TORONTO — Ontario is looking at years of deficits and a big jump in debt, according to the province’s independent financial watchdog.
The Financial Accountability Office of Ontario’s 2025-26 Annual Report, released this week, highlights its Winter 2026 outlook showing the deficit climbing from $1.1 billion in 2024-25 to $11.1 billion this year. It is expected to hit $11.8 billion in 2026-27 before slowly easing to $6.3 billion by 2029-30.
Niagara’s Welland Canal corridor is nothing short of integral to Ontario. The 43-kilometre channel that connects Lake Ontario to Erie sees roughly $157 billion in cargo pass through it every year, contributes nearly $5 billion annually to Ontario’s economy, and supports more than 67,000 jobs in the province. Despite its economic importance today, the canal almost didn’t exist.
Doug will just give the jobs to his Sikh and Muslim pals so why bother?
Think about the last time you booked a flight. Did you flinch at the price? Did you double-check the total before clicking “confirm”? That’s the sort of small hesitation Ontario voters may be experiencing now.
Our latest tracking survey with the Star, conducted with 1,000 adults across the province last month, found the Progressive Conservatives and Liberals in a statistical tie among committed voters. And the proportion of voters having a strong desire for change has climbed 12 points since October, to 54 per cent. For a government that’s spent much of the past year with leads north of 20 points, this should serve as a warning sign.
He’s not a conservative. Simple as that.
Premier Doug Ford said Thursday he does not feel he’s lost touch with the average person, despite a backlash over a scrapped plan to buy a jet and new polling numbers showing his popularity declining.
“I’m in touch with the people on a daily basis,” Ford told CTV News Toronto in an exclusive interview.
He said no other politician “in the entire world” hands out his phone number to people as much as he does.
After being re-elected in 2004, U.S. president George W. Bush candidly revealed what he extrapolated from the vote.
“I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it,” Bush told reporters two days after the election.
Since being re-elected in 2025, Ontario Premier Doug Ford may not have been quite as blunt, but his third term in office has seen him blow through some precious political capital.
Catering to the Liberal-Left rather than the people who elected him is no longer paying off.
Ontario saw the largest unemployment rate increase in the country for the second year running, according to its financial watchdog, which also found that new jobs are still being created in the province.
A new report from the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario found job creation slowed in 2025, with 80,900 jobs created last year.
That figure is a drop from the year before and the slowest pace of job creation since 2015, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Ontario government’s decision to purchase and later return a $28.9-million private jet appears to have created turbulence for Premier Doug Ford and his Progressive Conservatives.
According to a new poll by Liaison Strategies, for the first time in its monthly provincial tracking, the PCs trail the Ontario Liberal Party by two percentage points among decided and leaning voters.
The Liberals, which do not have a permanent leader at this time, have the support of 38 per cent of decided and leaning voters while the Tories are in second place at 36 per cent.
Doug Ford’s poll numbers slump as government seems aimless
We are just over a month until we hit the eighth anniversary of Doug Ford being elected premier. He’s had some good times and some bad times over those eight years, and he’s surprised plenty of people by surviving as long as he has, especially after his first year.
The Ford government has passed a spring budget that includes provisions to let the premier and his cabinet ministers keep all their office records secret.
The spring budget changes Freedom of Information laws retroactively as well, meaning Ontario Premier Doug Ford would no longer have to comply with a court order to release his cellphone records.
The government used its majority to fast-track the bill and skip public hearings.
The “gravy plane” mess lasted only a few days. But it sent a message. If Doug Ford hears that message, the Ontario Premier will soon retire.
The public learned last week that the provincial government had acquired a preowned Bombardier Challenger 650 jet aircraft. On Sunday, in the wake of opposition howls, the Premier announced the government would sell the jet. “I have heard and agree that now is not the right time for the expense of a government plane,” he declared.
The instant Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles blasted out the words “gravy plane,” it became obvious that the private jet purchased by Ontario Premier Doug Ford was not long for this province.
It wasn’t simply that the act of spending $28.9-million of taxpayers’ money on a private aircraft for the Premier’s office was hideously off-brand, though that was a major part of it. Mr. Ford and his late brother, Mayor of Toronto Rob Ford, built their entire political brand on being custodians of the public purse; Rob Ford made a public spectacle of cutting up the free memberships handed out to city councillors when he held that job.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford had had a borderline absurd run of good luck: For most of his nearly eight-year tenure, according to the Angus Reid Institute’s polling, he has been Canada’s least or second-least popular premier — and his main rival in that race to the bottom, Quebec’s François Legault, is now an ex-premier.
Call it Air Ford One.
The Ontario government has purchased a used $28.9 million private jet for the use of Premier Doug Ford, the Star has learned.
A senior official, speaking confidentially in order to discuss the matter, confirmed that the province this week took possession of a 2016 Bombardier Challenger 650 executive jet.
Make Ford take public transit so he can see first hand the shithole Ontario has become.
A new report suggests that Ontarians are falling behind their American neighbours when it comes to living standards.
The study conducted by right-wing think-tank the Fraser Institute finds Ontario ranks near the bottom of the Great Lakes region when it comes to GDP per person, a metric researchers use to evaluate economic prosperity.
The study suggests the gap with nearby U.S. states has widened significantly over the past two decades.
Measuring Ontario’s Regional Prosperity Gap Pdf below
AUSTIN, Texas—Premier Doug Ford is appealing for political “certainty” in Canada ahead of contentious trade negotiations with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Ford, in Texas on a trade mission to promote Ontario, stressed “it was the right move” when he called an early Ontario election last year to give his government a stronger hand against Trump.
“Again, it goes back to certainty,” the premier told the Star in a wide-ranging interview Thursday.
What a fraud. There’s a reason the provincial Liberals have been given new life.
h/t Mauser
