In this episode of The Fighter with Chris Simons, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation's Ontario Director, Noah Jarvis, joins us to talk about the province's $25.8 billion deficit and $50.2 billion in debt.
00:03:02.320but you know queens park is quite the uh beautiful uh old building uh so you know as a as the ctf
00:03:08.400ontario director i walk in to queens park and uh the the first goal is to find out what is going
00:03:14.400on with the budget so normally in other provinces they have a physical what's called a budget lockup
00:03:20.880where stakeholders and members of the media they all go into one room and someone from the ministry
00:03:26.480of finance gets up there and talks to you about what's in the budget you know some lockups are
00:03:31.600are more useful than others as you know Chris sometimes they are straightforward about what
00:03:36.660how they're spending and what the debt increase will look like others not so much but in Ontario
00:03:42.540they don't have a physical lockup they have a virtual technical briefing that's about 10 minutes
00:03:48.540not much longer than that so we basically just had to you know log in and watch the technical
00:03:56.180briefing while we're at Queen's Park. And the only interesting thing that they really told us was
00:04:01.960that the debt interest will be $17.2 billion. And I'm sure we'll get more into that as we go on. But
00:04:09.080they really don't give you very much useful information. So you have to wait until the
00:04:14.760budget is actually released at four o'clock to get all the important information. And then we
00:04:22.100take that information and we let our tax fighter army know what is actually in the budget because
00:04:29.800the government they're not going to be straightforward with how they're burning a bunch
00:04:34.040of money and driving up the debt. So just let me be clear you're not given an embargoed copy of the
00:04:40.560provincial budget like usually people need to you know swear a blood oath and you know like
00:04:45.400leave their blackberry with them I'm dating myself you have to swear that you're not going
00:04:50.340to say anything and breaking embargo is a big deal like you're in major trouble if you do that
00:04:54.240in most other provinces you get the budget documents either in paper or electronic form
00:04:59.720early in the morning and then you can just nerd out and pour over the hundreds of pages and then
00:05:05.080once the finance minister stands up you can talk about it you guys don't even get that early in
00:05:11.160the day no uh to my knowledge only i think the mpp has got an embargo copy of the budget and and you
00:05:18.580know if you're the foreign government who tabled a pretty bad budget uh you know debt's going up
00:05:24.40025.8 billion dollars this year you probably aren't proud of the fact uh that of what's in the budget
00:05:31.920you probably don't want to let the canadian taxpayers federation to be clued in uh to what
00:05:37.140is going on uh beforehand and so i think we can immediately blast them for uh driving up the debt
00:05:43.440So, 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.
00:05:55.840No kidding. Okay, you've taken us behind the curtain, right, and set the scene for us. Now, let's actually get to the numbers.
00:06:02.380How 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?
00:06:10.580Right. 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.
00:06:25.300This is not the federal debt we're talking about. This is a provincial debt. This is just one province in our great confederation.
00:06:32.420485 billion dollars that taxpayers are going to have to pay back and we are already paying uh for
00:06:40.100a years-long legacy of overspending by the government debt interest charges as i mentioned
00:06:46.580hit 17.2 billion dollars in this budget that's 17.2 billion dollars that's not going towards
00:06:53.360building schools hospitals roads that's about 1.4 billion a month about 350 million dollars every
00:07:01.060week that is going towards bondholders on bay street just imagine burning down 358 homes uh
00:07:09.380every week that is nuts with 17.2 billion you can build about 650 schools here in ontario so that
00:07:18.500money is not going towards uh helping taxpayers uh with tax cuts it's not going towards building
00:07:25.120key infrastructure it's going towards bankers and that's because uh the government over the
00:07:30.500past several years, no matter what political stripe they are a part of, has been reckless
00:07:35.360with managing taxpayer dollars. Okay, that was so much information, Noah. You're doing a great job
00:07:41.280covering this, but I got to slow down here so my brain can absorb this. Did you say that the debt
00:07:48.260is $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
00:08:09.380is significant and that the previous Kathleen Wynne government was making it worse by adding
00:08:15.820on billions of dollars of debt every year. So what does the Ford government do when they get
00:08:20.920into power? Well, they continue adding on to the debt. I mean, last year they added on an
00:08:26.900astonishing $32 billion of debts. And now this year, they're adding on nearly $26 billion to
00:08:34.840the debt. So it doesn't really seem that they are slowing down on this big borrowing binge.
