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The key word for Ontario’s government, boys and girls, is “balanced.”

“Balanced” as in “We have balanced the budget, therefore any additional spending is justified.”

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That’s the explanation offered by Premier Kathleen Wynne in revealing the government’s surprise offer of a generous contract extension to Ontario public servants.

“One of the reasons that we have been able to come to this position now where we are able to balance the budget, where we are able to make investments, is that we’ve worked very well with our labour partners,” Wynne said.

The Liberals’ 13-year reign has proven that people can be bought with their own money, and will pay little heed to the burden they heap on future generations

The budget isn’t actually balanced. In May, the Liberals were able to declare they had finally finished their run of annual deficits by using accounting tricks and one-off asset sales to hide this year’s shortfall. They still spend far more money than they have. This was confirmed after the budget release by Ontario’s financial accountability office, which reported that, once next year’s election is over, deficits will start rising again, to $6.5 billion by 2022, while the net debt soars $76 billion to more than $390 billion, after already doubling under Liberal rule.