Juno News - Ontario’s half-trillion dollar debt is only getting worse

00:00:00.000 welcome to the fighter with chris sims i am chris sims i'm the alberta director for the canadian

00:00:09.900 taxpayers federation we have got the inside scoop on what is happening in ontario and before our

00:00:16.720 western viewers are like why do i care about ontario well you probably have friends and

00:00:20.900 family that live in ontario ontario is the biggest province in this country with around 15 million

00:00:26.220 people there and um what they do definitely has ramifications across the entire country

00:00:33.260 get this folks this blew my mind coming up in this next interview the ontario debt is now close to

00:00:42.440 half a trillion dollars provincially provincially okay like pretend that justin trudeau you know

00:00:51.100 was never prime minister mark carney all that stuff like no shelvin just think of ontario right

00:00:57.900 good things grow all that stuff right canada you know forget what that was that super canada fun

00:01:03.240 park you used to go to when i was a kid african lion safari ontario they are close to half a

00:01:10.140 trillion dollars in debt now the ford government is just on a spending binge it's like math is a

00:01:19.740 social construct now. Like they don't care. And the reason why we all have to care, okay, especially

00:01:27.300 taxpayers in Ontario, is because the debt isn't something that can just be ignored. No, the

00:01:34.340 interest on the Ontario provincial debt is a line item in the budget, which must be paid by

00:01:41.520 taxpayers. Okay. Taxpayers from Wawa to Toronto, to London, to Ottawa, like you name it all through

00:01:52.400 the province of Ontario, you taxpayers are paying the debt interest. And it seems like the Ford

00:01:59.120 government really could not care less about it. Now, where are they spending the money? How fast

00:02:06.300 are they spending it? Are they giving us any tax relief whatsoever? Is there any hope in sight

00:02:12.760 of actually reining this thing in and starting to try to balance the budget? Let's find out.

00:02:19.740 Joining me now is Noah Jarvis. He is our Ontario Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

00:02:26.120 and is of course no stranger to this audience here at Juno News as he was a long-time reporter

00:02:32.320 and contributor to True North.

00:02:34.540 Noah, nice to see you over the video machine.

00:02:37.660 You were super busy at Queen's Park in Toronto,

00:02:40.800 your provincial capital.

00:02:42.120 Just before we get into the really depressing numbers

00:02:45.260 and the debt and stuff,

00:02:47.160 it's kind of neat going to these buildings.

00:02:49.280 Like on budget day, it's busy, it's buzzy.

00:02:52.600 Set the scene for our viewers.

00:02:54.520 What was it like going in there to cover the budget?

00:02:57.760 Well, you know, say what you will

00:02:59.440 about the Ontario government

00:03:00.540 and how much they're spending.

00:03:02.320 but you know queens park is quite the uh beautiful uh old building uh so you know as a as the ctf

00:03:08.400 ontario director i walk in to queens park and uh the the first goal is to find out what is going

00:03:14.400 on with the budget so normally in other provinces they have a physical what's called a budget lockup

00:03:20.880 where stakeholders and members of the media they all go into one room and someone from the ministry

00:03:26.480 of finance gets up there and talks to you about what's in the budget you know some lockups are

00:03:31.600 are more useful than others as you know Chris sometimes they are straightforward about what

00:03:36.660 how they're spending and what the debt increase will look like others not so much but in Ontario

00:03:42.540 they don't have a physical lockup they have a virtual technical briefing that's about 10 minutes

00:03:48.540 not much longer than that so we basically just had to you know log in and watch the technical

00:03:56.180 briefing while we're at Queen's Park. And the only interesting thing that they really told us was

00:04:01.960 that the debt interest will be $17.2 billion. And I'm sure we'll get more into that as we go on. But

00:04:09.080 they really don't give you very much useful information. So you have to wait until the

00:04:14.760 budget is actually released at four o'clock to get all the important information. And then we

00:04:22.100 take that information and we let our tax fighter army know what is actually in the budget because 0.84

