Ontario 2018 Budget: Go Big Or Go Home
Ontario 2018 Budget: Go Big or Go Home Privileged and confidential sussex-strategy.com Ontario 2018 Budget: Go Big or Go Home Ontario 2018 Budget: Go Big or Go Home March 28, 2018 By Joseph Ragusa, Abid Malik and Brian Zeiler-Kligman Today, Finance Minister Charles Sousa rose in the Legislature to deliver the Ontario government’s budget, for the fiscal year April 1, 2018 to March 31, 2019. This is the last provincial budget to be delivered before voters head to the polls for the June 7th provincial election. It is titled “A Plan for Care and Opportunity” and it is 307 pages long. Background to the Budget In years past, the content of federal and provincial budgets were closely guarded secrets unveiled when the budget was tabled, with only a hint given by the Finance Minister’s shoe photo-op (at least federally). In recent years, we’ve seen a trend toward more pre- announcements, through strategic leaks, of the budget’s highlights, leaving less suspense when the budgets are actually presented. Ontario’s 2018 Budget might have followed this recent trend. But, in this unprecedented political season, which began on January 24th when Patrick Brown’s political world came crashing down, it seems only appropriate that Ontario’s Budget pre-announcements – both in their size and their extent – were also unprecedented. Privileged and confidential sussex-strategy.com Ontario 2018 Budget: Go Big or Go Home In many ways, the announcements in the 2018 Ontario Budget are not that surprising – it’s an election-year budget, which are usually full of proposals to tempt voters.
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