Ontario’s balanced budget is laudable, but where’s the plan to tackle debt? + MORE Apr 27th

Canadian Minister of Finance Bill Morneau during a news conference at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. (Adrian Wyld/CP)
In 2012, Mark Carney, the former Bank of Canada governor, challenged the country’s exporters to break it off with their sugar daddy. “The combination of overexposure to the U.S. market and under-exposure to faster-growing emerging markets is entirely responsible for Canada’s further loss in world market share over the last several years,” he said in a speech to the Greater Kitchener Waterloo Chamber of Commerce.
They didn’t listen.
Five years later, the contours of Canada’s commercial ties with the rest of the world are about the same as they were when Carney punctured the myth that Canada is a great trading nation. Last year, Canadians invested $68.3 billion in Barbados, a tiny Caribbean country that is a haven for tourists and tax dodgers. That’s almost as much as Canada invested in all of Asia, home to most of the world’s fastest growing economies…

The Ontario government tabled its first balanced budget in 10 years, announcing a slew of spending measures to appeal to voters as an election looms in 2018. With approval ratings for Premier Kathleen Wynne tanking, the 2017 budget provides plenty of initiatives the government can tout in the coming months, not the least of which is the notion of fiscal responsibility.
But the Liberals’ balanced budget is far more precarious than the government is letting on. Rosy economic projections could easily be derailed by any number of risks, from protectionist sentiments in the U.S. to interest rates to a slowdown in the province’s booming housing market.
The budget itself contained few surprises. Many initiatives have been previously announced, such as the province’s Fair Hydro Plan, an effort to reduce electricity bills for consumers and businesses. Likewise, the Fair Housing Plan, a suite of measures designed help renters and first-time homebuyers in an overheated real estate market, was unveiled last week…

The Ontario government tabled its first balanced budget in 10 years, announcing a slew of spending measures to appeal to voters as an election looms in 2018. With approval ratings for Premier Kathleen Wynne tanking, the 2017 budget provides plenty of initiatives the government can tout in the coming months, not the least of which is the notion of fiscal responsibility.
But the Liberals’ balanced budget is far more precarious than the government is letting on. Rosy economic projections could easily be derailed by any number of risks, from protectionist sentiments in the U.S. to interest rates to a slowdown in the province’s booming housing market.
The budget itself contained few surprises. Many initiatives have been previously announced, such as the province’s Fair Hydro Plan, an effort to reduce electricity bills for consumers and businesses. Likewise, the Fair Housing Plan, a suite of measures designed help renters and first-time homebuyers in an overheated real estate market, was unveiled last week…

The province needs something like Quebec’s debt-fighting fund to rein in its longer-term financial threat

Amazon, Microsoft, Intel, Alphabet report earnings, likely helping to extend the rally on Nasdaq