Muhammad Ali Bukhari, CNMNG News
Toronto, March 26: Day before yesterday, Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvi presented Ontario’s 186 billion dollars’ budget for 2021. In that case, the economic fallout caused by the Corona pandemic would seem to have pushed Ontario’s budget deficit balancing to at least 2029. This is because the province contracted economic shrunk at a rate of 5.7 percent last year. Even though, Finance Minister said, “I’m betting on the people of Ontario, we are going to defeat this virus, and then we are going to come back stronger.”
The 231-page budget has two main themes: health and economic recovery. In addition to benefits, grants and tax rebates for families and businesses, the health and tourism sectors have been provided with the expected financial support. In addition, it provides job training, especially for those who want to be involved in a skilled profession. According to the finance minister, the pandemic has reduced employment by 5 percent for women and 3.1 percent for men.
Notably, despite the advice of health experts and advocacy groups in mitigating the pandemic, there was no provision for paid leave for illness. Even for the controversial Highway 413 in the greater Toronto area, no funding has been allocated, nor have school boards been given specific funding for the ongoing pandemic.
As it turns out, there was a record deficit of 38.5 billion dollars in 2020 alone; however, the 4 percent economic growth forecast for 2021-22 supposedly 33.1 billion dollars. Ontarians were able to save 148 billion dollars in the second quarter as a result of lower average per capita spending last year. As a result, Ontario will be in debt of half a trillion dollars by 2024.
Despite all this, the budget includes ‘Ontario Covid-19 Child Benefit’. This time the amount has been doubled to $400 per child and $500 for special needs children. As well as ‘CARE’ or ‘Child Access and Relief from Expenses’ is offering a one-time tax rebate of up to 20 percent, which will be given above $250 per child. It would cost the province 75 million dollars. Assistance will be provided to 300,000 families as temporary relief. In addition, $20,000 will be given to each of the 120,000 eligible businesses. As many as 140,000 people lost their jobs in the tourism sector, therefore an allocation of 100 million dollars has been earmarked for the tour operators. Each operator with 100 employees is to be given $20,000 dollars. In addition, the health sector has been allocated 6.7 billion dollars for pandemics, of which 50 million will be spent on vaccinating rural First Nations. In addition, 2.3 billion is being allocated to the testing and research sector. In the health sector, this year’s budget stands at 69.8 billion instead of last year’s 66.7 billion.