00:08:41.460And it's really encapsulated by this big borrowing budget here. Almost $26 billion added to our debt
00:08:49.040money that taxpayers are going to have to pay back down the line. And it's really frustrating that
00:08:54.480Ford acknowledges the problem of our debt and is doing very little to fix it.
00:09:00.160No kidding. It's one of those situations where I remember in The Simpsons where I forget what
00:09:04.640Homer was doing, but he was screwing up big time and everybody was telling him to stop screwing up
00:09:10.060and he was the one in power that could actually fix it. And his main line was, I know, but how?
00:09:15.820Dude, you're the premier, like Premier Ford. You're the one that needs to balance the budget.
00:09:20.920you're the one that needs to start paying down this like monstrous debt i still can't wrap my
00:09:26.060head around that noah like the debt interest payments are 300 million a week and you mentioned
00:09:34.500like 300 and something houses that's because of course like you know unfortunately you can imagine
00:09:40.560paying or one can imagine i can't one can imagine paying a million dollars for a house in ontario
00:09:47.260right like if you mix in like the fancy stuff near toronto and the more affordable stuff elsewhere
00:09:53.420and i use that term lightly sorry guys um so just picture like a whole neighborhood right
00:09:59.060a low of over 300 houses burn them down every saturday night that's what you guys are paying
00:10:06.120in debt interest provincially yeah it is absolutely nuts look i i know that uh your your alberta
00:10:13.540budget wasn't great either. No, but at least at least in Alberta, there's sort of the understanding
00:10:19.140that when you add on to the debt, that's something that taxpayers are going to have to pay back. And
00:10:23.500it really hurts taxpayers going down the line. Whereas it seems as if for 20 years, we've had
00:10:30.400successive governments that have just not been dealing with this debt issue, even if they
00:10:35.780acknowledge that it is a problem. I mean, credits are the current opposition liberals who acknowledge
00:10:41.760the debt problem but when they were in power uh they didn't do much to uh stop the borrowing binge
00:10:46.600forward acknowledge uh that we have a debt problem but he's not doing much to uh uh solve the
00:10:51.480borrowing binge help uh peter uh bethmanfall the our finance minister back in 2019 gave a speech
00:10:57.800to the canada club and said that ontario has a doesn't have a revenue problem it has a spending
00:11:03.780problem something that i uh repeatedly mentioned and i'd hope that he remembers his comments back
00:11:09.800in 2019 when he's taping the next budget but clearly he forgot about it for these past few
00:11:15.960years and that spending problem is the reason why we have this debt problem the and the ontario
00:11:22.440government they're not really doing much to fix the spending problem spending is up 5.8 billion
00:11:27.640dollars this year even though revenues are basically flatlining because of some economic
00:11:34.440pressure. So that means that Beth and Falvey and Ford are doing very little to find the necessary
00:11:41.100cuts to stop this borrowing bridge. They're not cutting all the political welfare that they're
00:11:47.280giving to Ontario's parties. They're not cutting all the corporate welfare that they're giving to
00:11:52.400big businesses and multinationals. They're not cutting all the government advertising that. I
00:11:58.540mean, Chris, I don't know if you've been in Ontario lately, but if you turn on the TV or,
00:12:03.700you know you go down to say um you see a billboard uh or you log on to say a website like the toronto
00:12:11.540sun or whatever uh you're gonna get inundated with a bunch of protect ontario ads and that's
00:12:16.420that's not cheap it costs hundreds of a million dollars every year um to you know put up all these
00:12:21.860ads so uh i think that uh if the fore government really wanted to be serious um with uh fixing
00:12:28.100the spending problem they would be looking at cutting uh these areas but but they just aren't
00:12:33.700okay you mentioned the ads and i can't help but share like i'm out here in lethbridge alberta
00:12:38.580and uh on the weekends i listen to two crime podcasts to take my mind off of work and you
00:12:44.060know cheer myself up so i'm listening to this crime podcast to cheer you up is true crime
00:12:50.440podcasts from like the south of the united states completely unrelated to canada nothing to do with
00:12:55.820taxes like just completely taking my mind off of things and lo and behold what do i hear three
00:13:02.160times in one episode fighting for Ontario it's the Ontario government ads I couldn't believe it
00:13:08.480I should have told you actually it just happened last weekend right and you're all the way in
00:13:11.840Alberta it's like you're like what are they doing and they're on an American podcast in Alberta like
00:13:16.460I can't imagine the amount of money that they're spending on this stuff folks I'm laughing because
00:13:21.340otherwise I'd cry like this is so irresponsible like for our viewers who are watching from outside
00:13:28.000of Ontario, you probably have friends and family in Ontario because Ontario is Canada's biggest
00:13:34.100province. There's around 15 million people living there. Okay. And it's really significant. It's
00:13:40.980like, you know, the anchor weight of our country. And so if they fall asleep at the switch and they
00:13:47.840run up a debt, that's, I can't believe I'm saying this out loud, nearing half a trillion dollars
00:13:55.340provincially. That's a serious problem. I'm going to ask you more of a kind of a personal
00:14:01.800observation question, Noah. You can keep your CTF hat on, but I want you to kind of lean into like
00:14:07.020your journalism brain a little bit. What is it? Like back when I was at talk radio in Ottawa,
00:14:13.120I would say around 2010-ish, right? Between those eras, right? Back when the hydro issue
00:14:22.100and the electricity issue was finally breaking through and people had had enough, okay? It was
00:14:27.880back around 2014-15 when Trudeau was running to become prime minister, actually. Folks might
00:14:33.700remember when he was doing town halls, like freewheeling live town halls on TV back in those
00:14:39.600days, around 2015, when he'd go to Ontario, folks would flock there and they would ask him federally,
00:14:46.980What 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.
