Ontario's budget is set to be tabled Thursday amid both surging revenues and a potential economic slowdown, and while the finance minister has been signalling ``restraint,'' he says that doesn't mean program cuts.
Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy says the vision he will set out Thursday afternoon will be a plan to attract jobs and build _ keeping on a favourite theme of Premier Doug Ford's infrastructure-focused government.
Ontario's fall economic update forecast a deficit of 8.1-billion dollars for the upcoming fiscal year and a relatively small deficit of 700-million dollars in 2024-25, though those figures are likely to change.
In the third-quarter finances released last month, the province cut its deficit projection for this year in half from that fall update _ down to 6.5-billion dollars.
It also revised its revenue projections for the year by nearly 10-billion dollars, just in the span of a few months since the fall update.
Those booming revenues _ due to higher-than-expected inflation and nominal GDP growth _ were also responsible for Ontario ending 2021-22 with a surprise 2.1-billion-dollar surplus, which was a far cry from the 33-billion-dollar deficit projected in the 2021 budget.
Bethlenfalvy has previously said that after unprecedented spending to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, now is the time for governments to show ``restraint.''
The Ontario Chamber of Commerce, in its pre-budget submission, urged the government to not put too much focus on quickly balancing the budget.
President and C-E-O Rocco Rossi wrote governments must maintain fiscal prudence as interest rates rise, adding eliminating the debt doesn't need to take priority over growth-enabling investments.
Ford announced Tuesday that the budget will include an additional 224-million dollars to build and upgrade training centres, part of a push to boost the skilled trades as the government plans major hospital, highway and home building over the next decade.
He is set to make another announcement Wednesday.