00:04:29.800 the government they're not going to be straightforward with how they're burning a bunch

00:04:34.040 of money and driving up the debt. So just let me be clear you're not given an embargoed copy of the

00:04:40.560 provincial budget like usually people need to you know swear a blood oath and you know like

00:04:45.400 leave their blackberry with them I'm dating myself you have to swear that you're not going

00:04:50.340 to say anything and breaking embargo is a big deal like you're in major trouble if you do that

00:04:54.240 in most other provinces you get the budget documents either in paper or electronic form

00:04:59.720 early in the morning and then you can just nerd out and pour over the hundreds of pages and then

00:05:05.080 once the finance minister stands up you can talk about it you guys don't even get that early in

00:05:11.160 the day no uh to my knowledge only i think the mpp has got an embargo copy of the budget and and you

00:05:18.580 know if you're the foreign government who tabled a pretty bad budget uh you know debt's going up

00:05:24.400 25.8 billion dollars this year you probably aren't proud of the fact uh that of what's in the budget

00:05:31.920 you probably don't want to let the canadian taxpayers federation to be clued in uh to what

00:05:37.140 is going on uh beforehand and so i think we can immediately blast them for uh driving up the debt

00:05:43.440 So, I mean, from like a cynical self-interest perspective, it kind of makes sense, but it goes to show that the foregover, they're not really very much into being honest and open and transparent.

00:05:55.840 No kidding. Okay, you've taken us behind the curtain, right, and set the scene for us. Now, let's actually get to the numbers.

00:06:02.380 How much are they adding to the debt? What is the debt right now? Why does it matter to the average hardworking Ontarian that's watching right now?

00:06:10.580 Right. So the Ford government is adding twenty five point eight billion dollars to the debt, driving up total debt here in Ontario to four hundred and eighty five billion dollars, nearly a half trillion dollars.

00:06:25.300 This is not the federal debt we're talking about. This is a provincial debt. This is just one province in our great confederation.

00:06:32.420 485 billion dollars that taxpayers are going to have to pay back and we are already paying uh for

00:06:40.100 a years-long legacy of overspending by the government debt interest charges as i mentioned

00:06:46.580 hit 17.2 billion dollars in this budget that's 17.2 billion dollars that's not going towards

00:06:53.360 building schools hospitals roads that's about 1.4 billion a month about 350 million dollars every

00:07:01.060 week that is going towards bondholders on bay street just imagine burning down 358 homes uh

00:07:09.380 every week that is nuts with 17.2 billion you can build about 650 schools here in ontario so that

00:07:18.500 money is not going towards uh helping taxpayers uh with tax cuts it's not going towards building

00:07:25.120 key infrastructure it's going towards bankers and that's because uh the government over the

00:07:30.500 past several years, no matter what political stripe they are a part of, has been reckless

00:07:35.360 with managing taxpayer dollars. Okay, that was so much information, Noah. You're doing a great job

00:07:41.280 covering this, but I got to slow down here so my brain can absorb this. Did you say that the debt

00:07:48.260 is $485 billion? $485 billion. And look, when Ford was campaigning back in 2018, the debt was about

00:08:00.220 $337 billion, still a lot. And at that time, Ford told Ontarians that Ontario's debt problem

00:08:09.380 is significant and that the previous Kathleen Wynne government was making it worse by adding 0.85

00:08:15.820 on billions of dollars of debt every year. So what does the Ford government do when they get

00:08:20.920 into power? Well, they continue adding on to the debt. I mean, last year they added on an

00:08:26.900 astonishing $32 billion of debts. And now this year, they're adding on nearly $26 billion to

00:08:34.840 the debt. So it doesn't really seem that they are slowing down on this big borrowing binge.

00:08:41.460 And it's really encapsulated by this big borrowing budget here. Almost $26 billion added to our debt

00:08:49.040 money that taxpayers are going to have to pay back down the line. And it's really frustrating that

00:08:54.480 Ford acknowledges the problem of our debt and is doing very little to fix it.

