Ontario's looming budget: Seven charts you should read before Thursday

1. ON THE DEFICIT

In the provincial budget last April, Ontario projected an $8.5-billion deficit for this year. Their plan to privatize Hydro One gave them about $1-billion in short-term relief from an initial public offering on the power utility, but left them no closer to meeting a promise to eliminate the deficit by 2017-18. The provincial budget watchdog warned this fall that there was a "significant risk" that the province would fail to meet that target.

2. ON HYDRO ONE

Whether Hydro One's privatization will help or hinder the province's finances is an open question. The Liberals had hoped that selling 60 per cent of the Crown corporation would raise $9-billion, some of which they could use for upgrades to the transit system. But in an October report, financial accountability officer Stephen LeClair said Ontario would lose $500-million a year in revenue from the privatization. Polls have suggested Ontarians aren't happy with the privatization. (Here's a fuller explanation from Adrian Morrow of how the privatization plan would work, and an interactive chart comparing Hydro One's IPO to other big public offerings of 2015.)

3. ON CARBON EMISSIONS

On Wednesday, the Ontario Liberals introduced legislation laying out the framework for a cap-and-trade system that they had promised in the spring. (Here's Adrian Morrow's explanation of what cap-and-trade systems typically involve.) The government's proposed pricing regime for greenhouse-gas emissions would give the province's biggest emitters a temporary reprieve before enforcing annual reductions leading up to 2020. Environment Minister Glen Murray said Wednesday that the system was expected to generate $1.3-billion per year for the province.

4. ON PENSIONS

This year, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has pressed on with one of her key legacy projects, the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan – though not on the schedule the Liberals originally intended. The government announced this month that big corporations would begin contributing in 2018, instead of next year as planned, so that they'd have time to figure out how to adjust in a tumultuous Canadian economy. (Here's Janet McFarland's explanation of how the Ontario pension plan would work.)

5. ON LIQUOR

Ontario is home to a lucrative and unusual monopoly system for alcohol sales, but the government hopes to top up its liquor revenues by licensing grocery stores to sell beer and wine – but only some stores, and under higher taxes and severe restrictions on what kinds of liquor can be displayed and sold. (Here's Adrian Morrow's explanation of how Ontario's liquor monopoly has worked in the past.)

6. ON INFRASTRUCTURE

With Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government preparing to spend $125-billion on infrastructure projects, Ms. Wynne – who had a famously frosty relationship with his predecessor, Stephen Harper, on the infrastructure file and other issues – has been pressing to get some of the money flowing Ontario's way. "I am so convinced that if we don't invest in infrastructure, we are going to be in trouble, not in 50 years, but we are going to be in trouble in 10 years, if we don't catch up," Ms. Wynne said in her year-end interview with The Globe and Mail last December.

7. ON UNEMPLOYMENT

Alberta and other resource-rich provinces are still taking heavy job losses from the decline in oil prices, but as far as employment goes, Ontario's doing relatively well. According to Statistics Canada, Ontario was the only province to see job expansion in January, and there are signs of economic recovery in communities like London, Ont., where the loss of manufacturing plants has sent unemployment soaring in recent years.

With reports from Adrian Morrow, Jane Taber and Rachelle Younglai

MEANWHILE, IN OTTAWA

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