Canadians should realize that, from now on, Confederation will be different because Ontario, once the country's cash cow, has become a fiscal featherweight.
The days when Ontario's surplus wealth could be redistributed elsewhere with political impunity and economic ease are over. Rather than lifting Canada up, Ontario will be dragging it down.
How bad are the province's prospects? Consider the unthinkable: Within four years, and possibly three, Ontario's debt load as a share of provincial income will be that of Quebec's, for a long time the highest in the country.
In Quebec, though, people are contemplating how to reduce their debt load, given the aging population and a decade of slow economic growth ahead. Whether Quebec will take the steps required to reduce that debt load remains unclear, but at least serious Quebeckers are talking about their predicament.
In Ontario, however, Premier Dalton McGuinty and most Ontarians don't seem to give a hoot their province is going from strongman to weakling.
Yesterday's Ontario budget laid out the doleful and dubious math - a $21.3-billion deficit this year, followed by six more years of red ink that will add more than $100-billion to the province's debt. The fiscal situation is likely to be worse, perhaps much worse, than the budget suggested.
For starters, Finance Minister Dwight Duncan's seven-year forecast was, by definition, nonsense. Neither Mr. Duncan nor Mr. McGuinty are likely to be around in seven years. It's bad enough the Harper government in Ottawa has taken to five-year guesses masquerading as precise budgetary forecasts. But now Ontario is offering even less credible seven-year ones.
Then there's the matter of interest rates. Rates are rock-bottom now, but they're going up - the only question being when and by how much. Each point they rise will add about half a billion dollars to the yearly Ontario deficit.
Then there's the biggest whopper of all: restraining health-care costs. For years now, health costs have been rising at 6 per cent in Ontario. Since health care consumes 46 per cent of all program spending, the remorselessness of this annual increase distends the entire provincial budget.
A few budgets ago, the McGuinty government promised that, by now, the yearly increase would have dropped to 3 per cent. The promise was a fantasy then. Yesterday's budget repeated the fantasy that, within two years, health-care spending increases will drop from 6 per cent to 3 per cent, and remain at that level thereafter.
There's not a chance of this happening. Inflation and population growth alone will produce increases of 3 per cent - before wages and benefits rise, the costs of new drugs and procedures appear, and the fiscal pressures of an aging population are factored into the equation.
Which leads to the final reason why yesterday's budget math should not be believed. The government will not open existing collective bargaining agreements, but it wants to freeze public-sector salaries when the agreements expire. Public-sector unions in Ontario are well organized, with deep pockets and a tradition of militancy. Getting them to be reasonable, let alone to accept long-term wage freezes, will be difficult, to say the least.
So much for the fiscal situation that will almost certainly be worse than the government suggests.
Look at the budget from another perspective and you can see why Ontario's public services will be cracking.
Hospitals will be given a 1.5-per-cent increase, which, given that their costs are rising much faster than that, will mean fewer operations and longer wait times.
Universities are being told to accept 20,000 more Ontario students, plus a doubling of foreign students, with paltry sums for new buildings and none at all for new faculty. The result will be even bigger class sizes for undergraduates, too many of whom are already getting a raw teaching deal.
Metropolitan Toronto, the country's biggest urban area, has a subway system that looks old and hasn't had a major infusion of cash for decades. Now, the budget removes $4-billion from its long-term plan to expand rapid transit. A system that hasn't kept pace with population growth isn't going to catch up.
The crumbling of Ontario, in other words, will continue. No sympathy will be found outside the province for its plight, but the repercussions will be felt across the country.