00:09:00.160 No kidding. It's one of those situations where I remember in The Simpsons where I forget what

00:09:04.640 Homer was doing, but he was screwing up big time and everybody was telling him to stop screwing up

00:09:10.060 and he was the one in power that could actually fix it. And his main line was, I know, but how?

00:09:15.820 Dude, you're the premier, like Premier Ford. You're the one that needs to balance the budget.

00:09:20.920 you're the one that needs to start paying down this like monstrous debt i still can't wrap my

00:09:26.060 head around that noah like the debt interest payments are 300 million a week and you mentioned

00:09:34.500 like 300 and something houses that's because of course like you know unfortunately you can imagine

00:09:40.560 paying or one can imagine i can't one can imagine paying a million dollars for a house in ontario

00:09:47.260 right like if you mix in like the fancy stuff near toronto and the more affordable stuff elsewhere

00:09:53.420 and i use that term lightly sorry guys um so just picture like a whole neighborhood right

00:09:59.060 a low of over 300 houses burn them down every saturday night that's what you guys are paying

00:10:06.120 in debt interest provincially yeah it is absolutely nuts look i i know that uh your your alberta

00:10:13.540 budget wasn't great either. No, but at least at least in Alberta, there's sort of the understanding

00:10:19.140 that when you add on to the debt, that's something that taxpayers are going to have to pay back. And

00:10:23.500 it really hurts taxpayers going down the line. Whereas it seems as if for 20 years, we've had

00:10:30.400 successive governments that have just not been dealing with this debt issue, even if they

00:10:35.780 acknowledge that it is a problem. I mean, credits are the current opposition liberals who acknowledge

00:10:41.760 the debt problem but when they were in power uh they didn't do much to uh stop the borrowing binge

00:10:46.600 forward acknowledge uh that we have a debt problem but he's not doing much to uh uh solve the

00:10:51.480 borrowing binge help uh peter uh bethmanfall the our finance minister back in 2019 gave a speech

00:10:57.800 to the canada club and said that ontario has a doesn't have a revenue problem it has a spending

00:11:03.780 problem something that i uh repeatedly mentioned and i'd hope that he remembers his comments back

00:11:09.800 in 2019 when he's taping the next budget but clearly he forgot about it for these past few

00:11:15.960 years and that spending problem is the reason why we have this debt problem the and the ontario

00:11:22.440 government they're not really doing much to fix the spending problem spending is up 5.8 billion

00:11:27.640 dollars this year even though revenues are basically flatlining because of some economic

00:11:34.440 pressure. So that means that Beth and Falvey and Ford are doing very little to find the necessary

00:11:41.100 cuts to stop this borrowing bridge. They're not cutting all the political welfare that they're 0.98

00:11:47.280 giving to Ontario's parties. They're not cutting all the corporate welfare that they're giving to

00:11:52.400 big businesses and multinationals. They're not cutting all the government advertising that. I

00:11:58.540 mean, Chris, I don't know if you've been in Ontario lately, but if you turn on the TV or,

00:12:03.700 you know you go down to say um you see a billboard uh or you log on to say a website like the toronto

00:12:11.540 sun or whatever uh you're gonna get inundated with a bunch of protect ontario ads and that's

00:12:16.420 that's not cheap it costs hundreds of a million dollars every year um to you know put up all these

00:12:21.860 ads so uh i think that uh if the fore government really wanted to be serious um with uh fixing

00:12:28.100 the spending problem they would be looking at cutting uh these areas but but they just aren't

00:12:33.700 okay you mentioned the ads and i can't help but share like i'm out here in lethbridge alberta

00:12:38.580 and uh on the weekends i listen to two crime podcasts to take my mind off of work and you

00:12:44.060 know cheer myself up so i'm listening to this crime podcast to cheer you up is true crime

00:12:50.440 podcasts from like the south of the united states completely unrelated to canada nothing to do with

00:12:55.820 taxes like just completely taking my mind off of things and lo and behold what do i hear three

00:13:02.160 times in one episode fighting for Ontario it's the Ontario government ads I couldn't believe it

