Hello, it's Mark Albert.  I really
appreciate you being with me today.  Today
is April the 11th 2019, and, and this is
the day that the Ontario Government, the
Provincial Government of Ontario,
released their, their annual budget.  This
is the first budget for the Ford
Government and, and it's going to be for
fiscal year 2019-2020.  Now I'm going to
share some things from my vantage point
and I'm, I'm non-partisan here.  It's
just my perspective.  Things I've observed.
Things I think are important, and I'm
going to hit on some, some numbers that
you're going to be like I didn't know that
and, and, and thanks for telling me that.
So those are the type of numbers and I'm
going to give you and hopefully it makes
sense.  I'm going to explain a little bit of -
technic - terminology but we're going to
get into this.  Hopefully you, you
appreciate this.  This is not meant to be
a political, oh this party versus that
party, and I do know that there are some
people who, leading up to this budget,
weren't happy, but I also know that some
of the things that the media were saying
in terms of what we anticipate in terms
of the cuts,
everyone thought that it's going to be
pretty severe but, but it actually wasn't.  So let's get into this.  So one of the big
things that the Provincial Government
wants to do is they want to tackle the
budget deficit and they want to tackle
the growing debt problem that the
Province of Ontario has.  And so in their
election platform, and then again now,
that the big thing is the budget, the
first budget, it would show the path to
balance, the path to balance.  So the path
to balance is five years so they're
going to take five years, of course they're
in for a four year term so to get the
full balance, they got to get reelected.  So
political parties do that, not a big deal.
That's just stuff that happens.  That's just
how the numbers are.  So path to balance
is five, five years.  So you may not know
this but the debt of the Province of
Ontario, the net debt, is $346 billion, $346
billion!  That's a lot of money.  Like
if you write that many zeros, like that's
a big number, that's a lot of money.  So
this background information as to why we
got to, we got to tackle the, the budget
deficit and the growing debt problem.  So
the debt to GDP ratio is 40.4% and I'm going to
explain what this means because a lot of
people think, what are you talking
about?  I don't even know what that means!
Well,  I'm going to explain it.  So they have a
debt to GDP ratio of 40.4% and they're
facing economic slowdown time in terms
of projections within the economy. 
Globally there's a bit of a slowdown but
also in Canada as well compared to, in
most recent years.  So the debt to GDP
ratio really is the ratio of a country,
of a country's debt, in compared to their
gross domestic products or product or
GDP, and I'm going to explain what GDP means.
Okay, so it's just a little math equation,
alright?  It tells us something about the
debt situation and your ability to
manage the debt under your debt load.  So
if we look at GDP, GDP in essence is
you're measuring the value of the total
economic activity within, in our case, the
Province of Ontario, alright?  So
technically speaking, GDP is the sum of
the market values or prices of all final
goods and services produced in an economy within a period of time.
So, simplistically speaking, GDP is the
total economic activity that produces
final goods, final services that are
produced within that economy so
basically the overall economy, what it
does, what it brings forward.  The dollar
value of that is your GDP.  So the debt to
GDP ratio is calculated this way - you've
got the total debt of Ontario, which is
$346 billion,
divided by
the total GDP that the Province of
Ontario produces within the economy,  that
number is well over $800 billion.
I don't have the exact number, but we do
know what the ratio is, the ratio is
40.4%.  So, so that's your calculation.  Now
what you'll hear with the Federal
Government, what they say about the
Federal debt to GDP ratio, is they say, oh
we're better than all the other G7
nations, right?  Oh, okay, okay.  So you compare yourself to another
country, okay,
another country that's in a worse
situation than you makes you look good, oh,
okay.  So I don't buy that and I'm going to explain why,
and you want to understand this if you
want to know the impact of this debt.  So
this chart I got from Statistics Canada
and the Ontario Ministry of Finance, okay,
so it's a chart I got there, and it shows
the net debt to GDP ratio for the
Province of Ontario, alright?  Now you
might not be able to see the numbers so
I'm going to explain what's important here.  So it's based on the fiscal year, so 2018
to 2019.  So right up here, at its peak, we
got the debt to GDP ratio for Ontario
currently sits at 40.4%, alright?
So, if we go all the way over here, to
1990 to 1991 that fiscal year, that's the
the other side of this chart when they
start tracking it, debt to GDP ratio was
13%, 13.4%, so in that period of time, it
grew pretty significantly.
