Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli says the Financial Accountability Officer is sounding a warning over the Liberal’s debt reduction plan. The FAO says the Liberals are making unlikely assumptions when forecasting future debt. Although the Liberals say Ontario is growing and Fedeli agrees, he adds they are leaving out an important detail. He says what the Liberals don’t say is that our spending is outpacing our growth. The FAO says to meet their debt target, the Liberals have to either cut expenses or raise taxes. Fedeli says the Liberal solution will be to severely hike taxes because they don’t know how to put the brakes on spending. Fedeli also notes that the FAO says as a result of the unlikely assumptions, he expects the provincial debt to grow by $76 billion dollars to $392-billion by 2022. And Fedeli adds that doesn’t include the FAO’s earlier report that the Hydro One debt could increase by $93-billion. Fedeli says that’s nearly half a trillion dollar in debt that we face in just a few years. When the Liberals took office, the debt to growth ratio was 27 percent. It’s now 36 percent and the FAO expects it to rise to 40 percent by 2022 despite Liberal claims that they expect to get it back to the 27 percent level.