00:13:08.480 I should have told you actually it just happened last weekend right and you're all the way in

00:13:11.840 Alberta it's like you're like what are they doing and they're on an American podcast in Alberta like

00:13:16.460 I can't imagine the amount of money that they're spending on this stuff folks I'm laughing because

00:13:21.340 otherwise I'd cry like this is so irresponsible like for our viewers who are watching from outside

00:13:28.000 of Ontario, you probably have friends and family in Ontario because Ontario is Canada's biggest

00:13:34.100 province. There's around 15 million people living there. Okay. And it's really significant. It's

00:13:40.980 like, you know, the anchor weight of our country. And so if they fall asleep at the switch and they

00:13:47.840 run up a debt, that's, I can't believe I'm saying this out loud, nearing half a trillion dollars

00:13:55.340 provincially. That's a serious problem. I'm going to ask you more of a kind of a personal

00:14:01.800 observation question, Noah. You can keep your CTF hat on, but I want you to kind of lean into like

00:14:07.020 your journalism brain a little bit. What is it? Like back when I was at talk radio in Ottawa,

00:14:13.120 I would say around 2010-ish, right? Between those eras, right? Back when the hydro issue

00:14:22.100 and the electricity issue was finally breaking through and people had had enough, okay? It was

00:14:27.880 back around 2014-15 when Trudeau was running to become prime minister, actually. Folks might

00:14:33.700 remember when he was doing town halls, like freewheeling live town halls on TV back in those

00:14:39.600 days, around 2015, when he'd go to Ontario, folks would flock there and they would ask him federally,

00:14:46.980 What am I supposed to do about my power bill? Because back then, they were jacking up the hydro rates so much that people couldn't afford to keep the lights on. Like, I was taking calls from people who were literally buying oil lamps. Like, I couldn't believe it in order to save money because they couldn't afford their electricity bills. And it seems like Ontarians are these folks that just work all the time, go along to get along, keep their head down, watch the Blue Jays. They don't want to rock the boat and they put up with a lot of nonsense.

00:15:16.980 but finally every now and then something breaks through and the hydro costs were what busted

00:15:21.780 through that time what's the feeling right now like are people paying attention to this debt

00:15:26.340 interest cost are people paying attention to the fact that the ford government's overspending like

00:15:30.580 crazy like is it punching through uh i think yes and no to the extent that it is uh it's because

00:15:37.540 of uh i mean i don't want to sort of uh self-promote but i think we're doing a really good job

00:15:42.500 at letting on turners know like what the consequences of these rising debt interest

00:15:47.780 payments are and people are starting to really clue in. We commissioned a poll

00:15:52.820 a couple months ago that found that 75% of Ontarians are concerned about rising debt

00:15:59.220 interest charges. When you have an issue like that where 75% of people are agreeing,

00:16:05.140 you know that maybe the government should do something about that. It's hard to find

00:16:09.140 an issue in politics where 75% of people agree.

00:16:12.800 It's hard to get 75% of people to agree that Elvis is dead, you know, and didn't fake his

00:16:18.780 death.

00:16:19.280 No, it wasn't dead.

00:16:20.300 Sorry, see what happened there?

00:16:22.320 You see, right?

00:16:23.500 So, but that's my point.

00:16:25.000 Like, the fact that 75% of Ontarians say they're concerned about debt interest means

00:16:29.140 that the government has an imperative to act quickly on this.

00:16:34.160 And it makes sense why.

00:16:35.460 I mean, debt interest is the fastest growing line item in the budget, the fastest growing line item in the budget, according to our budget watchdog, the Financial Accountability Office, faster, going faster than health care spending, which is growing fast because of our aging population, faster than education spending, faster than anything in the budget.

