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Not only is the deficit, at $11.3-billion in the year just ended, nowhere near to being eliminated, but all of the numbers that are getting better in the federal plan are getting worse in Ontario. The debt-to-GDP ratio, at a record 40% and second only to Quebec’s among the provinces, is still rising; interest costs, as a proportion of revenues, are likewise headed higher, even as interest rates sink to record lows.

Yet the Wynne government seems almost to go out of its way to show how untroubled it is by all this. Even the revenue windfall from “unlocking the value” of provincial assets (Wynnespeak for “sell” or “privatize”) has ostensibly been put into the infrastructure pot, though as opposition critics pointed out this is a bit of a shell game: The same money could as well be said to have gone against the deficit, with the infrastructure contribution coming out of general revenues.

About the only thing that rouses the government out of its stupor is its alleged mistreatment at the hands of the federal government. As in last year’s budget, there is an entire chapter devoted to whining about the lack of federal “partnership,” the need for federal “action,” and that old standby, the “fiscal imbalance,” three synonyms for “give us more money.”

As provincial complaints go, this is more than usually baseless. Federal transfers to Ontario, at $23 billion, are nearly double what they were just a decade ago; Ontario’s share of all federal transfers to other governments (see chart) is now at 35 per cent, up from 30 per cent when the Liberals took power, and 25 per cent in 1990.