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.Nowhere in that five-year window does the FAO see the books balancing under current plans.“To balance, we feel that, based on the current state of policies, something would have to change — some kind of measure that would reduce spending and/or increase revenues,” FAO Chief Economist Paul Lewis said when the outlook was released in February..Net debt is on track to rise from $427.1 billion last year to $547.9 billion by 2029-30 — an increase of nearly $121 billion, or about 28%. Roughly $44 billion of that comes from the string of deficits themselves. The rest is mostly borrowing to pay for infrastructure owned by the province, hospitals, school boards and other public bodies.Spending is growing faster than revenue in the near term. Health care is the biggest pressure point, with the FAO projecting average annual growth of 4.9%. Interest on the debt is climbing even faster, at 5.6% a year, as the province keeps borrowing.Mid-year numbers already show the strain. In the first six months of 2025-26, health spending ran $1.6 billion over plan and total spending was $1.7 billion higher than budgeted.The FAO’s spending forecasts sit higher than the government’s own numbers from last fall’s fiscal update — by a cumulative $13.4 billion through 2027-28, mostly because of health care..All three of the province’s fiscal sustainability measures are expected to worsen. One of them, net debt relative to operating revenue, is projected to push past the government’s own target.This comes after the Ford government has already pushed back its balanced-budget target more than once. The 2025 budget aimed for 2027-28. The 2026 budget moved it to 2028-29 and showed even larger near-term deficits.The FAO remains more cautious than the government’s latest path, which counts on stronger revenue growth and tighter spending control in the later years.For taxpayers, the practical result is higher interest costs that will keep competing with other priorities. Those charges are expected to rise from about $15 billion a year to nearly $20 billion by the end of the decade.The annual report also notes the FAO put out a record 21 reports last year. Its health spending review and longer-term spending trends were among the most read — a sign that people are paying attention to where the money is going.
