Moody’s credit rating firm is the latest to urge the debt-ridden Ontario Liberal government to rein in spending.

Moody’s Investment Services’ report released Monday noted that Ontario’s debt burden has gone up every year since 2009 and compared that to Quebec where debt has remained stable.

“Given such high levels of planned spending, it is our expectation that there will be non-significant reductions in Ontario’s debt burden for the next five to 10 years,” said the report, which explained that Ontario’s borrowing is driven by infrastructure spending.

Moody’s rating for Ontario is Aa2 negative and Quebec’s Aa2 stable. The rating firm downgraded Ontario to negative from stable in July last year, just before the provincial budget was introduced.

Finance Minister Charles Sousa said “the report reinforces some of the challenges that I’ve been expressing now for the last two years.”

“There is no change. I’m staying the course,” said Sousa, stressing the books will be balanced by 2017-18.

“We will continue to reduce the deficit through our responsible and balanced approach. This includes annual program savings targets of $250 million for 2014-15 and $500 million for each of the next two years,” Sousa said in a statement.

Quebec is scheduled to get rid of its deficit by 2015-16, a year earlier than Ontario, Moody’s report noted.

Moody’s said Ontario’s cost control designed to return the province’s budget to balance is subject to “execution risk.”

“The province’s persistently large deficits and its tendency to delay the most significant attempts at expenditure restraints to the latter years of its projected timeline for returning to budgetary balance, increases the risk that the province will be unable to achieve its goals,” the report stated.

Tory finance critic MPP Vic Fedeli said there have been no signs of the Liberal government changing its ways despite the “dire warnings” by number of organizations.

“The Bank of Canada says to them ‘you are not going to make your revenue numbers,’ the Conference Board of Canada says ‘you’re not going to make your revenue numbers.’ The Ontario Chamber of Commerce came out with a report (two weeks ago) that says confidence in Ontario is down from 42 per cent to 29 per cent this year,” he said.

Fedeli said “every organization is come out with dire warnings to the province and the government is not listening. This is one (the Moody’s report) they had better listen to.”

Ontario’s forecasted deficit for this year is $12.5 billion, up from $11 billion last year and $9.2 billion the year before.

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“Everybody is telling the government the same thing — stop the spending — but the government is doing exactly the opposite,” said Fedeli, adding the government has earmarked $10 billion in new spending over the past couple of years.

The Moody’s report said Ontario’s struggle to balance the books is partly due to the larger scale of its deficits when compared to other provinces, which continue “to post much smaller deficits.”