Ballooning deficit and changes to auto insurance included in Ontario budget

The Ontario government has tabled the largest spending budget in the province’s history with more on that, what that means for you and your home. We’re joined now by Tina as Danny, our very first guest in our new studio here on City News 24/7. Thanks for being with us. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. OK. So you were there as the budget was announced yesterday. I wonder what your big take away was. Well, I think the biggest take away was this ballooning deficit. It’s going to triple over the next fiscal year from three, A $3 billion deficit to just under $10 billion. So this is coming from a Conservative government and a finance minister who has called himself a fiscal prudent manager. It was unexpected because in last year’s budget they were forecasting A surplus for the upcoming fiscal year. So a lot of questions surrounding that. The contingency fund, the rainy day fund has also shrunk. It went from $5.4 billion to half a billion dollars. So they don’t even have cash to fall back on at this point. We know a lot of this is Bill 124 impact billions of dollars in back pay to public sector workers owed by this government. Already they’ve spent $6 billion paying healthcare workers, teachers, some of that back pay. So we’ll have to wait and see how that continues to affect the budget. But you know the finance minister, he was optimistic. He said there is a path to balance. They are forecasting a surplus in 2026, which is election year. It is a modest surplus though it’s only 0.5 billion dollars. So again, we’ll have to wait and see. But he did say that, you know, this government isn’t immune from, you know, the slowing economy from global conflicts, from high interest rates and inflation. And these are all having an effect on Ontarios economic outlook as well. But you know, he did say they’re continuing to make investments in key sectors. Of course, not everyone agrees that they are. Well, I wonder what those investments are. What are some of the big ticket items that they are putting that money towards right now? I think their focus has always been on infrastructure projects, these Hwy. 413, for instance, transit is a big where a lot of money is being thrown right now. Health and education, which a lot of eyes were on those two sectors because, you know, we’ve heard from healthcare workers, from education workers that these sectors are underfunded. You know, they were expecting more from this budget. There increases are modest and the majority of that money is for the bill, 124 back pay. So I think it was a 1.5 billion for health, 1.8 billion for education. But again, most of that money is going to public sector workers. I’m going to throw to a clip from the finance minister talking about, you know, this growing deficit and his reaction to it. Let’s have a listen. The deficit is bigger, but we’re not immune from global forces slowing down our economy. These higher interest rates, high inflation are having their impact. We’re under $10 billion. We saw Quebec have an $11 billion deficit there. Their economy is roughly half of our size. We saw BC with a record deficit and by both measures we compare very favorably. So again like he is optimistic and and he is saying that significant investments are still being made. We also know housing is a big priority for this government as well. So they’ve been talking about their housing starts, keeping track of how many new homes are being constructed year after year and it is projected to go up. They’re still not hitting their targets though. They need to be building 150,000 homes a year in order to meet their ultimate target of 1.5 million homes by 2031. So we’ll have to wait and see if they’re able to kind of increase those numbers in the coming years. Like housing is a word we hear a lot these days. Affordability is another one. How does this budget kind of play into that issue that I know is top of mind for pretty much everybody right now? Yeah, absolutely. And I know a lot of people watching this, we’re hoping for more goodies, right? But a lot of them were already announced in pre budget announcements. I mean the gas tax cut was announced right before the budget was released. Tuition has been frozen. There’s been they’ve announced that there’s gonna be no new tolls on provincial any new provincial highways that are going to be built. The only really new thing we heard about was changes to auto insurance, but it was very vague and detail. Basically they are talking about giving drivers more options, more choices when it comes to auto insurance. Maybe they can opt out of certain requirements or if they have auto, if they have insurance with their work for instance, maybe they don’t have to double up. But again, it it, it, it seems like the government is still in talks with the third party members that need to kind of approve this and finalize it. There’s no clear timeline on that. As for housing, one of the announcements that we heard before this budget was infrastructure funding going to municipalities, $1.8 billion earmarked for roads, water, sewage, all of these things that municipalities say, you know, these are barriers. They’re not able to build new homes because they don’t have the infrastructure in place. And I know we have a clip from Olivia Chow also reacting to some of that money coming in. Excellent, given that this budget really focus on municipal housing infrastructure funds the built Ontario fund, there’s quite a good number of infrastructure fund which is which makes me hopeful. So she sounds helpful. I mean, I think anytime municipalities are getting some extra cash, they are hopeful. But again, there’s a lot of reaction pouring in even today. Melissa says as special interest groups, you know, digest this budget, we’ve heard from the education sector, health sector, mental health sector. So we are going to be gathering a lot more reaction today on on how people feel about this budget. OK. So we’re gonna hear more from you tonight. Tina has Danny on City News Five and six. Thanks again for being our very first guest here on the new set at City News 24/7. I will. Thanks, Melissa. Thanks, Catina.