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We are told the Ontario government has to sell off 60 per cent of Hydro One and charge a new beer tax to help it pay for its 10-year, $130-billion infrastructure program.

Superficially that might seem reasonable. After all, the infrastructure plan does sound awfully expensive. But here’s the odd part: The new spending plan bears an awfully strong resemblance to the old spending plan that it replaces.

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Under the new plan, the government will spend an average of $13 billion a year on things like bridges, roads and transit. Over the previous five years, the government has actually spent an average of $13.2 billion on these items. Annual figures ranged between $12 billion and $15 billion.

A reasonable person might wonder why we need to sell most of a significant public asset and impose a new tax on beer drinkers, just to keep doing what we have been doing for years.

The real answer, I suspect, is that putting some billions of new money into the province’s transit trust will enable the government to quietly shift existing money to help it reduce the deficit or pay for other spending.