A proposed provincial infrastructure bank with an initial three-billion-dollars in public funding is the biggest-ticket item in Ontario’s fall economic statement.
The Ontario Infrastructure Bank would be an arms-length agency enabling pension plans and other institutional investors to help fund what the province says is an infrastructure deficit, as the government plans to spend 185-billion-dollars in the next 10 years on building roads, transit and hospitals.
The update today by Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy also shows a larger deficit for this fiscal year, and has the province delaying its path to balance by a year.
The spring budget projected a 1.3-billion-dollar deficit this year, then getting to balance in 2024-25 with a small surplus, but today’s update has Ontario 5.6 billion dollars in the red this year and with a 5.3-billion dollar deficit next year, followed by a small surplus in 2025-26.
Written by: The Canadian Press
