Conference Board predicts it’ll be a decade before Ontario has a balanced budget
Posted February 2, 2012 8:58 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
OTTAWA – The Conference Board of Canada is predicting that Ontario will be unable to balance its budget for a decade as economic growth slows and government revenues drop.
And the Ottawa-based economic think-tank says the province will need to rein in health-care cost increases if it wants to balance the books by 2022.
That’s because potential sustainable economic growth for Ontario is dropping to 1.9 per cent a year.
The Conference Board said to keep the publicly funded health-care system growing at its recent levels, the province will have to raise taxes.
The Ontario government has said it plans to eliminate its annual fiscal deficit in 2017-18, but the Conference Board said even with planned spending cuts, meeting fiscal targets will be delayed due to slower projected revenue growth.
