The Fragile Fiscal Pulse of Canada’s Industrial Heartland: Ontario’s 2011 Budget

The Ontario government’s March 29, 2011 budget deserves commendation for adhering to a coherent, growth-friendly plan to keep down the effective tax rate on business investment and for targeting a return to surplus, but the schedule for doing so, by 2017/18, is problematic, according to a C.D. Howe Institute e-brief released today. In “The Fragile Fiscal Pulse of Canada’s Industrial Heartland: Ontario’s 2011 Budget,” author Colin Busby argues unless the provincial government takes aggressive steps to bring its budget to balance, debt service costs could rise sharply, and Ontarians could find themselves contributing a much larger share of their incomes to servicing the provincial debt.