Tell me how Ontario's deficit drops $300 million and then gets their rating 'downgraded'. S&P are political tools of the righties and have no credibility:

"...S&P... reaffirmed its AAA rating for Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s financial products unit on Sept. 12, 2008, three days before the bank failed. It downgraded Bear Stearns Cos. to BBB on March 14, 2008, two days before JPMorgan agreed to buy the failing securities firm.

“There is no reason to take Friday’s downgrade of America seriously,” Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman said in a New York Times column. “These are the last people whose judgment we should trust.”

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-08-08/s-p-seen-surrendering-to-tea-party-costing-u-s-taxpayer.html

I guess you don't get out much.

Hudack (and Flaherty) were part of the Tory government that did this in Ontario:

"...Fiscally Responsible Tories?

In 1995, when the NDP lost to the Mike Harris Tories and their "Common Sense Revolution", the deficit was falling steadily. Harris, an [Economic Conservative]... immediately reversed the downward trend in Ontario's deficit by implementing a series of tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefited corporations and the rich.

The Harris Conservatives laid off public sector workers, cut welfare payments by over 20%, reduced funding for education, health care, and the environment, and dumped cyclical expenditures onto cities with the notorious Omnibus bill.

Over the next eight years, a period of non-stop economic growth in Ontario, the Tories managed to balance the books ONLY by selling off a chunk of Ontario Hydro and then selling off Hwy 407 ETR.

Now, any economist will tell you that if you have to sell off capital assets to balance your budget, you're not running a sustainable operation.

By the time the Tories handed power to the McGuinty Liberals, Ontario's deficit stood at $5.5 billion, comparing rather poorly with the deficit eight years earlier, when the NDP were trying to bring Ontario out of the worst recession since the Great Depression.

(The size of the deficit was not revealed until after the Liberals had taken over the government. Prior to the election, the Tories had claimed the deficit was in the $1-2 billion range.)..."

http://raisethehammer.org/blog/401/

After what Mike Harris did to this province. It will take a while to get back on track.

Yup, one and the same that rated all those sub-prime Mortgages as triple A securities and put the whole word into recession.

Yes they both did. And Hudak was part of the Harris government.

Of course its Harper's fault. LOL. Learn to hold the right people accountable and maybe you"ll get to the root of the problem.

Have a read sport.

"Instead, Duncan stuck with his original plan to run deficits for another five years (until 2017-18). Another five years in which Ontario’s debt will increase to more than $315-billion from $238-billion today — this after the debt has already increased by over 70% since the McGuinty Liberals took office in 2003"

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/03/27/ontarios-budget-missed-opportunity/

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/04/24/the-debt-bubble/

lets blame Ms.Horwath, she missed the chance......
Smart, smart McGuinty.

Actually you are right, he is. You are smarter than I thought Colin. Faved!

The Feds, who run deficits perpetually, downloaded these costs onto the provinces in the past 30 years. An entity that can run deficits perpetually downloading costs on entities that cannot. That's neoliberalism for you.