Spending is the source of Ontario's deficit and debt problem /

Ontario’s net debt has increased dramati- If the government had restrained program cally since 2003/04, with the province running spending growth to the rate of nominal GDP budget deficits in 10 of the past 13 years. [...] Ontario’s run-up in debt has created an on- In the second half of the decade, the govern- going cost for taxpayers in the province. [...] The large debt load and associated economic chal- Second, the narrative that weak revenue lenges facing the province today are therefore par- growth is responsible for Ontario’s deficits and ticularly the result of the debt accumulation that the run-up in debt ignores important evidence. [...] And over the whole 2003/04 to 2015/16 growth in the overall economy (GDP), and the period, the pace of provincial government rev- combined effects of inflation and population enue growth has exceeded the rate necessary to growth. [...] In fact, these data demonstrates a meaningful increase in the size of the demonstrate that the growth in real per capita provincial government’s tax take relative to the size of spending was several times larger than the rate of the provincial economy during this period.