Where's the First Quarter of 2014 Ontario GDP Numbers Charles Sousa?

The Ontario finance ministry provides quarterly updates of Ontario's finances here:

http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/budget/finances/2013/

From the page itself:

"As required by the Fiscal Transparency and Accountability Act, the First Quarter Ontario Finances is released on or before August 15 and the Third Quarter Ontario Finances is released on or before February 15."

It is well past August 15th and I've been checking, but the update isn't there. It is my guess that Ontario's GDP in the first quarter may have been negative (or at least very low). The government had been predicting GDP growth of 2.1% in the 2014 budget document. That seems unlikely now.

There is supposed to be an update today, so maybe we'll finally learn the 2014 first quarter GDP numbers. 

Is Hamilton Mountain NDP MPP Monique Taylor in Trouble on Hamilton Mountain

With a lot of commentators saying that the NDP could lose some seats in the upcoming provincial elections, I wondered about the three Hamilton NDP seats. Obviously leader Andrea Horwath isn't losing. I'm also assuming that Hamilton East/Stoney Creek is OK. That leaves rookie Monique Taylor on Hamilton Mountain.

Tayolr beat incumbent Liberal Sophie Aggelonitis, a cabinet minister last time round, with 20,492 votes versus 14,694 for the Liberal. That's a pretty healthy margin for beating an incumbent, although in my opinion Aggelonitis wasn't a super strong candidate, with some weak fairly weak ties to Hamilton Mountain.

With regards to the NDP losing seats, I'm guessing they are likely to be those they picked up in bye-elections rather than those they won in the last election. I don't think Liberal candidate Javid Mirza is a weak candidate, however his advocating against the province funding LRT in Hamilton seems weird, although for the Liberals who would prefer to spend the money in Toronto as opposed to Hamilton he's helping them out.

If Taylor loses, the NDP have had a bad night. The one advantage Taylor has is that voters likely know that the seat isn't going to go PC so they can vote NDP without worrying too much about Tim Hudak.

Steve Paikin's Blog Post "Are The Liberals Really Promising No Layoffs?"

Steve Paikin of TVO's the Agenda made what I thought was a very good blog post about the Liberals and layoffs. Certainly they haven't been campaigning like they will be making layoffs although they've claimed that they will follow through on balancing the budget in the 2017-2018 fiscal year.

Paikin has does a good job of scoping out the financial realities of Ontario's fiscal situation:

"From the beginning of the Great Recession (2008-09) to the current fiscal year (2014-15), revenues into Ontario’s treasury have increased by more than $21 billion.

That sounds good if you're trying to pay for programs people want.
However, program spending has increased by $24 billion.

And our annual interest payments on the debt have increased by almost $2.5 billion.

That sounds bad. That sounds unsustainable.

Astonishingly, the net debt under the Liberals during that six-year period has increased from $170 billion to $290 billion. As a percentage of our economy, it’s gone from 28 per cent to 40 per cent. That’s not Greece (155 per cent), but clearly it’s alarming."

The one thing I would say about comparing to Greece in this manner is that we still have a quite sizable federal debt (albeit as a percentage of GDP we're close to an inflection point where it starts to decrease) that should be included in some manner when comparisons to Greece are made.

Paikin also lays out the Ontario deficits since the 2009-2010 fiscal year.

"The Liberals primed the pump to the tune of an all-time high $19 billion deficit in 2009-10, and then started to whittle that deficit down:

• $14 billion in 2010-11
•  $13 billion in 2011-12
• $9.2 billion in 2012-13

However, the following year, the deficit went back up:

• to $11.3 billion in 2013-14
• to $12.5 billion in 2014-15 (in the second Wynne budget which didn’t pass)."

Personally I don't think enough has been made of the fact that the deficit has now risen (or would have) for two years in a row. Also I'm not sure I would agree with the phrase "primed the pump." The big 2009-2010 deficit was mainly due to revenues totally collapsing due to the recession. However this also leaves Ontario vulnerable if another recession were to occur in the next few years. Ontario's economic growth has been weak since basically since the Harris years, so pushing Ontario into the technical definition of a recession (two consecutive quarters of negative growth wouldn't take much).

Nanos Poll Has Hudak and Wynne Close, Horwath in Third

Nanos has a new poll out, showing that the Ontario Liberals have 36%, the PCs at 33% and the NDP at 25%. Nanos' previous poll in January had the Liberals at 36%, the PCs at 28% and the NDP at 27%.

I'm going to try and keep track of all Ontario polls from now on. I've noticed that in Ontario Nanos seems to have the Liberals higher than other pollsters. For instance Forum's last poll I believe had them well back of the Tories. Seems strange, but I'll be keeping track of Ontario polls from now on.

I'm skeptical that the Liberals would poll currently higher than the Tories if an election were held today, but one should never underestimate the propensity of the Ontario voter to vote Liberal provincially.