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Just as the Ontario election prepares to officially start next week (as if the parties are not already campaigning hard) the incumbent Liberals and Premier Kathleen Wynne are getting slammed by the province’s auditor general. Bonnie Lysyk, a frequent critic of the government’s accounting practices, noted last week that the government’s claim that next year’s deficit would be only — only! — $6.7 billion, is utter bunk. The auditor general said the real number would be closer to $12 billion, with much of the added debt hidden on the books of various provincial agencies, rather than on the province’s primary balance sheet. All told, Lysyk found, the province would add a whopping $70 billion in new debt over the next three years, with no realistic plan back to balance.

It was damning stuff, from an expert, particularly since Lysyk also said that Wynne’s government had deliberately tried to deceive the auditor general’s office through chicanery. But the Liberals just brushed it off. It was an accounting dispute, they said.