The Progressive Conservatives are using financial fearmongering as a cover for cutting funding for public services. This paper outlines two alternative fiscal paths that maintain and enhance services while reducing Ontario's deficit and debt-to-GDP ratio. Both alternative budget proposals increase annual spending by the 3.5% necessary to maintain service levels, and top this up by $2.4 billion in 2019-20, rising to $3.8 billion by 2022-23, for service enhancements approved in the 2018 Ontario budget.
Ontario Alternative Budget
TORONTO—A new report released today shows the Ontario government has options that would allow it to reduce the provincial deficit while maintaining and enhancing public services, as long as the province begins to address its longstanding revenue problem.
Over on our blog, Behind the Numbers, CCPA Research Associates are sharing their analyses of the Ontario budget:
The Ontario government tabled its budget today, putting deficit reduction ahead of jobs. The budget also penalizes social assistance recipients and threatens to burden postsecondary students with tuition fee hikes. For full details, see Off target:
The CCPA Ontario office released its prescription for this year's provincial budget, calling on the Ontario government to make job creation -- not deficit reduction -- a top priority. It shows how hard hit Ontario has been by the global recession. Ontario accounted for 59% of the nation's permanent job losses last year. By focusing on a strong job creation plan, the Ontario government can get Ontarians working again, which is good for the economy and will be important to the province's future deficit reduction efforts.
Determined to benefit from the shock of a global recession, conservatives are whipping up unnecessary hysteria over the fiscal deficits governments have incurred in the past year’s efforts to protect their citizens.
TORONTO – One year after the Crash of October 2008, Ontario’s recession is looking eerily like the Great Depression and governments need to do something about that, says a report released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Close Encounters of the Thirties Kind, by social policy expert John Stapleton, is a blow-by-blow account of the similarities between Ontario circa 1930s and today.