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There’s never, ever a right time to get sober

So off the Liberals will go, on a binge of heroic proportions. A daycare package that suddenly becomes affordable almost 15 years after the party came to power. A new drug and dental program that somehow never occurred to the finance minister until 10 weeks before the next election. Money for seniors to hire a cleaning lady or shovel their snow, because every caring government should shovel the snow for its retirees.

The “uncertainty” the Liberals foresee fits neatly into their need to disavow responsibility for their actions. It comes from factors no provincial government could control: higher interest rates; worries about trade, the chaotic political situation engulfing Canada’s giant customer to the south. Once again, it would have been nice for the government to have prepared for this sort of eventuality when it had the time and the opportunity — as any responsible administrator would have done — but somehow Wynne never got around to it. Now she plans to tackle these ambitious goals just when the capacity to handle them is looking strained.

Higher interest rates mean higher payments on that colossal debt. More borrowing means increasing the tab already causing so much strain. The trade dangers could hit the job market and affect investment decisions, weakening the revenue stream needed to carry the load. What the Liberals want to do is to double the bet at a time it’s already paying heavily to cover past losses; Wednesday’s budget calls for deficits of $6.7 billion this year, $6.6 billion next year and $6.5 billion the year after that. These are the same years Sousa claimed last year would absolutely, definitely be in the black. The debt, $325 billion this year, would hit $360 billion by 2020-2021. The cost of carrying it — the money Ontario would be spending on interest rather than hospitals, schools or transit — would grow to $16.9 billion, or $1.4 billion a month. Alberta’s NDP government is under fire because its own spending binge projects interest charges of $4 billion-$5 billion by 2024. Ontario would be spending that amount every 12 weeks.