I keep hearing “$200 billion” from the government. The lawn signs say it, the press releases say it, Peter Bethlenfalvy says it from the podium with the kind of confidence that comes from repetition. But the Financial Accountability Office looked at actual spending plan behind Bill 24 and came back with a different number: $223.1 billion. That’s the real 10-year infrastructure commitment, and twenty-three billion dollars is a large rounding error.
The Plan to Protect Ontario Act, which is Bill 24’s official name, authorizes the Crown to borrow up to $27 billion and amends eight provincial statutes to speed up delivery of highways, transit, schools, and hospitals. It passed in 2025. And the borrowing has already blown past what was planned, Ontario completed $58.6 billion in long-term borrowing for 2025-26 alone. That’s $15.8 billion higher than the budget projected.
Not a rounding error. Not close to one.
Where the Money Goes
The FAO’s breakdown is worth sitting with because government talking points make it sound like this is mostly about highways. It isn’t.
10-Year Capital Plan by Sector (FAO Estimates)
Health and transit together eat more than half the plan. $61 billion for hospitals and healthcare, $60.7 billion for transit which is mostly Metrolinx and GO. Highways get $31.3 billion, education gets $30.1 billion, post-secondary gets a comparatively thin $5.1 billion.
I’d argue transit number is the most telling. Of that $60.7 billion, roughly $34.6 billion flows through Metrolinx and Ontario Northland, with another $19.6 billion going to GO Transit expansion. That is a lot of money running through one agency. An agency which, I’ll just say it, has a mixed record on delivering things on time and on budget. The Eglinton Crosstown opened years late. The Ontario Line’s budget keeps climbing. And now we’re trusting the same shop with $34.6 billion.
The Front-Loading Problem
Here’s where my confidence starts to drop. The FAO found that 46% of total spending, about $93.2 billion, is packed into the first three years of plan. The remaining 54% gets spread across seven years.
Context: Front-loading a capital plan means average annual spending of $31.1 billion in years one through three, dropping to $15.7 billion per year in years four through ten. Governments often promise big in early years and quietly scale back later when fiscal room tightens or election cycles change priorities.
If you follow Ontario politics at all that pattern should look familiar. Promise spending now, build the press release around headline number, then quietly reduce out-year commitments when nobody’s paying attention. I’m not saying that’s what is happening here. But if you were going to do that, this is exactly what spending profile would look like.
$31.1 billion per year in years one through three. $15.7 billion in years four through ten. Less than half.
The Debt Side of the Ledger
Net debt is projected to climb from $427.1 billion in 2024-25 to $529.3 billion by 2028-29. An increase of $102.2 billion in four years, roughly 24%. That’s a lot of money to not have.
NDP Leader Marit Stiles (Davenport) has been hitting this hard, she called the 2025 budget a “Band-Aid budget” and pointed out that Ontario’s debt has gone from $337 billion when Ford took office to a projected $485 billion. Debt servicing now runs at $17.2 billion a year. More than the province spends on post-secondary education.
Read that again. $17.2 billion a year, just servicing debt. Not building anything, not hiring anyone. Just interest.
NDP Shadow Finance Minister Jessica Bell argued the budget was “full of cuts and no new investments in services that people rely on.” Whether you agree with that framing or not, the math on servicing costs is hard to argue with. Every dollar going to bondholders is a dollar that doesn’t go to a hospital bed or a teacher’s salary.
Context: The Ontario Loan Act, 2025, embedded in Bill 24, originally authorized the Crown to borrow a maximum of $27 billion. Actual borrowing for 2025-26 reached $58.6 billion, with the government pre-funding future years and the $5 billion Protect Ontario Account.
I looked at the 2026-27 and 2027-28 borrowing forecasts and they are $47.2 billion and $43.1 billion, both higher than what was projected in 2025 budget. Increases of $6.1 billion and $10.1 billion above forecast. The borrowing trajectory is consistently overshooting what government says it will be, that’s a pattern worth watching.
Building Faster, Skipping Steps
Bill 24 didn’t come alone. Bill 17, the Protect Ontario by Building Faster and Smarter Act, got Royal Assent on June 5, 2025, and it is the legislation that actually changes how projects get delivered. It expands the Building Transit Faster Act to cover all provincial transit projects through Metrolinx, gives the agency utility coordination powers and municipal right-of-way access, and amends Planning Act.
The Canadian Environmental Law Association pushed back. Their concern is pretty direct: Bill 17 restricts information available to municipalities making development decisions and limits local residents from having a say in how their communities grow. The government’s answer is that speed matters more right now, especially given trade uncertainty with the United States.
That argument has some merit. But “we need to build faster” and “we need to build well” are not the same sentence, they just get used interchangeably.
There’s also question of construction capacity. Ontario’s construction sector was already running hot before this plan, labour shortages in skilled trades are well documented. Pouring $31 billion a year into projects when the workforce to deliver them is stretched thin doesn’t get you $31 billion worth of infrastructure. It gets you cost overruns and delays. Eglinton Crosstown is the example everyone reaches for, but it’s hardly the only one.
What $223 Billion Actually Buys
The split between new builds and fixing what exists tells you something. The FAO estimates 57% goes to expansion (new hospitals, new transit lines, new highways) and 43% goes to renewing existing stuff.
That’s a choice. A defensible one maybe, but still a choice. Ontario has a well-documented maintenance backlog in schools, hospitals, and municipal infrastructure. Spending more on new projects than on fixing ones which are already falling apart is a political decision, not an engineering one.
Provincial contribution is $184.6 billion, about 83% of total cost. Federal and municipal governments are expected to chip in $16.3 billion. That seven percent federal contribution looks thin, especially when Ottawa is also running deficits and federal-provincial relations are (to put it gently) strained. The plan needs that federal money. It also needs construction costs to hold steady, interest rates to behave, and the trade situation with the US to stabilize. That’s a lot of things that need to go right for a plan which is already overshooting its own borrowing targets.
My read is pretty simple. The infrastructure needs are real, nobody serious disputes that Ontario’s hospitals are overcrowded, the transit system is decades behind, and housing construction needs serviced land. But a $223 billion plan funded mostly through borrowing, front-loaded in ways that look designed for press conferences rather than project delivery, and paired with legislation that strips environmental review and municipal input? That’s not a plan. That’s a bet.
And the province is making it with borrowed money.
Sources and verification: The $223.1 billion figure and sector breakdown come from the FAO’s 2025 Capital Plan Spending Review (fao-on.org). The 46%/54% front-loading split is from the same FAO report. Net debt projections ($427.1B to $529.3B) and borrowing figures ($58.6B for 2025-26) are from the Ontario 2026 Budget, Chapter 4. NDP Leader Marit Stiles’ “Band-Aid budget” comments are from the Ontario NDP (May 2025) and CBC News reporting. Jessica Bell’s quote is from the Ontario NDP press release. Bill 24 and Bill 17 details are confirmed against Ontario Legislative Assembly records (ola.org). CELA’s criticism is from their published comments on Bill 17. The $17.2 billion debt servicing figure is from the 2026 Ontario Budget.
Track how your MPP voted on Bill 24 and other infrastructure legislation at Ontario Pulse.