget?

SPEAKER_00 11:19

Um that's that's a little tough. I think maybe education unions might see themselves as the the big loser. The I wouldn't want to put words into the mouths, but I don't think they're happy. Uh and the the education, the increase there was like a 0.6% increase, right? Which is pretty, pretty slim. And they've been worrying that it's not great. And the sector's really unhappy for a number of reasons. Um, the education minister keeps moving, musing about reform in terms of maybe eliminating trustees partially or somewhat or changing their roles, and he's taken over a whole bunch of school boards. And then the teach negotiations are are coming in to start. So that is uh an area of discontent uh that we're gonna hear a lot more about going forward. Um, I don't know about winners. Uh, there was a little bit of extra autism funding that advocates say is very important, but I don't think it's enough for what they say they they needed. Um uh home buyers, people who are interested in buying uh new built homes. Uh there's a this was announced before the budget, but it's part of the budget. You're gonna get the HST off a home if it's up to a million dollar home. And if it's there's a it phases out, but for one to up to 1.85 million, you'll still get$130,000 off. Um, that is meant to spur the the building of new homes, to sort of fix the market so that developers will start building again and be able to sell the homes that they build to people, because right now prices and incomes are at this disconnect where people can't afford to buy homes that are being built. So nobody's building them, which uh then drives up the price of housing. It's a pretty bad circle.

SPEAKER_02 13:02

Uh some other numbers here, uh Jess, infrastructure spending set to rise by uh 14% from uh$32.3 billion this fiscal year to$36.7 in uh$2627. Uh transit provincial highways and hospitals will each see uh their infrastructure spending uh jump by about uh a billion bucks. What else can you tell us about that?

SPEAKER_00 13:23

Yeah, there's there wasn't any huge new uh infrastructure announcements in the budget, but this government has made it a mission to build and is building a lot of things. So on transit, the Ontario line is uh underway in Toronto. It's actually right next door from my house where we're doing this. They're hard at work.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Look out the let's check it out. I'll go look out the window.

SPEAKER_00 13:43

Uh trucks. Uh and there's highway, there's progress on the various highway projects, the Bradford bypass and the 413. And there's even going to be an update on the tunnel. It's still in the feasibility study stage. So no one's building a tunnel yet, but there will be field work associated with the feasibility study starting this spring. We learned in the budget.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

One of my favorite topics. We're going to definitely have you on again to talk about that, Jess. Tell us about this Protect Ontario account investment fund. This is fascinating to me. I don't think the vast majority of Ontarians have any idea what it is.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Well, it's new, right? It's this is brand new. And even when the government and the civil servants were explaining it, they're they've cast it as a new way of doing things. Um, the most similar thing we have in Ontario already is the Building Ontario fund, but this is a little bit different. I'll try my best to explain it in layperson terms, but mostly because I am a layperson. So here it goes. Uh there's$4 billion that uh the government had here marked as part of this Protect Ontario count uh in the last budget. Then this is how they're saying they're gonna spend it. They've gone quietly out to the market to the private sector to find a manager, an investment fund manager from the private sector to invest this money on behalf of the province and test Ontarians' money on behalf of Ontarians into emerging sectors that the province then believes are going to be important to building the economy. They listed like critical minerals, defense, bio side, like biotech, stuff like that, AI is in there as well. Um, as a way to help boost the economy and presumably get some kind of return on investment for Ontarians. Um we don't know everything yet. So there's they're going out to these private sector potential partners. We don't know who I asked for information about like what do you, if you put in this like tender, this request for proposal, what's out there, they won't say. Uh we don't know yet what kind of rules or guardrails there are going to be around it. Uh the finance minister promises there will be guardrails, um, but not what they will be. There will be some kind of arm's length board, it looks like. Um, on one hand, it does seem like one of uh it seems aimed at making the economy stronger, making it better so that they can't afford to pay for healthcare for this growing and aging population and everything that it needs. And it's targeted at the kind of economic problem I have heard economists talk about is an issue in Canada. Um, but you know, best laid plans, who knows? I don't know if we'll be here in five years saying that this was a brilliant stroke or if this will be another boondockle because I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

Well, we'll check on it in five years.

SPEAKER_02 16:25

We'll we'll play this clip. We absolutely will. Jess, there's a kind of a mysterious skydome legislation change uh that's going to allow a parking lot to be developed. What can you tell us about that?

