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Ontario’s long-term credit rating has been downgraded by Standard and Poor’s after years of warnings the province needed to control its spending.

The long-term rating was lowered from AA- to A+, but Ontario’s short-term A-1+ rating was affirmed and its outlook remains stable. That means there will be few short-term costs to the provincial treasury but in the long-run the downgrade could drive up Ontario’s borrowing rate when interest payments already eat up the third largest chunk of its $132-billion budget.

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This is the second time S&P has downgraded Ontario since it started running deficits after the recession. Though the agency notes Ontario is set to balance its books by 2018 — as promised by Finance Minister Charles Sousa — it worries about how much capital spending the Liberal government has committed.

Premier Kathleen Wynne ran and won in the 2014 election in part on a plan to spend $130 billion over 10 years on transit across the province. Some will be financed by selling part of Hydro One, other asset sales, minor tax increases and increased beer sales, but there are still billions going onto the net provincial debt, which is expected to top $298 billion by the end of this fiscal year.