00:15:16.980but finally every now and then something breaks through and the hydro costs were what busted
00:15:21.780through that time what's the feeling right now like are people paying attention to this debt
00:15:26.340interest cost are people paying attention to the fact that the ford government's overspending like
00:15:30.580crazy like is it punching through uh i think yes and no to the extent that it is uh it's because
00:15:37.540of uh i mean i don't want to sort of uh self-promote but i think we're doing a really good job
00:15:42.500at letting on turners know like what the consequences of these rising debt interest
00:15:47.780payments are and people are starting to really clue in. We commissioned a poll
00:15:52.820a couple months ago that found that 75% of Ontarians are concerned about rising debt
00:15:59.220interest charges. When you have an issue like that where 75% of people are agreeing,
00:16:05.140you know that maybe the government should do something about that. It's hard to find
00:16:09.140an issue in politics where 75% of people agree.
00:16:12.800It's hard to get 75% of people to agree that Elvis is dead, you know, and didn't fake his
00:16:35.460I 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.
00:16:54.820debt interest it is it's like the pac-man of the budget is just eating away at the government's
00:17:00.580ability to spend on health care education and all the other services that people want the limiting
00:17:06.100the ability of government to deliver meaningful tax relief for ontarians like the the foreign
00:17:12.180government they did to their credit uh cut a couple taxes they are removing the hst uh on
00:17:17.940new home purchases for one year it would be nice if they just did that um continuously permanently
00:17:23.860They 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.
00:17:43.100But they're feeling the pressure of increasing debt interest charges.
00:17:46.740And that's just the consequence of years of government overspending, years of mismanagement of our books.
00:17:53.740So I think this stuff is really starting to punch through with Ontarians.
00:17:57.960They'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.
00:18:07.720the way you describe it there of like yes those small tax cuts are good but it's like um
00:18:14.020it'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
00:18:19.320I'm just going to cool this down but instead of like you know using your oven mitt and like
00:18:23.400dousing it in the sink you just grab a little eyedropper of water and right and it's gone
00:18:28.300poof gone poof gone like that's what's going to happen if they're overspending like this
00:18:33.120and they're adding so much to the debt like I'm I'm encouraged though Noah that you're saying 75
00:18:39.300percent of Ontarians like realize that the debt interest payments and the basically the rate of
00:18:44.920binge spending right of like hey everybody back away from the buffet table here we got to stop
00:18:49.520um if 75 percent of Ontarians are getting that that is so important and I was seeing you were
00:18:55.480doing scrums there at Queen's Park it seemed like you were being asked about this by both uh I would
00:19:01.060say the mainstream media and obviously you're being interviewed right now on the independent
00:19:05.120media like it seems like it's kind of getting through to you know the press gallery types isn't
00:19:10.160it absolutely just to give you guys a little inside uh look into what uh that uh post budgets
00:19:16.100from look like um after uh like the media all gathered out right outside the the legislative
00:19:21.540chamber and then uh as soon as uh the mpp start walking out uh you know they bring all their
00:19:26.520cameras and mics and try to, you know, get a push for some answers.
00:19:31.400And they're talking to our finance minister, Peter Bethenfalvy,
00:19:35.200and it was encouraging to see some of the questions that were being lobbed at him.
