Ontario 10 Year Financial Record

It is interesting to look at the 10 Year track record of the Ontario Provincial finances. I have charted the revenue vs. the program expenses, and compared it to the GDP. All currency figures are in $billion. The Surplus includes debt management charges. Program expenses have been averaging 5.93% annual growth rate, and between 2004 and 2008 the revenue exceeded that. In 2008 the GDP dropped significantly along with revenues, this created a significant deficit which also became an operating deficit in 2009. There was a increase in program expense rate growth in 2009-10 probably due in large part to the government bailout of the auto sector, that rate slowed but is still above the average trend.

Power Prices in Ontario

Note: As someone correctly pointed out to me the Provincial Benefit should also be considered. This is a 'correction' rate that is added to (or subtracted from) the market rate (HEOB) that I have charted below. The market rate it still very important when power generation is considered, but the retail rate is balanced by other forces. When I get the opportunity I will update the graph to show both and repost. I was aware of this when I wrote the HEOP becomes the basis of the commodity charge, but I failed to really identify Provincial Benefit. Note that home consumers generally see fixed rates or time of day rates, but that is a whole different story beyond the scope of this article.

Are power rates in the province going up because of increased generating costs? I looked at the Hourly Ontario Energy Price based on the weighted monthly average and was surprised by what I found. I was expecting to at least see some increase due to inflation, and possibly some due to changing generation methods. The chart below shows every month since they began recording in May'02 until the last full month with data - September'10. The trend is actually declining, but it appears there are long periods of time where the price remains just below the mean value of $50.88/MWh.

HOEP is the hourly price that is charged to Local Distributing Companies and other non-dispatchable loads. HOEP is also paid to self-scheduling generators. HOEP becomes the basis of the commodity charges in the Retail electricity market if customers receive their electricity from their Local Distributing Company. Customers who have arranged contracts with licensed Retailers are not affected by HOEP, but instead are charged their particular contract rate for the commodity.

HOEP is important when looking at the effect of power generation as it is most reflective of the wholesale market in the province. The HOEP is calculated in $/MWh, convert to $/KWh (which is what you generally see at the retail side) you need to divide by 1000. For example the latest month available (September 2010) is $32.91/MWh or 3.3¢/KWh. The data is from the Independent Electricity System Operator, the not-for-profit corporate entity appointed by the Government of Ontario with the authority for establishing, monitoring and enforcing reliability standards in the province.

Ontario GDP & Provincial Government Budget

The Ontario GDP has doubled in the past 18 years from about $300 billion in 1993 to around $600 billion today. The following chart illustrates the GDP growth, and the budget surplus/deficit each year. A surplus is shown in green, and a deficit in red. Note the scale (on right) is different for the budget; the GDP scale is on the left.

GDP figures are drawn at quarterly resolution, but the budget is computed annually. The bars for the budget are show at the first quarter for each fiscal year. I have added the name of the Premier for each government, and the black vertical lines correspond to the date of change of government.

Mike Harris ran an average annual deficit of $2.675 billion.

Ernie Eves ran an average annual deficit of $2.683 billion.

Prior to the recession, Dalton McGuinty managed an average annual surplus of $403 million. After teaming up with Stephen Harper on the General Motors bailout, the situation has changed dramatically and it is now an average annual deficit of $4.355 billion.

 

Information sources:

Ontario Budget 2010

Ontario Budget 2003

Ontario Budget 1996

Ontario Economic Accounts Historical Data

Canada's growing trade deficit with China

China is a very important trading partner with Canada, but we face an increasing trade deficit. Our imports from China are over 3 ½ times those of our exports, giving us a trade deficit of around $30 billion annually. This information is from the Canadian International Merchandise Trade Database at Statistics Canada. Note that the year 2010 is an estimate based on extrapolated data from January-August.

Collapsed house at 477 Scarborough

Here are the before google & bing pictures of the collapsed house at 477 Scarborough in Toronto. It looks like an original older construction in these photos, so it may have been under construction to increase the size. It is the house with the green roof in the middle of the pictures.

 

Budget 2009-10 Projection History

There is a long history associated with projecting the federal 2009-10 fiscal budget. Originally Jim Flaherty projected that we would have a $1.3 billion surplus which we could apply to debt repayment. That quickly changed to a $33.7 billion deficit and bounced up and down, ending today with a $55.6 billion deficit.

