On Thursday, Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy introduced a record $204.7-billion spending plan that included increased funding for health care. However, the budget offered little in the way of help to combat inflation and warned of looming economic uncertainty.
Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government’s latest budget proposes a path back to fiscal stability. The record $204.7-billion spending plan, tabled by Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy on Thursday, does increase funding for health care, thanks in part to federal cash infusion post-pandemic. However, with Ontario’s economy facing uncertainty, the budget provides few additional measures to combat the rising cost of living or inflation. Despite overall inflation running at 5.2% and grocery prices up by 10.6% since this time last year, Premier Doug Ford’s Tories offer little in the way of tax cuts or other relief for consumers. The treasurer acknowledges people are struggling to afford housing, groceries, and other household goods. Opposition party leaders Marit Stiles and John Fraser criticize the budget for not doing enough to help ordinary Ontarians deal with inflation, such as bringing back meaningful rent control.
The government, however, maintains that it has reduced last year’s projected $19.9-billion deficit to $2.2 billion, and projects a $1.3-billion shortfall in 2023-24. Bethlenfalvy projects that Ontario would be back in balance with a $200-million surplus in 2024-25 and a $4.4-billion surplus the following year. The treasurer boasts of incentives to encourage electric-vehicle manufacturing and related mining measures to promote the extraction of critical minerals, showing that the government is investing more in housing, highways, transit, skilled trades, manufacturing, health care, and education.
The fiscal blueprint spends almost 30% more than the final budget of former Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne five years ago, including $81 billion on health care. Bethlenfalvy emphasized that the government is investing $15.3 billion more into health over the next three years, including the $4.4-billion additional funding negotiated by Premier Ford. The treasurer also hailed his “historic investment of an additional $202 million each year in supportive housing and homelessness programs to provide not only a hand up, but hope, for a better life for those that need it the most.”
However, the government’s goal of building 1.5 million new homes over the next decade, which led to Ford’s controversial decision to open up 7,400 acres of protected Greenbelt lands for development, has been dealt a setback. Rising interest rates and other market factors project just 80,300 new housing starts this year, far below the 150,000 required annually to achieve the target. The opposition Green Party leader, Mike Schreiner, argues that the government’s sprawl agenda will make life less affordable for people, instead of addressing the housing crisis.
In conclusion, the Progressive Conservative government’s latest budget focuses on fiscal stability, investing more in health care, housing, transit, education, and the skilled trades. The government’s goal of building 1.5 million new homes has hit a setback, but the treasurer maintains that the government is taking bold action and calling on the federal government to defer the harmonized sales tax on all new large-scale purpose-built rental housing projects. However, opposition parties and leaders criticize the budget for not doing enough to help ordinary Ontarians deal with inflation, such as bringing back meaningful rent control.
