Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Quebec Balances 2015-2016 Budget, Ontario Obviously No

We won't know the Ontario numbers for 2015-2016 until the budget is released, but I wanted to note that Quebec has plans to balance their budget in 2015-2016. Ontario's certainly won't be balanced, although the Liberals have been planning for many years to do it in 2017-2018.

Quebec's 2014-2015 deficit was only $2.35 billion, way less than Ontario's $10.9 billion deficit adjusting for population and GDP. Ontario's 2014-2015 is also significantly higher than the federal deficit.

Obviously Quebec has controlled expenses to a much greater extent over the past few years (Ontario's 2014-2015 is actually bigger than the 2013-2014 deficit which in turn was bigger than the 2012-2013 deficit).

Quebec's debt to GDP ratio will peak at 54.9% this March and start to decline with this budget. Ontario's will continue to rise although I'm skeptical it will ever match Quebec's. According to Wikipedia, Ontario's debt to GDP ratio was 37.4% in 2013, although that's obviously higher now.

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