The premier of Ontario’s “First Government For the People” addressed the people the other day. Doug Ford reminded us of what we (apparently) already know.

“You know me,” he began.

“I believe in honest conversations.”

Whenever people — especially politicians of the people — feel the need to proclaim their honesty, pay attention. The numbers usually give the game away.

Especially Ford’s numbers.

“It’s no secret that the province inherited a massive debt and deficit from the previous government,” Ford declared.

Fair enough. Let’s have that conversation.

A year ago, Ford told Ontarians he wanted to “follow the money” —code for criminality. An accounting dispute between the previous Liberal government and the auditor general amounted to “the biggest government scandal in a generation,” he claimed.

Ford pointed an accusing finger at his predecessor, Kathleen Wynne: “If you lie on your taxes … there are consequences.”

Her crime? In her last budget, for the 2018-19 fiscal year, Wynne projected a budget deficit of $6.7 billion.

Impossible, cried Ford. After taking power, he assembled an outside panel that alleged the deficit had somehow soared to an outsized $15 billion — more than double Wynne’s figure.

Proof, for Ford, of “corruption” by the Liberals.

“If you tried to pull this kind of coverup in the private sector … the police would come calling,” he alleged, before adding ominously: “We are not going to let Kathleen Wynne and her cronies walk away from their $15-billion scandal … Who authorized the coverup?”

This month, Ford’s Tories announced the final numbers for that disputed fiscal year. Let us try to uncover the coverup — in all honesty.

Turns out the 2018-19 deficit was $7.4 billion after all. Not the $15 billion that Ford alleged (by mischievously counting a number of Liberal campaign promises that never came to pass).

Compare that final figure to the original $6.7 billion estimate from Wynne’s government in their original budget. That’s a difference of roughly 10 per cent, versus Ford’s post-election allegation that overstated the deficit by 100 per cent.

A 10 per cent margin of error by the Liberals versus 100 per cent by the Tories. In this sad saga of allegations and obfuscations, contortions and distortions, other bean counters have also stirred the fiscal pot.

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Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk weighed in last year with an unpersuasive pre-election report claiming the true budget deficit was $11.7 billion, thanks to a long-running accounting dispute over how to count the government’s pension surpluses (she insisted they were worthless, leaving outside accounting experts incredulous).

Ford’s Tories upsized it to $15 billion last summer. Vic Fedeli, in his first (and last) budget this spring, then downsized it back to $11.7 billion (aligning himself with the auditor).

Ten weeks later, Ford shuffled Fedeli out of the portfolio, blaming him for one of the worst budget rollouts in recent memory. Fedeli’s focus on finance proved to be heavy on deficits but deficient on realities — antagonizing the public with the death of a thousand cuts

Unsurprisingly, the new finance minister, Rod Phillips, claims his own prudent fiscal stewardship deserves the credit for driving down those deficit numbers. Despite his boasts, he seems less beholden to the auditor general than Fedeli — who slavishly embraced her critiques while in opposition because he needed the ammunition.

Yet for more than a decade, the auditor’s office had supported counting a pension surplus as a government asset, until Lysyk abruptly changed course in 2015 (ultimately ignoring the opinions of two outside panels, one convened by the Liberals, another by Ford’s Tories). In fact, Ford’s own panel called it “unlikely” that anyone assessing the pension surpluses would “conclude the value to be zero.”

Which is why no one will be surprised when Ford’s government quietly restates the deficit numbers downwards yet again. Expect the final — truly final — deficit figure to align even more closely with the original projections from that disputed Liberal budget, the one that Ford claimed in so many words was criminally corrupt.

Honestly (to use Ford’s favourite word), does anyone still care about the accounting dispute? Bay Street never bought into the doomsday rhetoric, but the deficit scaremongering served its purpose by providing cover for Ford to demand even tougher budget cuts.

All these months later, however, the pretend deficit dispute that the premier repurposed into a political scandal tells us everything we need to know.

“You know me,” Ford said the other day — and it is fair to say that Ontarians know him better than ever:

“I believe in honest conversations.”

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