Treasury Board President Peter Bethlenfalvy is defending the $2,500 per day pay for his new chair of an internal audit committee Charles-Antoine St-Jean. Bethlenfalvy is pictured in a file photo. Rene Johnston/Toronto Star

TORONTO — Restoring Ontario’s finances to balance and improving its economic competitiveness will drive the Ford government’s agenda in 2019, says a senior cabinet minister.

Treasury Board President Peter Bethlenfalvy sits on the cabinet’s powerful Planning and Priorities committee. In a year-end interview with iPolitics, he said navigating the province out of its structural deficit, and finding ways to make Ontario more competitive, will top the to-do list at Queen’s Park in the year ahead.

“We won’t rest until we have a credible, responsible and pragmatic path to balance,” Bethlenvalvy said. “We need a healthy economy, and we have to find a path to balance. Those are the two priorities.”

Until now, that path has looked hazy. Since entering office, the Ford government has stepped back from a campaign promise to balance the budget within its first four years. There also appears to be confusion on the size of the deficit. The Tories pegged the 2018 budget shortfall at $14.5 billion, but Ontario’s budget watchdog says it’s more than $1 billion less. Either way, with $161.8 billion in expenses this year, the Progressive Conservatives have a steep hole to climb out of.

Next spring’s budget will likely offer the first glimpse of any deficit-reduction plans, when the government is required to provide spending and revenue projections for the next several years.

That budget will show just how fast — or how slowly — Premier Doug Ford’s government plans to stop the deficit spending.

But election promises, and a recent credit downgrade, will make reaching balance even more difficult.

During the campaign, Ford promised approximately $5 billion worth of tax cuts and rebates. Once they’re all implemented, revenues will drop, requiring yet another cut to expenses.

While it might make balancing the books more difficult, Bethlenfalvy said he believes the province doesn’t have a revenue problem, but rather, a spending problem.

“It’s really not a revenue equation; it’s an expenditure equation in this province,” he said. “The spending has grown substantively over the last 10 years, and we can’t keep spending more than we take in.”

Adding yet another layer to the difficult math of balancing the budget is the credit downgrade from Moody’s, which could push the province’s borrowing costs even higher. Already, Ontario’s interest payments make up the fourth-biggest line item in the budget.

None of those extra factors, though, is deterring the government from making good on its promise to balance the budget and cut taxes.

“I can’t comment on the timing of that, but we’re definitely standing behind our commitments,” Bethlenfalvy said of the coming cuts to the gas tax, corporate taxes, and a child-care rebate, among others.

To make it work, Bethlenfalvy says the government is considering cuts both large and small, from ending landlines to going paperless to cancelling programs. Some appear to already be in the works, such as reported cuts to programs offered by local school boards.

The province is also rolling voluntary buyouts for non-unionized civil servants and new requirements for how government agencies negotiate collective agreements. Furthermore, Bethlenfalvy says “significant savings” will be found in a cross-departmental review to prevent duplication between ministries. He says this will be done “without compromising safety and standards, and without compromising the quality of the programs and services.”

On top of the budget and economic growth, the government must keep its other main election promises: ending “hallway health care,” cutting hydro rates, and making life more affordable, says Chris Froggatt, Ford’s former campaign vice-chair who also headed his transition team.

In 2019, Froggatt said, Ontarians should expect Ford to continue talking about the same things he spent much of 2018 talking about.

“The big focus for the premier will be his ‘open for business’ approach to Ontario: getting the focus back on creating an environment for jobs, businesses and the private sector to thrive.”

He said that could mean more cuts to regulations the government considers unfriendly to business. With the introduction of Bill 66 late in the fall sitting, such cuts have already begun.

How Ford’s moves — and the government’s first budget, in particular — spill over into federal politics will be important to watch, says Conservative insider and vice-president at Summa Strategies, Kate Harrison.

She believes the province will present a “pretty lean” budget in the spring, which could affect Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer as he heads into the federal election next fall.

And she expects the Trudeau Liberals will seize on Ford’s program cuts, then try to “paint Scheer with the same brush.”

Whether any of it sticks is another question. While Harrison said Conservatives will expect Scheer to campaign on balancing the federal budget, specific cuts announced by Ford still have the potential to hurt his electoral chances.

This fall provided a taste of that, when Scheer was forced to put daylight between himself and Ford after the latter cut French-language services. That went over like a lead balloon, not just in Ontario, but also in Quebec, where francophones saw it as a direct attack on minority language rights.

The two provinces are election battlegrounds where Scheer will need to pick up seats if he’s to oust Trudeau.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: A previous version of this article mistakenly said cuts to school boards and the Ontario College of Midwives were part of the province’s fall economic statement.