The Ontario government will release a Fall Economic Statement on Nov. 6 showing it’s expected to beat its projected 2019 deficit target of $10.3 billion, Finance Minister Rod Phillips says.

The Minister did not reveal the new lower deficit figure.

In a speech to the Canadian Club Thursday, Phillips emphasized the need for continued fiscal restraint to address the province’s debt, which has topped $352 billion.

Excessive debt crowds out critical expenditures on priorities like hospitals and transit, he said.

“I think we all agree that environment, conservation and parks is a pretty important thing, especially in 2019,” Phillips said.

“Ontarians pay more in 17 days to our creditors than we do for everything that we spend on the environment, conservation and parks in a year.”

Phillips told the business crowd he would not take sides in the upcoming Oct. 21 federal election.

“But you can certainly see, both in our province and in our country, that there are those who believe that we can tax and spend and borrow our way to prosperity,” he said.

“They don’t appreciate, or choose not to appreciate, the unintended consequences of regulation after regulation and tax after tax which just provides advantage to our international competitors.”

When quizzed later on his preference for a government in Ottawa, Phillips said he believes all parties are interested in Ontario’s well being and added he’s prepared to work with any one of them.

NDP MPP Sara Singh said she believes Phillips’ message to the business crowd was that the Doug Ford government will continue making cuts to programs needed by communities.

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“I think we hear this time and time again from this government, creating this sort of doom and gloom outlook, creating situations that are way worse than they actually are in reality in order to justify making deep cuts to the services that matter,” Singh said.

“And I think that’s what we heard from the Minister again today.”

The government is on track with its fiscal plan to balance the books in five years, but it’s important to remind people about Ontario’s debt load, the largest sub-sovereign debt in the world, Phillips said.

Failure to address that deficit would mean less money for services or passing on the cost of borrowing to the next generation, he said.

“What we’ve laid out is a very prudent approach,” Phillips said.

“It’s an approach that gets us to balance but it’s also an approach that understands that we are continuing to make investments, to listen and so it’ll have that balance that you’d expect from our government.”

aartuso@postmedia.com