Canada's Conservative leaders break the bank while preaching prudence

“Fix the budget.” It’s one of Pierre Poilievre’s patented “verb-the-noun” formulations for what he’d do as Canada’s next prime minister, and it remains an article of faith among many conservatives in Canada. But like most acts of faith, this is far more about belief than reality. For all their talk about being fiscally prudent, Conservative politicians in Canada have more or less abandoned the idea of balancing the budget.  

Take Ontario’s Doug Ford, whose government has added $86 billion to the province’s debt since it was first elected in 2018. Even if you strip out the debt associated with COVID-19, his government has still added $66.5 billion to the provincial debt, which is $22.5 billion more than Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals during their five years in power. Even conservative think tanks are getting nervous: as the Fraser Institute noted earlier this year, Ford’s government has overseen the second- and third-highest years of per-person (inflation-adjusted) spending in Ontario’s history. “At every turn,” Jake Fuss and Grady Munro wrote, “the Ford government has demonstrated that it’s an irresponsible steward of Ontario’s finances.”

As if to really prove that point, the Ford government recently decided to spend $48 million ripping up bike lanes in Toronto in order to deliver what city staff describe as “minor” improvements in traffic. It also dedicated $100 million to a new program that will bring SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet system to 15,000 households and businesses in rural Ontario at a per-unit cost of more than $6,600. “The province will cover equipment and installation costs, but not monthly fees,” the Globe and Mail noted. 

Here’s the odd part: Starlink is already available to everyone in Ontario, and they could buy the equipment themselves for as low as $500 as their local Home Depot, Walmart, or Best Buy (who, of course, also sell it online). As PC Mag’s Brian Westover wrote in a recent how-to about the service, “Wherever you live in North America (and much of the world), Starlink is available and ready to provide speedy service.” The installation, meanwhile, is hardly worth the extra $6,000 — you simply put it somewhere with unobstructed views of the sky and plug it in. In rural Ontario, I doubt that’s much of a challenge. 

But when it comes to the Ford government’s fiscal recklessness, nothing can top the way it’s handled the rebuilding of Ontario Place. According to a scathing new report from the province’s Auditor General, the project has been defined by selective communication, a lack of transparency, and a bidding process that was “irregular and subjective.” 

It’s also already way more expensive than it needs to be. It will cost the public an estimated $2.24 billion, up considerably from estimates of between $335 million and $424 million in 2019. A big part of that increased cost is its unpopular decision to shutter the Ontario Science Centre and relocate it to the new Ontario Place, pitched to the public as a cost-saving measure. Instead, as the AG’s report shows, renovating the old location would have cost less than closing it down and building a new one. 

None of this is behaviour consistent with the image of a fiscal conservative. As AM640 radio host Greg Brady wrote on social media, “I honestly don't think an Ontario Liberal government could spend as much throwaway money as this government has in the past 6 1/2 years if they TRIED.”

Ford isn’t the only Conservative premier governing like a spendthrift. In Alberta, Danielle Smith’s UCP spent $71.2 billion in its most recent budget, or 20 per cent more than predecessor Jason Kenney did before he left office in 2022. And when it comes to the previous NDP government that was routinely criticized by Smith and other Conservatives for failing to balance the budget, the contrast is even more striking. As the CBC’s Jason Markusoff noted earlier this year, “Smith hiked provincial spending in two years by more than the Notley government did in four years, between her final $56.2-billion budget in 2018 and the last one by the PCs.”

Yes, the Alberta government is running a surplus right now, but that’s built on resource revenues that will evaporate if oil prices drop. Oh, and guess what? JP Morgan’s forecast for the next two years has them doing just that. 

It’s a similar story in Saskatchewan, where the province’s debt has nearly tripled to $21.1 billion since 2015 under the Saskatchewan Party government. As the Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s Gage Haubrich argued in a recent op-ed, “since becoming premier in 2018, Moe has balanced exactly one provincial budget. And that one balanced budget wasn’t the result of some newfound financial genius or a reduction in spending, but rather a huge increase in resource prices that drove provincial revenues to record-highs.”

If there was a fiscally conservative premier in this country, it was probably New Brunswick’s Blaine Higgs. But voters clearly didn’t care much about that when the provincial chequebook was balanced on the back of their healthcare system and other social spending. His government’s recent electoral defeat was a reminder of something that Justin Trudeau’s team realized back in 2015: deficits simply don’t matter to most people. 

Progressive politicians would do well to remember that. Unless or until voters actually start punishing governments for their failure to balance budgets, they shouldn’t trip over themselves to please the tiny constituency of fiscal conservatives in the country. Instead, they focus on delivering the services Canadians want and find fair and just ways to pay for them. If nothing else, their Conservative critics won’t have much of a leg to stand on if they try to criticize them for it.