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Photo by Dave Abel/Toronto Sun/Postmedia Network

The auditor general, the provincial financial accountability office and the media have all highlighted this financial sleight-of-hand, which the Liberals preferred to call an accounting dispute. Because of that, news of the $15-billion deficit was greeted with a world-weary shrug by commentators who say they have seen this story before. A new government gets in, feigns surprise at the state of the books, then either abandons its own promises or embarks on a radical program of cuts, using the deficit as an excuse.

Well, no. That’s not what’s happening here. One of the good things that former premier Dalton McGuinty did was bring in a law saying that the auditor general had to sign off on the province’s books before an election, so no new government could claim its predecessor’s numbers were illegitimate. It was a good plan, until Kathleen Wynne decided she would ignore the auditor general’s warning that the numbers were wrong and pretend the deficit was much smaller.

The actual news is that for the first time in three years we have a government that is giving the public an honest accounting of Ontario’s finances. It’s a major step in the difficult process of restoring trust in government.

While the big deficit is not news to those few who follow provincial finances closely, Ford is trying to reach people who have been conditioned to believe that deficits don’t matter. Too many Ontarians still think we can have a level of services our tax dollars won’t cover, and we can do it indefinitely. Logic suggests otherwise. Funding essential services with debt is not sustainable.