00:19:38.280I think a global news reporter was pressing him on the increase in the debt
00:19:43.120and our debt interest and how that is really affecting Ontarians
00:19:48.400and the ability for the government to deliver meaningful tax cuts
00:19:54.840I 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.
00:20:08.940You know, I think it is encouraging that the media is starting to catch on to this.
00:20:13.380And that's, you know, part because of everyday taxpayers are really waking up to these problems.
00:20:20.060And that is the sort of things they want to see the media talk about.
00:20:24.840So I think more and more people are waking up to the to the fact that we have a debt problem.
00:20:31.440You know, you see media questioning politicians about it more and more often.
00:20:36.480I even have the opposition liberals, you know, talking about the debt.
00:20:40.080I'm not saying that they would do anything differently.
00:20:44.940But, you know, politicians, they say one thing and do another, as we all know, all the damn time.
00:20:50.220But 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.
00:21:03.000I think that that's a it's a positive reflection.
00:21:05.280You know, politicians will talk about things unless they think it will buy them votes.
00:21:09.320So I think it's encouraging that more and more people are waking up to the problem.
00:21:12.740Now we just need leaders, real, true leaders in power to step up and actually make that significant change.
00:21:19.620You 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.
00:21:31.780I 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.
00:21:41.800You 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.
00:21:55.060You 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.
00:22:04.720it. So even the Ford people understand that what they're doing is unpopular. It's just that the
00:22:12.080rhetoric is not matching the actions. When you're borrowing $25.8 billion, you can't say you're
00:22:17.680fiscally responsible. It's mutually exclusive. You can't say you're fiscally responsible when
00:22:23.440you're driving up debt interest charges the way you are. They don't drive together. It's like
00:22:30.420water and oil. Does not compute. Before I let you go, Noah, I'm sorry to spring this on you. Was
00:22:37.180there any like spending cuts that you saw that you wanted to highlight? I know it's really early.
00:22:42.580Like guys, this budget document is probably like several telephone books. Think you don't know
00:22:47.260what telephone books are. Anyway, we used to have telephone books, Noah, and they were in all the
00:22:51.160payphone booths. I'm so dating myself, but my point is, is like, guys, this budget document
00:22:55.380is huge. It's thick. Noah's going to find all sorts of crazy dumb stuff in there. But just when
00:22:59.120you were able to look at it any spending cuts like are they stopping spending on imaginary train
00:23:05.620stations or something like throw me something here was there any spending cuts that you saw yet
00:23:09.660look it's it's a bit uh tough to find uh positives on the spending side because they are
00:23:16.140increasing spending like if they're if they're claiming to make cuts and they're driving up
00:23:20.260spending uh by 5.8 billion dollars you're you're cutting wrong uh you're just you're saving money
00:23:25.320wrong yeah exactly right so but at least the budget uh it seems like they're not uh trying
00:23:31.300to talk about the skills development fund it doesn't mean it doesn't exist anymore but they
00:23:34.720at least acknowledge that this corporate welfare slush fund uh is is not a good idea uh but the
00:23:40.280problem is uh they're bringing in new corporate welfare slush fund called the protect ontario
00:23:44.720account right so it's like trading uh one bad policy for another you're trading a 2.2 billion
00:23:50.760dollar corporate welfare fund for four billion dollar one like okay uh exactly it's it's the
00:23:57.340exact problem that we have this province um you know they say they're gonna make the cuts but
00:24:02.320when they are going to spend uh they're spending more uh bigger than the the cuts they're trying
00:24:07.600to make it can get frustrating my friend okay noah you've done an amazing job uh for tax fighters
00:24:13.140there in ontario thank you for going to the legislature thank you for going to the belly
00:24:17.720of the beast thank you for covering this budget i know you have some reading to do over the weekend
00:24:22.360thank you so much for joining us today thanks for having me on chris it's always a pleasure
00:24:26.680likewise okay once again that is of course noah jarvis he is the ontario director for the canadian
00:24:32.920taxpayers federation my colleague over there at the ctf and of course a long time reporter and
00:24:38.920commentator on true north and a friend here at juno news hey speaking of which you just got
00:24:45.480coverage right there from the middle of Queen's Park, breaking down the budget. Somebody who was
00:24:51.040actually there, who got the briefings, who's right in there talking to the finance minister, staff,
00:24:57.320mainstream media, independent media, you name it. And you got it right here on Juno News.
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