On Wednesday, Doug Ford’s government announced a COVID-19 aid package which touted $17 billion in “new support.”

However, the majority of these announced supports are not new spending at all. The $10 billion in assistance to businesses is, in fact, deferrals of taxes and premiums. Not only is it not new spending, the government still expects to collect this foregone revenue later in the year.

Of the $3.7 billion in “Support for People and Jobs,” $1.5 billion is attributed to electricity cost relief. Yet, the shift from $4 billion to $5.6 billion in cost for Ontario’s hydro subsidies is not new. As early as January, the Ford government was estimating that the cost of these subsidies would balloon to $5.6 billion regardless of a pandemic. The extra spending on electricity cost relief was already earmarked prior to this aid package and does not represent new or expanded relief.

The $3.3 billion in support of the healthcare system is also misleading. Roughly, $1.2 billion of that figure is “the annual increase for rising health system costs due to the aging and growing population,” says CBC’s Mike Crawley. The remainder amounts to $2.1 billion – the real figure for new spending on healthcare.

The govt is spending $3.3B extra on health care this year but $1.2B of that is the annual increase for rising health system costs due to the aging and growing population. That leaves $2.1B for the Ontario health system’s specific needs for #COVID19 https://t.co/FRLwPvzJA5 — Mike Crawley (@CBCQueensPark) March 26, 2020

Rather than $17 billion, the Ford government’s COVID-19 aid package more accurately represents $4.1 billion in new spending to fight the pandemic.

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