00:16:54.820 debt interest it is it's like the pac-man of the budget is just eating away at the government's

00:17:00.580 ability to spend on health care education and all the other services that people want the limiting

00:17:06.100 the ability of government to deliver meaningful tax relief for ontarians like the the foreign 0.91

00:17:12.180 government they did to their credit uh cut a couple taxes they are removing the hst uh on

00:17:17.940 new home purchases for one year it would be nice if they just did that um continuously permanently

00:17:23.860 They are also cutting the small business tax rate from 3.2% to 2.2%. So that's good. But that's tax relief that is going to benefit a small minority of Ontarians and good for them. But it would be great if the foreign government had the ability to commit to more broader based tax relief.

00:17:43.100 But they're feeling the pressure of increasing debt interest charges.

00:17:46.740 And that's just the consequence of years of government overspending, years of mismanagement of our books.

00:17:53.740 So I think this stuff is really starting to punch through with Ontarians.

00:17:57.960 They're starting to understand the consequences of rising debt interest charges and how adding on to the debt is driving the debt interest problem out of control.

00:18:07.720 the way you describe it there of like yes those small tax cuts are good but it's like um

00:18:14.020 it's like when you've left a pan on the stove for too long and it's gotten too hot and it's like oh

00:18:19.320 I'm just going to cool this down but instead of like you know using your oven mitt and like

00:18:23.400 dousing it in the sink you just grab a little eyedropper of water and right and it's gone

00:18:28.300 poof gone poof gone like that's what's going to happen if they're overspending like this

00:18:33.120 and they're adding so much to the debt like I'm I'm encouraged though Noah that you're saying 75

00:18:39.300 percent of Ontarians like realize that the debt interest payments and the basically the rate of

00:18:44.920 binge spending right of like hey everybody back away from the buffet table here we got to stop

00:18:49.520 um if 75 percent of Ontarians are getting that that is so important and I was seeing you were

00:18:55.480 doing scrums there at Queen's Park it seemed like you were being asked about this by both uh I would

00:19:01.060 say the mainstream media and obviously you're being interviewed right now on the independent

00:19:05.120 media like it seems like it's kind of getting through to you know the press gallery types isn't

00:19:10.160 it absolutely just to give you guys a little inside uh look into what uh that uh post budgets

00:19:16.100 from look like um after uh like the media all gathered out right outside the the legislative

00:19:21.540 chamber and then uh as soon as uh the mpp start walking out uh you know they bring all their

00:19:26.520 cameras and mics and try to, you know, get a push for some answers.

00:19:31.400 And they're talking to our finance minister, Peter Bethenfalvy,

00:19:35.200 and it was encouraging to see some of the questions that were being lobbed at him.

00:19:38.280 I think a global news reporter was pressing him on the increase in the debt

00:19:43.120 and our debt interest and how that is really affecting Ontarians

00:19:48.400 and the ability for the government to deliver meaningful tax cuts

00:19:52.240 and properly fund our programs.

00:19:54.840 I saw a lot of the coverage after the budget focusing on the debt problem, what Ford committed to back in 2018 and what kind of budget sees tabling in the year of our Lord, 2026.

00:20:08.940 You know, I think it is encouraging that the media is starting to catch on to this.

00:20:13.380 And that's, you know, part because of everyday taxpayers are really waking up to these problems.

00:20:20.060 And that is the sort of things they want to see the media talk about.

00:20:24.840 So I think more and more people are waking up to the to the fact that we have a debt problem.

00:20:31.440 You know, you see media questioning politicians about it more and more often.

00:20:36.480 I even have the opposition liberals, you know, talking about the debt.

00:20:40.080 I'm not saying that they would do anything differently.

00:20:42.620 I hope so. Maybe they would.

00:20:44.940 But, you know, politicians, they say one thing and do another, as we all know, all the damn time.

00:20:50.220 But at the same at the same time, you know, the fact that they think that talking about that issue is salient with Ontario people, that they would bring them success in their quest for power.

00:21:03.000 I think that that's a it's a positive reflection.

00:21:05.280 You know, politicians will talk about things unless they think it will buy them votes.

00:21:09.320 So I think it's encouraging that more and more people are waking up to the problem.

00:21:12.740 Now we just need leaders, real, true leaders in power to step up and actually make that significant change.

