Doug Ford's government drops new Ontario budget today. Here's what to watch for
As Donald Trump's tariffs loom over provincial economy, Ford's PCs table their 2025 spending plan
Premier Doug Ford's government tables its post-election budget Thursday, as Ontario's export-focused economy confronts the impact of U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs.
Ford's Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy is due to deliver the spending plan in the Legislature at 4 p.m.
You can watch CBC Toronto's live coverage of the budget in this story, stream it on the CBC Toronto channel on CBC Gem or your smart TV, or listen to it across the province on CBC Radio, all from 4 to 5 p.m.
Here's what to watch for in the 2025 Ontario budget.
How does the budget respond to tariffs?
The word "tariff" did not appear even once in the 221-page budget document that Bethlenfalvy tabled last year. You are guaranteed it will be used a whole bunch of times in today's version.
Ford says his government has had to look at the 2025 budget "through a different lens" as a result of the tariffs. All the signals suggest that lens is focused squarely on big spending on infrastructure.
"You have two options in a budget. You can start cutting and slashing, which I've never believed in," Ford told a news conference Wednesday. "You have to put money into the economy to keep things going."
His government has already announced what looks poised to be the single-biggest tariff response item in the 2025 budget: allowing businesses to defer about $9 billion in provincial taxes for up to six months.
Another measure Ford promised during the election campaign is yet to be officially announced: a $5-billion fund dubbed the Protect Ontario Account, described in the PC platform as a way to help major industries adapt to tariffs and keep workers employed.
Watch for the Ford government to frame just about every new budget measure — and perhaps even some old ones — as a tariff response. The PCs pushed this narrative throughout the election campaign, claiming that everything from banning traffic congestion charges to building a tunnel under Highway 401 would protect Ontario from the impact of tariffs.
Are there any surprises?
The first budget after an election win usually looks a lot like the winning party's election campaign platform. Bethlenfalvy is almost certainly eager to move forward immediately on many of the key platform promises the PCs made in the run-up to their majority win.
The surprises could come by way of absence (such as failing to put a key election promise into the budget) or with the presence of something unexpected that Ford didn't talk about during the campaign.
Watch out for any examples of non-budgetary measures that are tacked on to the budget legislation. The government has done this in the past, most notably in 2019 when the budget bill included clauses empowering provincial inspectors to fine gas stations up to $10,000 per day for not displaying stickers about the cost of the federal carbon tax.
Because the budget document just gives the big picture of overall spending within each ministry, the specifics of any cuts are sometimes not totally apparent on budget day. For that, you may have to wait until agencies that receive provincial funding are notified, or until the government tables what are called the estimates, a line-by-line breakdown of program spending.
What's the impact on schools, colleges and universities?
Education takes up the second-biggest chunk of the provincial budget after health care. Funding for the K-12 and post-secondary systems in 2024-25 totalled $51.5 billion, roughly one-quarter of Ontario's total program spending.
Several school boards in the province are considering cuts to balance their budgets. Critics say the Ford government has been in effect cutting education by keeping its annual increases in per-student funding below the rate of inflation.
Meanwhile colleges across Ontario are slashing programs and laying off staff as they confront a dramatic drop in the number of international students, whose higher tuition fees long subsidized courses for domestic students. The 2024 budget forecast that colleges' total revenues would decrease by $1.4 billion in just one year.
Although the proportional impact on university finances has been less dramatic, Ontario universities say they've collectively made $550 million in budget cuts over recent years and their umbrella group warns that the situation will worsen without a significant increase in base funding from the province.
Keep an eye out for whether the budget offers any notable boosts to education funding, and whether it's a one-time or ongoing increase.
What is the housing plan?
Despite adding long-term care beds and student dorm rooms into its count, the Ford government remains well off-pace of its 2022 pledge for 1.5 million new homes to be built in Ontario in a decade. All the current signs suggest 2025 will be another slumping year for new home construction in the province.
Each budget provides a three-year projection of what private-sector forecasters expect will happen with new home construction. The province's latest numbers, unveiled in October, predict 86,500 housing starts in 2025, followed by 93,200 in 2026 and 95,300 in 2027. Look for whether those pre-tariff forecasts are downgraded even further.
Until now, much of the province's initiatives aimed at spurring housing construction have focused on forcing municipalities to approve development more quickly. That continued as recently as this week, when Housing Minister Rob Flack tabled legislation that he says will speed up the municipal permitting process for housing and lower costs for developers.
Yet the new housing market remains moribund, and the meagre outlook for the coming years raises another question for the Ford government: when will it acknowledge that it won't be possible to hit that 1.5 million new homes target?
Will the Ford government ever table a balanced budget?
Ford's PCs swept into office in 2018 on a promise to rein in government spending. Since then, Ford's finance ministers have tabled six budgets, every single one of them forecasting a deficit.
Ford has already signalled this will be another deficit budget, and there are growing signs that his government won't hit its previous target of getting back to balance in 2026-27 either.
The province's rising unemployment rate and the expectations of coming tariff-induced job losses seem likely to have a dampening effect on Ontario's tax revenues. Additionally, if business profits start shrinking, the province's corporate tax revenues will decline too.
Ontario budgets typically include a three-year forecast of revenues and expenditures, so look there to find out whether there's a path to balance by 2027-28, which would be the ninth budget of Ford's tenure as premier.
"We can always balance in a year or two," Ford said Wednesday. "What scares me are governments that go in there and start slashing and burning. We've never done that. We never will."
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