When the Ontario Liberal government of Kathleen Wynne was reduced to unofficial party status in last year’s provincial election, it left an enormous legacy in its wake.

Unfortunately, that legacy was out-of-control spending.

Premier Doug Ford and the Progressive Conservatives inherited a balance sheet from the Liberals, in power for 15 years, in which Queen’s Park was spending $40 million more per day than it was collecting in revenue, and paying $34 million per day to service the interest on the province’s $350 billion debt.

That $34 million per day payment — about $13 billion per year — doesn’t reduce the principal amount owed, and every annual deficit the Liberals recorded and the PCs inherited, adds to the total amount of the debt.

Despite this runaway spending — turning the Ontario government into one of the world’s most indebted non-national borrowers — municipalities, school boards and other recipients of provincial funding now complaining about spending restraints under Ford, weren’t happy under the Liberals, either.

To the contrary, they complained the Liberals were underfunding them.

This was the unsustainable reality Ford and the PCs faced when they came to power last year, and continue to face today as they move to get spending under control.

Spending cuts aren’t popular or easy, which is why the recipients of provincial funding who used to complain that the Wynne government was underfunding them, have become almost hysterical about the Ford government’s efforts to put on the brakes.

But make no mistake about the origins of this ongoing political turmoil.

That was the Wynne Liberals spending $40 million per day more than they were making, and paying $34 million per day to service the ever-increasing debt they were sticking to Ontario taxpayers.

That’s a major reason for hallway medicine and why medical wait times are so long.

That’s why repairs to schools and public housing take forever and why there aren’t enough hospital beds or subsidized daycare spaces.

The root cause is not that Ford is trying to restrain spending — in fact, the PCs have initially increased spending, because when you’re trying to turn the Titanic away from the iceberg, you can’t just shut down all the engines and hope for the best.

Every family in Ontario who has to balance a household budget understands what the Liberals never did — that spending more than you make and paying for the difference by borrowing more is not sustainable.

As we head into the fall, it’s time for municipalities and other recipients of provincial funding to stop being part of the problem and to become part of the solution, by working with the provincial government to restrain spending in the most effective, efficient and least harmful ways possible.

Because the status quo they were a part of under the Liberals — unsustainable spending financed by more debt — is no longer an option.