In late May, two months after the 2009-10 fiscal year ended, Jim Flaherty told Canadians that we were going to come in at a $47.0 billion deficit. Today he announced the figure would be $55.6 billion, but instead of comparing to his last estimate he compares to an earlier estimate from Budget 2010. When you make so many projections that are all over the map, you can't just pick one that is closest and suggest that your projections were close. The final(?) figure is $8.6 billion higher than he was projecting two months after the fiscal year ended, that is over 15% higher. Note that the budget deficit came in 65% higher than Jim Flaherty was projecting at the start of fiscal year 2009-10.

Date of projection	Source	Amount
February 26, 2008	Budget 2008	$1.3 billion surplus
January 27, 2009	Budget 2009	$33.7 billion deficit
June 11, 2009	Canada's Economic Action Plan - 2nd Report - June 2009	$50.2 billion deficit
September 10, 2009	Update of Economic and Fiscal Projections - September 2009	$55.9 billion deficit
March 4, 2010	Budget 2010	$53.8 billion deficit
May 28, 2010	Fiscal Monitor - March 2010	$47.0 billion deficit
October 12, 2010	Update of Economic and Fiscal Projections - October 2010	$55.6 billion deficit

York Region peaker power plant

One year ago there was nothing in the area where the York Region peaker power plant is being built:

That has now all changed.


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Provincial Crime Statistics for 2009

How does the crime rate in your province compare with others and with the national average. Here are the latest (2009) crime rates by province. Those in green are less than the national average, while those in yellow are above the national average. The red entry is the highest. I dealt with overall crime rate trends in an earlier article on September 18th, and drilled down by city on October 1st.

It is clear that the lowest crime rate is in Ontario, and highest is in Saskatchewan. Quebec & New Brunswick are fairly low, the Atlantic provinces are about average and the western provinces are higher than average. I have not included the territories here, in general they have even higher crime rates than the provinces.

Click on the table to see it in original size.

Stephen Harper on Program Spending

On March 24th, 2004 at 3:25 p.m., Stephen Harper Leader of the Opposition (Canadian Alliance) rose in the House of Commons and stated:

Only a few short years ago the Government of Canada had projected program spending of just a little over $100 billion. Today this budget projects program spending well over $150 billion. It is an increase of 50% in only a few short years.

Mr. Harper, let's look at your record so far. At the end of this year you are projecting a program spending of $238 billion, or over 42% increase after five years. You are way above the Liberal growth. They went from program spending of $120 billion which they took over from Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservative Government to $176 billion in their last year, or an average of 4.3% growth per year. Your government has grown program spending at a rate of 8.4% per year. If we look at your projected spending for 2014-15 which is after the "stimulus" spending has ceased, you will still have grown 47% or 5.2% per year.

As you yourself said in your statement

It is a Liberal Conservative regime that cannot be trusted to manage our public funds.

Note the data sources are the same as my earlier post on Jim Flaherty's Expenses. The difference between Program Spending and total Expenses is the public debt charges. They were around $30 billion annually, but will increase over 30% (to $40 billion) with all the new debt we have been acquiring recently. The one additional source is from the 1995 budget which states in the Expenditure Outlook section of the Fiscal Outlook fact sheet that program expenses were $120 billion in 1993-94.

Jim Flaherty's Federal Expenses

As Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty has increased our federal government expenses by 28% after 4 short years in office, from $209 billion his first year to $267.7 billion last year). With more increases on the way, this self described 'fiscal conservative' does not appear to meet that criteria. The source of this data is from Jim Flaherty's budgets (May 2, 2006; March 19, 2007; February 26, 2008; January 27, 2009; March 4, 2010)

Crime Severity Index in Canada by City

Statistics Canada recently released the Crime Severity Index for the larger 208 police servicing communities representing 77.8% of the population of Canada. Here is that list in a table that can be sorted by the various fields. Simply click on the column heading you want to sort by. The CSI columns are their ranking in the list, if you want the actual CSI value refer to the original Statistics Canada article above.

I also have the data in a Google Spreadsheet format if you want to investigate further.