Now the prior Government, the Provincial
Liberals, they were in power for about 15
years, so we go back about 15 years on
this chart, and the debt to GDP ratio is
around 27%.  So what happened was, see how
the chart goes up?  So spending, those high
spending, growing of debt up to 32%
34, 36,
38, 39, 40, 40 all the way to 40.4 so
that grew, of course the economy grew, the
GDP grew, and, but the ratio kept going up,
alright?  So this is a problem.  And so
that's why that this particular
Government they got to get the
balance, we got to get on top of the debt
situation, so you think about it.  If I
have a debt situation and I overspend, or
if you overspend, you can only go that for
some time.  Look at Greece 10 years ago.
Their debt to GDP ratio out-of-control,
terrible, and they're in crisis do you
know, are we gonna go bankrupt?  What's the
deal here?
So the Minister of Finance for the
Province of Ontario, he said concerning
the interest on the debt on the, on the
debt for the Province of Ontario.  He said
this, and this is, this is on the public
record.  He said, we will pay $12.5 billion
of interest this fiscal year!  Do
you know what that means?  That means that
in the next 12 months
the Province of Ontario is going to pay
about a billion dollars a month just to
service the debt, just to pay the
interest on the debt, not, not one penny
to pay down the debt!  Do you get it?  So it's a
service of debt. So if, let's say the
Government keeps overspending year after
year and the debt doubles, with the
current interest rate that they're
paying, then it's like $2 billion
a year to service the debt.   Two,
what I might say was, $2 billion 
a month to service the debt, right?  So
this is crazy!  So we got to get on top of
it and, and this out-of-control spending,
in my personal life or in your personal
life, would be a problem  No one family
can overspend month after month, year
after year, without eventually getting to
a crisis point.  If you had a business, if
you were in business and you overspend
month after month, year after year, over
time, you get at a crisis point, you're out
of business, right?  So, 
but, but the Finance Minister, he also
said that the prior, and is on record as
well, he says that the previous
Government was spending $40 million
a day more than they brought in.
Can you imagine that?  Fifteen years in
power you're spending $40 million
more a day than the, the taxation,
all the income that you get.  And so
that's why the debt ballooned, right?  So we
can't do that.  Now we talked about debt
to GDP ratio, we're at 40.4% for Ontario, right?
Japan, Japan, their, in 2017, their debt to
GDP ratio was - listen to this -
236%!!  That's crazy!
They're like, they're just stockpiled in
debt.  And then the United States, in 2017,
their debt to GDP ratio was a 108%
so, and they're like
stockpiling it, they are trillions
upon trillions, so you can't compare, you
can't say if you're the Federal
Government or Provincial Government in
Canada or in Ontario, you can't compare
yourself to a company to, to, to another
nation that's stock piled in debt and say
oh look at us we're the best of, of the
7.  Well, does that necessarily mean
that it's good to have a 40.4% GDP?  What happens if the
economy tanks and our GDP drops
significantly?
What happens if interest rates go up?  All
those things will hurt that, and then the
problem is, 20 years from now, 30
years from now you want to retire, 40
years you're in retirement and if the debt,
where's the government going to get money?
They're going to tax us!  So if you think
that taxes are high now, you wait if the
Government continues to spend out of
control.  So very interesting stuff.  So
what we should expect is spending
restraints and cuts from the Government.
It was very mild on this first budget,
but if they do that over time, you're
going to find tax relief coming in, in the
upcoming years.  So if the Government does
that, we'll be fine.  What I like, they got
free dental care for low-income seniors
so if you are a senior, 65 or older, you
make $19,300 a year, free dental.  If you're
a couple that makes $32,300, free dental care, which is
great.  Another thing, the GTA, they plan
to build infrastructure on the transit
system so billions are going to go towards
that, and then billions more are needed, of
course it's coming from the City of
Toronto and the Federal Government to
make this happen, and I think that this
might be a problem because the City
might say, ah we don't want it that way
though, we don't want to pay, Federal Government
say, we don't want to pay that much, so
that's how things happen.  Child care tax
credit - this is a great thing so basically
it's a sliding scale so if you make up
to $150,000 you could participate.  Low
income people are going to benefit the most so
if you make less than $20,000 a year, which is pretty low,
you'll receive $6,000 per child, that's, that's 
under the age of 7.  So
if your child is between 7 and
16, then you're looking at up to
$3,750.  So if your child has severe disability
then you're looking up to $8,250, good stuff.  So a
lot of these topics I'm going to have links
down below so you can look further if
you want.  And the business tax credit,
which is a good deal.  There's tax credit
and what they want to do here is the
companies can write off capital expenses
right away and the goal here is to
encourage companies to spend money
rather than to hang onto their profits
and that will help.  Listen, really
appreciate you being with me I trust this is a very good use of your time.
Help me think it through.  Comment below.  I
know there's people who agree, disagree,
that's fine.   Have yourself a great day!
We'll talk to you later.  Bye now.
