The Ford government set aside $15.7 billion in no-strings-attached contingency funding for the next three years in its latest budget, Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk detailed in a report tabled on Monday. Those funds — $3.1 billion in 2023, $5.5 billion in 2024 and $7.1 billion in 2025 — are unearmarked and could be spent on future programs without needing legislative approval, Lysyk told QP Briefing.
The government budgeted $19.4 billion in contingency funding and Lysyk found that 81 per cent, or $15.7 billion, of those funds were unallocated or restricted. Because COVID-19 funds have their own time-limited categorization, unless a pandemic surge requires expenditures beyond what has been set aside, the contingency fund is most likely for non-pandemic-related expenses, Lysyk said.
<div id="attachment_404875" style="width: 592px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-404875" class="wp-image-404875" src="https://www.qpbriefing.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/AG-Report-2-2-May-2022-405x265.png" alt="" width="582" height="381" srcset="https://old.qpbriefing.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/AG-Report-2-2-May-2022-405x265.png 405w, https://old.qpbriefing.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/AG-Report-2-2-May-2022-768x502.png 768w, https://old.qpbriefing.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/AG-Report-2-2-May-2022.png 779w" sizes="(max-width: 582px) 100vw, 582px" />A graph of reported contingency and COVID-19 time-limited funds from 2013 to 2025. (Review of the Pre-Election 2022 Multi-Year Fiscal Plan)</div>
The auditor general also noted that the government had low-balled its projected corporate tax revenues but said this was due to a lack of corporate profit data from Statistics Canada and the economic uncertainty caused by the pandemic. The Ford government’s projections were a cumulative $5.5 billion lower than the bottom range of Lysyk’s projections from 2023-25.
<div id="attachment_404871" style="width: 591px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-404871" class="wp-image-404871" src="https://www.qpbriefing.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/AG-Report-2-May-2022-405x196.png" alt="" width="581" height="281" srcset="https://old.qpbriefing.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/AG-Report-2-May-2022-405x196.png 405w, https://old.qpbriefing.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/AG-Report-2-May-2022-843x408.png 843w, https://old.qpbriefing.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/AG-Report-2-May-2022-768x372.png 768w, https://old.qpbriefing.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/AG-Report-2-May-2022.png 967w" sizes="(max-width: 581px) 100vw, 581px" />Graph comparing the corporate tax revenue projections made by the auditor general, the Financial Accountability Office and the Ford government. (Review of the Pre-Election 2022 Multi-Year Fiscal Plan)</div>
Responding to QP Briefing’s questions on the report, Bethlenfalvy’s spokesperson, Emily Hogeveen, wrote, “In contrast to the Del Duca-Wynne 2018 Budget, the Auditor General has determined that our budget is a reasonable and fully costed plan to Build Ontario.”
On the eager allocation of contingency funds, Hogeveen said “extraordinary contingencies” gave the government “the flexibility to respond quickly and provide funding where needed” during the pandemic. She added that the budget had “appropriate levels of prudence” in its contingency funds “to respond to changing circumstances, such as COVID-19 and geo-political conflicts.”
In her <a href="https://www.auditor.on.ca/en/content/specialreports/specialreports/2018Pre-Election_en.pdf">2018 report</a>, Lysyk had noted that then-Premier Kathleen Wynne’s pre-election budget was “not a reasonable of Ontario’s finances” because it understated both the cost of the government’s hydro plan and pension expenses.
The auditor general’s report is tabled after every pre-election budget as required by the 2019 Fiscal Sustainability, Transparency and Accountability Act and the 2004 Fiscal Transparency and Accountability Act. If the Ford government wins in June and tables the same budget in September, as Bethlenfalvy has <a href="https://www.qpbriefing.com/2022/04/28/ontario-pc-government-tables-budget-but-wont-promise-to-stick-to-it/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said the government would</a>, Lysyk won’t issue a new report. The report assesses the “reasonableness” of a pre-election budget’s projections and is the fourth of its kind. Lysyk noted in her report that the Ford government’s latest budget was “reasonable” except for its “overly cautious” contingency fund and the “understatement” of provincial revenue.
Because the government had to amend legislation to extend the deadline for tabling the budget — a deadline they had imposed in the first place —Bethlenfalvy worked with Lysyk’s office to share projections and data before the budget was tabled so the auditor general’s report could come out before the election.

Ford government set aside unearmarked $16B for next three years in budget: AG

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