Canada's debt-laden Ontario province votes, with Conservatives ahead in polls & More News Here

OTTAWA: Canada’s most populous province, Ontario, went to the polls on Thursday, with the right-leaning Progressive Conservatives set to retain energy on the again of a promise to extend spending regardless of an enormous current debt load.

The celebration led by Doug Ford has been holding a transparent lead over the opposition New Democrats and the Liberals, who each compete for the center-left vote. An Ekos Research ballot printed Sunday gave the Progressive Conservatives a seven-point lead over their closest challenger, the Liberal Party.

Ford, who swept to energy in 2018 after 15 years of Liberal rule, must win 63 seats in the 124-seat provincial legislature to retain his majority. At dissolution the celebration held 67.

Some polls opened late, by as a lot as two hours, as a result of “incidents such as fire, sewer backups and power outages,” an Elections Ontario spokesperson stated, with out saying what number of or the place.

A portal that provides events data on who has already voted was hit by “connectivity issues,” the spokesperson added. Parties use the knowledge for his or her last-minute get-out-the-vote methods, a New Democratic Party spokesperson instructed Reuters. The portal was working by Thursday afternoon.

Polls shut at 9:00 PM ET (0100 GMT, Friday).

Ontario, house to simply underneath 40% of Canada’s 38.2 million folks, is Canada’s manufacturing heartland. It can be one of many world’s largest sub-sovereign debtors, with publicly held debt presently standing at C$418.7 billion ($330.8 billion).

With inflation in Canada at a three-decade excessive, housing and cost-of-living points drove the election marketing campaign.

In a pre-election price range tabled in April, Ford promised billions of {dollars} of spending on infrastructure initiatives and outlined a tax credit score for low-income earners, ensuing in a better price range deficit in the present fiscal yr than the final.

The price range additionally put forth a slower path again to steadiness than some analysts had anticipated.

“Day 29, I am so excited!” Ford, 57, stated in a video tweeted on Wednesday, referring to the twenty ninth day of his marketing campaign.

With a debt-to-GDP ratio of 40.7%, Ontario’s debt load is greater than the subsequent three most populous provinces and it pays extra to borrow in the bond market.

Ford’s reputation plunged in 2020 amid accusations Ontario had bungled the COVID-19 epidemic.

But his fortunes revived this yr, in half by some populist strikes like eliminating license plate renewal charges and increasing a international purchaser tax on houses.

The New Democrats’ Andrea Horwath vowed to create an annual hypothesis and emptiness tax on residential property.

The Liberals, led by Steven Del Duca, promised to scale back public transit fares whereas imposing a surtax on firms with annual income exceeding C$1 billion.

A ballot tracker https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/poll-tracker/ontario maintained by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp confirmed that the Liberals and the New Democrats every had only a 1%-chance of profitable.

($1 = 1.2658 Canadian {dollars})

(Reporting by Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; Editing by Denny Thomas and Richard Pullin)

 

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