SPEAKER_00 16:37

Yeah, I mean, it's always the skydome in my heart. It was when this bill was passed when it was when it was made. So there's this area near the dome with some parking things for buses. That's provincially owned land. Uh, and that's written in legislation. So they're gonna have to pass legislation to open it up to some kind of development, and we don't know what yet. The Premier's had a lot of big grand ideas for changing Toronto, and we don't know what is in mind here. They haven't said yet.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

Aaron Powell All right. Speaking of grand ideas, one that we're very much against uh in the budget bill is the are the changes to the FOI legislation that we're all very concerned about here. Was it actually mentioned in the budget?

SPEAKER_00 17:19

Very much in passing. There's like a reference to modernizing it.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Just not no no none of the detail, just that we're gonna modernize it. Okay. And so what's the timeline on that? Well, maybe just remind our listeners, Jess, what what the changes are and how it's gonna impact what so many people do with FYI legislation.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

Aaron Powell Yeah, I'll try not to get too worked up about it.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

This is Go ahead. You can you can get as worked up as you want. That's fine.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

This one affects uh me personally and and journalists personally. So here goes. So when we are looking for information from this government, a lot of times we can't just get it by asking. We're told we have to submit a freedom of information request. Uh and when we're investigating this government, because I've got some great investigative journalists on my teams, we we need to get information through FOI. It means you submit a request to a government body and you describe the information that you're looking for, and they're supposed to give it to you. They can charge you money to do it. And there are a lot of exceptions uh laid out in a law that tells you what information you can't get. So people's personal information, health information, information that would, you know, harm a commercial deal, information that would compromise national security or police investigation. There's like the list, this goes on. Information that would disclose a cabinet deliberations. It's called cabinet confidence. The premier and his ministers are allowed to talk in confidence about how to run this province and we don't get to know what they thought before they made the decision so that they can say their piece uh freely, which makes sense. But what the government is doing with this law is they're gonna take away our access to like records held by ministers and the premier's office, um, which is a big blow to transparency. We use this tool to get the calendars of ministers and the premiers to find out what kind of lobbyists and other folks they're they're meeting with so we know what they're doing because they don't disclose that publicly. Uh in the federal government, if a lobbyist meets with the politician, they have to publicly report it. They don't in Ontario. The period doesn't call us where he is on any given day, and publishing schedules used to be routine. We also look for emails and communications between political staffers so we can get a sense of the political calculations that go into the things that the government does. So we can tell everybody maybe why they're doing what they're doing and what voters might want to know when they're making their choice in the next election. So they're they are taking this away. Um, the information and privacy commissioner who oversees this regime is appears to be livid, quite outspoken about how harmful this is to trust in government, to transparency, to a functioning democracy. Um, but these changes are written in the budget bill. Uh, we have heard some indications that they're gonna speed through the budget bill very quickly, perhaps skipping committee as they have before and passing it as soon as possible. The consequences uh for entire politics are pretty severe. There are a couple of really big FOI court cases, and we have some big FOIs that look like they're gonna be um ended. Uh, the Global News has looked for the prof uh the premier's cell phone records uh on government business only to figure out what government business he's been conducting on his phone during a certain period of time. The guy who was in the middle of the greenbelt scandal working for the housing minister, his chief of staff is in a court fight with the integrity commissioner about protecting government records about the greenbelt that he's apparently kept in his personal Gmail account, which is a no-no. Uh, she's asked him to turn them over. He's refusing. If this legislation passes, I believe the lawyers have not confirmed this yet on either side. They won't comment, but that's likely in jeopardy. So we won't learn who said who told them to do what, if that's in there when it came to the green belt, which is a big problem in Ontario and is still under police investigation. That is, unless the police can compile those records down the road.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

It's it's it's so it's hugely important. I can't say it better than you did. And I viewers and listeners in the public in Ontario can make what they want of this, but it's very interesting that this change was announced shortly after the Ford government loses a court case about being ordered to hand over those records to the information privacy commissioner, the cell phone records, so that she can take a look and see what's in there. That's what was happening, right? Jess, they lost that that hearing and then all of a sudden this this this uh this legislation comes out. Is there any way that you can see that any of this could be amended? I mean, is is that when when it actually goes through the House for all the different readings, is there anything that could happen where this was changed?

SPEAKER_00 21:46

I mean they can. Will they? Yeah. They they won't. I don't I don't expect them to budge, but they might maybe they there have been times where the premier has backed down in the face of political pressure before. The Greenbelt is one of those times. I'm not sure people are beating down his doors vote changes to the FOI system, but I wish they would. Yes. And it it would even be hard. If there was actually anybody in his caucus who would disagree, it would be one thing to vote against the changes on their own. I think that would still be unlikely, but it's even harder when it's in a budget though, because then you're voting non-confidence in the government itself. And that's that's not going to happen.

