Let's not applaud the province too much for the surplus

So the provincial government has announced a modest surplus for the fiscal year 2005-'06!

Whoopie!

Perhaps we're being excessively flippant.

It's good news that there is a government surplus. We've heard a couple of different figures mentioned, but they are all a little less than $300 million. And as York North MPP Julia Munro pointed out, that's not a whole lot of money, considering it's part of a budget of some $84 billion.

So that's about $300 million that will likely be coming off the provincial debt, which Sorbara said is around the $130 billion mark. The lower the provincial debt means fewer tax dollars are going towards interest payments on the debt. Very few of us should have a problem with that. It's true that when a government

sets it's budget, many, if not all of the figures are based on a certain amount of speculation. Thus, it's not realistic to expect any government to be bang-on accurate when projecting deficits or surpluses.

But we have the right to expect government to be at least in the proverbial ball park, and $300 million, it could be argued, falls in that range.

But the government had been projecting a deficit of about $1.4 billion. So, in fact, it was off by about $1.7 billion.

We think we've moved out of that proverbial ball park.

Why should our politicians and senior bureaucrats be doing a better job at forecasting their budget projections? Because that is what they get paid to do. At budget time, we are entitled to accurate and reliable information.

This government is telling us that it has been doing a good job of managing finances, but let us also

keep in mind that it has done so after going back on one of the main planks in its successful election platform in 2003, namely a pledge not to raise taxes.

So yes, let us acknowledge that the books are better than we were led to believe. And maybe it's what we were led to believe that was the real problem.