Ontario budget 2013: Where the money comes from, and where it’s going

Watch: What’s in Ontario’s budget?

The Ontario budget unveiled Thursday feels like a government – and a province – in a holding pattern: Yes, everyone’s watching to see if New Democratic Party leader Andrea Horwath will support a Liberal budget that incorporated much of her fiscal wish list. But commuters are also waiting to find out how the province will pay for a promised $34-billion transportation plan – the closest this budget came was the prospect of high-occupancy toll lanes, with details by December. The province is putting off corporate tax breaks as one of its biggest non-tax money-makers waits on a new casino.

For all the budget’s mentions (more than 130 of them) of the economic importance of slaying the deficit and Ontario’s plans to do so by 2017, you’d be forgiven for missing the part where the province adds $2-billion to that deficit this year (the Toronto Region Board of Trade said in a statement it’s “concerned”).

But the 2017-18 timeline is still in place, and the good news is Ontario’s economy is growing. The bad news: It may not be growing fast enough.

Last year’s real GDP growth was below the provincial government’s estimate in the 2012 budget (1.4 per cent compared to 2). The unemployment rate’s still higher than the national average and a once-heated housing market is still cooling: Royal Bank of Canada projected this year’s housing starts to be about three-quarters of last year’s.

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The province is relying largely on cuts to slay the deficit – the ministerial losers in Thursday’s budget were Tourism and Culture, Citizenship and Immigration, Energy and government services. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development are also facing cuts. The biggest winners? Consumer services and “other” expenses. And while health care still takes by far the biggest chunk of money, it’s supposed to grow more slowly over the next few years.

On the revenue side delayed tax credits for big businesses will help, but Ontario is banking on more money from gambling and liquor: Last year, the province was planning for an extra $100-million a year from the Liquor Control Board of Ontario and, by 2018, an extra $1-billion a year from Ontario Lottery and Gaming. Things haven’t worked out as planned: The province has brought in less gambling money in each of the past two years. Thursday’s budget hopes that’ll turn around in 2013.

To get a broader sense of where Ontario’s getting its money, and where it’s spending it, we tracked changes in revenue and expenditure categories over the past several years using numbers from the 2013 and previous years’ budgets, adjusted to 2013 dollars. In the interest of clarity we merged categories that were split or combined from year to year.

Hover over coloured slices on the chart for details on the budget item. Use the zoom key in the top left to get a closer look.