Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa, right, delivers the 2017 Ontario budget next to Premier Kathleen Wynne at Queen’s Park in Toronto on Thursday, April 27, 2017.

Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa, right, delivers the 2017 Ontario budget next to Premier Kathleen Wynne at Queen’s Park in Toronto on Thursday, April 27, 2017.
Photo Credit: PC / Nathan Denette

Ontario’s first balanced budget in decade promises billions in health care

Ontario’s Liberal government released on Thursday its first balanced budget in nearly a decade, a fiscal plan designed to appeal to broad categories of voters in the province ahead of an election next summer.

The centrepiece of the $141.1 billion spending plan is increased funding for health care by $7 billion over the next three years, including a signature $465 million pharmacare program that would cover prescription medications for people under age 25, with no deductible or co-payment as of January 2018.

“Four years ago, our government promised to balance the budget and today … I am proud to announce that we did it,” said Finance Minister Charles Sousa, promising to keep balanced books again in 2018-19 and the year after that if the Liberals are re-elected in the June 7, 2018 election.

The last time Ontario, Canada’s largest province, had managed to balance its books was in 2008.

“The road to balance has not been easy. We had critical choices to make,” said Sousa.

“We could do what some suggested: cut expenses, cut vital programs and services that people depended on to eliminate the deficit or take a more principled and thoughtful approach to make strategic investments and stimulate economic growth.”

Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa, right, delivers the 2017 Ontario budget next to Premier Kathleen Wynne at Queen’s Park in Toronto on Thursday, April 27, 2017.
Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa, right, delivers the 2017 Ontario budget next to Premier Kathleen Wynne at Queen’s Park in Toronto on Thursday, April 27, 2017. © PC/Nathan Denette

The budget also includes funds for new child care spaces, money to build schools, measures aimed at seniors and previously announced cuts to electricity bills and plans to cool the housing market.

Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown called the budget a “patchwork attempt by a desperate government to fix the mess they’ve created before the next election.”

Ontario New Democratic Party Leader Andrea Horwath, who just this week promised her own version of universal pharmacare if elected, said the Liberal plan seemed improvised.

“All I can think of is that they made it up on the back of a napkin before they got to today,” she said.

With files from The Canadian Press

Categories: Economy, Politics, Society
Tags: ,

Do you want to report an error or a typo? Click here!

For reasons beyond our control, and for an undetermined period of time, our comment section is now closed. However, our social networks remain open to your contributions.