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Provinces face tough financial choices in 2011
After the recession and an orgy of stimulus spending, 2011 will be the year Canada`s provinces begin the hard job of restoring their financial health.
The provinces are on pace to ring up record combined deficits of $26.6-billion in fiscal 2010-11, a gap that has grown 20 times larger in the two years since the global economic collapse.
Just three provinces are expected to balance their budgets this year in 2010 ` Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador ` thanks to recovering resource prices and, in Alberta`s case, by dipping into a special reserve fund.
For the rest, the path back to budget balance will be long and fraught with hard choices between tax hikes, cuts to favourite programs and squeezing the civil service.
Ontario, for example, isn`t expecting to be back in the black for another seven years, and getting there will depend upon uncharacteristic spending restraint.
Read the full article here.
After the recession and an orgy of stimulus spending, 2011 will be the year Canada`s provinces begin the hard job of restoring their financial health.
The provinces are on pace to ring up record combined deficits of $26.6-billion in fiscal 2010-11, a gap that has grown 20 times larger in the two years since the global economic collapse.
Just three provinces are expected to balance their budgets this year in 2010 ` Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador ` thanks to recovering resource prices and, in Alberta`s case, by dipping into a special reserve fund.
For the rest, the path back to budget balance will be long and fraught with hard choices between tax hikes, cuts to favourite programs and squeezing the civil service.
Ontario, for example, isn`t expecting to be back in the black for another seven years, and getting there will depend upon uncharacteristic spending restraint.
Read the full article here.