The largest budget.........
Health and Education are up 2B combined,( operating, excudes Uni/Coll sector which is down 800M)
By Contrast......
The LIFT Tax Credit is 400M the new Childcare credit has an impact of similar size or a bit larger, depending on how you calculate its impacts, its likely more, but it is 'booked' as 390M
That gets you to 2.8B, interest on the debt is up 800M for 3.6B
Before I get any pushback, the above are booked as tax expenditures, because the gross revenue is still be collected in the first place and then given back on a targeted basis.
So when you factor the above in, and the numbers below, you can see where programs/ministries has to see an absolute cut.
Actual growth in program expenses from 2018-2019 to 2019-2020 is
Or 125M Which is less than 0.1% program expenditure growth.
The rest is interest on the debt.
Total Expenses, including interest on debt, from 2018-2019 to 2019-2020
An increase of 900M and change, the vast majority of that, interest on the debt.
For the record
Inflation in Ontario, in the last calendar year was booked at 1.8%
That alone would be 'status quo' program spending should have been up $2.7B
That, however, forgoes population growth.
I haven't seen full-year estimates yet, but based on trendlines from Q1 2018, that would be a bit over 200,000
That is population growth of roughly 2%, off a base of 14.3M residents.
Tack that number on to the adjusted base, and status-quo spending needed to rise by another 3B.
A total increase of 5.7B in program expenses would be required just to maintain programs as they were.
Ergo, the budget as produced, necessitates roughly 5.55B in (effective) cuts.
Since there were no absolute cuts to non-college education, health and there can't be to interest on the debt.....that means the cuts have to fall on the remaining 35% of the budget.
Keep in mind the cost of the new tax credits in also in there and needs to be offset.