Ontario’s financial accountability office is warning that the province’s deficit will triple to $12 billion this year due to the Liberal government’s spending promises in its most recent budget and without new money to pay for them.

The Financial Accountability Office (FAO) says promised services such as free child care for preschoolers, more pharmacare and dental care will account for an extra $4 billion alone.

It says over the next three years, deficits will run about $12 billion annually — numbers similar to those the auditor general reported last week — creating a “fundamental imbalance.”

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“The 2018 budget introduced significant new spending without adequate new revenues to pay for them,” said J. David Wake, the province’s temporary financial accountability officer.

However, Finance Minister Charles Sousa said the government has “built in lots of prudence. We have reserves. We have contingencies.”

Both the FAO and the province’s auditor general “have noted that we are very cautious in our assumptions, and that they’re reasonable. They stated that,” Sousa said.

The FAO report notes that the government’s own plan to get out of the red will see spending growth cut from 4.2 per cent in 2017-18 to 2.1 per cent from 2020 through to 2026.

Such “severe spending restraint” could lead to balanced books by 2025, the FAO says.

But the province’s net debt will be $400 billion by 2020-21, and “even with the significant spending restraint planned by the government, Ontario’s debt burden would remain elevated,” Wake said.

Wake cautioned of shifting “the burden of stabilizing Ontario’s public finances from current taxpayers to young Ontarians” and said such deficit and debt levels will also leave the province vulnerable should a recession hit, or when it comes to managing future health care needs with an aging population.

Progressive Conservative finance critic Vic Fedeli slammed the Liberals, saying they “cooked the books. They aren’t telling the people of Ontario the whole story. They’re trying to bury the true costs of their scandal, waste, and mismanagement.

“An Ontario PC government led by Doug Ford will respect the taxpayer. We will commission a full audit of the government’s books and will deliver responsibility, accountability, and trust back to Queen’s Park,” Fedeli said.

NDP finance critic John Vanthof noted his party’s platform, which also calls for deficits — lower than the Liberals by about half, at $3.3 billion this year — also had additional revenue sources, such as corporate tax rates and personal income tax boosts for high-income earners.

Although arrived at using different methods, the FAO’s numbers are similar to those of Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk, and Wake agrees the accounting practices Lysyk is using regarding the Fair Hydro Plan and pension plans are appropriate.

The auditor general’s report said the Liberal government has an $11.7 billion deficit this year, not its stated $6.7 billion. Lysyk said the government cannot apply billions in holdings in two pension plans toward its bottom line.

During Question Period, Premier Kathleen Wynne said “the reason that we can have this discussion about our finances is that we put in place a requirement to have a pre-election report. That is what we are discussing openly and transparently,” and noted that the report says Ontario’s economy “recorded the strongest pace of growth since the early 2000s.”

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Fedeli said the government claimed to have a balanced budget, but the FAO found a $3 billion deficit.

“So they did not slay the deficit, as they say,” he said. “They did not balance.”

He said a PC government would not be able to balance the books in the first year, “but through efficiencies, we will get to balance.”

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