00:21:19.620 You won't toot your horn, so I will. But I'm pretty sure that after the finance minister got through with the media that you jumped right in front of it and like followed up with the taxpayer army points. Right.

00:21:31.780 I mean, absolutely. That's I mean, that's kind of why I'm there. Right. But I think but I think also to the media's credit, like they wanted to get that perspective.

00:21:41.800 You know, I think they are waking up to this. But what's really interesting is that even the finance minister has to couch sort of his rhetoric in the framing of fiscal responsibility.

00:21:55.060 You know, he talks about how the government is being fiscally responsible and how they're trying to manage our debt and how they're trying to be more responsible than the previous government.

00:22:04.720 it. So even the Ford people understand that what they're doing is unpopular. It's just that the

00:22:12.080 rhetoric is not matching the actions. When you're borrowing $25.8 billion, you can't say you're

00:22:17.680 fiscally responsible. It's mutually exclusive. You can't say you're fiscally responsible when

00:22:23.440 you're driving up debt interest charges the way you are. They don't drive together. It's like

00:22:30.420 water and oil. Does not compute. Before I let you go, Noah, I'm sorry to spring this on you. Was

00:22:37.180 there any like spending cuts that you saw that you wanted to highlight? I know it's really early.

00:22:42.580 Like guys, this budget document is probably like several telephone books. Think you don't know

00:22:47.260 what telephone books are. Anyway, we used to have telephone books, Noah, and they were in all the

00:22:51.160 payphone booths. I'm so dating myself, but my point is, is like, guys, this budget document

00:22:55.380 is huge. It's thick. Noah's going to find all sorts of crazy dumb stuff in there. But just when

00:22:59.120 you were able to look at it any spending cuts like are they stopping spending on imaginary train

00:23:05.620 stations or something like throw me something here was there any spending cuts that you saw yet

00:23:09.660 look it's it's a bit uh tough to find uh positives on the spending side because they are

00:23:16.140 increasing spending like if they're if they're claiming to make cuts and they're driving up

00:23:20.260 spending uh by 5.8 billion dollars you're you're cutting wrong uh you're just you're saving money

00:23:25.320 wrong yeah exactly right so but at least the budget uh it seems like they're not uh trying

00:23:31.300 to talk about the skills development fund it doesn't mean it doesn't exist anymore but they

00:23:34.720 at least acknowledge that this corporate welfare slush fund uh is is not a good idea uh but the

00:23:40.280 problem is uh they're bringing in new corporate welfare slush fund called the protect ontario

00:23:44.720 account right so it's like trading uh one bad policy for another you're trading a 2.2 billion

00:23:50.760 dollar corporate welfare fund for four billion dollar one like okay uh exactly it's it's the

00:23:57.340 exact problem that we have this province um you know they say they're gonna make the cuts but

00:24:02.320 when they are going to spend uh they're spending more uh bigger than the the cuts they're trying

00:24:07.600 to make it can get frustrating my friend okay noah you've done an amazing job uh for tax fighters

00:24:13.140 there in ontario thank you for going to the legislature thank you for going to the belly

00:24:17.720 of the beast thank you for covering this budget i know you have some reading to do over the weekend

00:24:22.360 thank you so much for joining us today thanks for having me on chris it's always a pleasure

00:24:26.680 likewise okay once again that is of course noah jarvis he is the ontario director for the canadian

00:24:32.920 taxpayers federation my colleague over there at the ctf and of course a long time reporter and

00:24:38.920 commentator on true north and a friend here at juno news hey speaking of which you just got

00:24:45.480 coverage right there from the middle of Queen's Park, breaking down the budget. Somebody who was

00:24:51.040 actually there, who got the briefings, who's right in there talking to the finance minister, staff,

00:24:57.320 mainstream media, independent media, you name it. And you got it right here on Juno News.

00:25:01.700 So it's super important for folks to support independent media because journalists should

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Juno News - March 29, 2026

Ontario’s half-trillion dollar debt is only getting worse

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