SPEAKER_01 22:23

Yeah. And I think if people don't understand, it just means that we're going to know less about what our government is doing. And that's that's that's the concern here. That's the that's the one-sentence version of what's going on here. You're gonna know a lot less.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

Jess, what's the uh the whole thing around the speaker's warrant that I heard that uh the NDP uh was was pursuing?

SPEAKER_00 22:39

It was a failed tactic. I don't think it was ever gonna succeed. Um they're they're the opposition, but they don't have a, they can't command a majority against the government. So they were trying to uh they would have needed uh an order from the legislature itself, from the MPPs, uh, to this through the speaker, like a request to the speaker who would order the production of these records. This has been done in the past in Ontario. Um there were records, I think, in the um air ambulance scandal, I believe, that were compelled that way, that the orders could come through a committee to the speaker, but essentially the speaker has these uh court-like uh abilities to compel documents uh and even the yeah, people and stuff like that. But that's what they were saying they were attempting to do, but I don't think they ever had the power to get it done. Got it.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Well, we're all gonna be watching this closely or starting early next week as this bill makes its way through. Um, Jess, is there anything else about the budget that we should have touched on that we should have asked you about?

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Uh there is a small business corporate income tax cut. That will be good news for for small business owners. Um other than that, it is sort of as as expected and all the things that we have touched on in this podcast.

SPEAKER_02 23:52

Great. All right, great stuff. Uh as always, from Toronto and from the Trillium. There's Jessica Smith Cross, our editor-in-chief. Thanks, Jess. Uh have a terrific weekend.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

Thanks. You too.

SPEAKER_02 24:05

I know like you, we've uh been reading a ton of stuff uh on yesterday's budget, but now after that, yeah, I feel like I get it all.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Nobody explains things better than Jess. She's the best in the business and her team is the best in the business. Yes, they are. And uh I take zero credit for what they do. They they they do they do their thing and they're they're amazing at it. And she just understands all the angles of everything we talked about. I gotta tell you, the figure that still sticks out for me is that$485 million overall provincial debt, right? Yes, yeah. And you've see there's actually, you know, this obviously in this day and age, you can find charts very easily that show you where it was 20 years ago and where it is today. Yeah. And it's just it's just multiple. And the interest. And the interest is about 16 billion. Yeah, yeah. And I guess, you know, as Jess said, like it they feel as long as the economy is doing well and there's revenues coming in that they can afford to pay. But it's like your it's like your house. I mean, you can keep earning more and more money, but you know, you've got that kind of interest payment on your on your mortgage or whatever it is. That's all.

SPEAKER_02 24:57

It's like making the minimum payment on the money.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

That's a lot of money. I'm saying this now. We're gonna do an episode next week. I'm gonna get a couple experts to come on and talk about it because she mentioned there's two arguments, right? There's the there's the one who says, Oh, it's not that big of a deal, and the ones are like, yeah, this is a big deal. We're gonna get it, we're gonna have a discussion about that because it's no deal. Like if I don't know, seven mortgages on your house, you're you're in trouble. You don't spend more than you're making. That's right. And uh and I do encourage people, I do encourage people to listen to the part about the FOI changes. Yes. This is happening very, very quickly. If you want to voice your concern, reach out to your MPP, reach out to the Premier's office. Yeah. Do whatever you can because this is this is gonna have an impact and you won't feel it tomorrow. Because as we know from the the work of the Trillium alone, these requests can sometimes take years. And there are some of the requests that are gonna be retroactively killed, have been in the works for years, and they're this close to being released, and then all of a sudden they're gonna put the put the axe down on that. Uh I think people need to voice their concerns about this. Any time uh in a democracy that a government is less transparent is a bad day. Agreed. Uh before we go, how did your Tigers do last night? Big opening day win, eight-two. This is great. Terrick Scuble's six, six scoreless innings, but they have a rookie, he's a top number two prospect in baseball. He got he worked his way onto the team. He shouldn't have made the team, made the team, went four for five last night in his spring, his op his debut on opening day. He got two doubles, two singles, knocked in two runs. Crazy. 21 years old. Nice. What are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 26:24

Uh what I'm not doing that. That is for sure. All right, closer look at villagemedia.ca. That's our email address. Reach out anytime. Zach Trunzo at the uh Helm This Evening, executive producer of this evening show. For Michael Friscalanti, I'm Scott Sexmith. Have a great weekend. We'll see you back here Monday night at seven on Closer Look.