Restore Ontario's place as Canada's growth engine: simpler taxes, faster permits, fewer subsidies, and a real comparative advantage in the industries that will drive the next economy.
Get more out of every public dollar, move the tax burden off work and investment, and fix a procurement system that overpays and waits.
Clear away the delay, duplication, and cost that drive off the people who want to start a business, invest, and hire here.
Concentrate our firepower on the industries where Ontario can genuinely lead, instead of subsidizing whoever lobbies hardest.
Twenty years ago Ontario pulled the rest of the country forward. We made things, sold them to the world, and set the pace for Canada. Today our income per person has barely moved while other places kept climbing, and the province that used to lead now weighs the country down. You feel it in wages that fall behind the cost of living, and in young talent that leaves for somewhere hungrier.
This is not a story about Ontarians running short on ability. It is a story about a province that made itself a hard place to build in. We taxed work and investment in the wrong places, buried builders in process, and handed public money to whoever lobbied hardest instead of backing the industries where we can genuinely win.
This section is about getting that edge back. Spend the public's money like it belongs to the public. Tax in ways that reward effort and investment rather than punishing them. Let someone open a business or break ground on a factory in months instead of years. A growing economy is not a vanity project. It is what pays for every other promise in this book.
Review every program for whether it works, simplify the tax code, and modernize procurement. Stop paying for things that don't deliver.
Cut the red tape that protects incumbents and slows new investment. Make it possible to build a factory, hire a worker, or launch a product in months, not years.
Concentrate industrial policy on capital formation in sectors where Ontario can lead the world and focus on domestic businesses with serious potential export capacity.
| Goal | Lower | Upper |
|---|---|---|
| Total — An Opportunity Economy | +$12.4B | +$16.9B |
| Spend Smarter and Tax Better | +$9.5B | +$13.0B |
| Make Ontario The Place To Build | +$2.9B | +$3.9B |
| Competing and Winning Globally | $0 | $0 |
Net budgetary impact over the Ontario Budget 2026 baseline. Negative numbers represent net new provincial spending; positive numbers represent net savings or revenue. Reform Dividends are shown on a separate page.
Detail on how each cost or savings estimate was derived. All figures represent net budgetary impact over the Ontario Budget 2026 baseline.
| Idea | Lower | Upper | How it was estimated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Launch a program spending review targeting $8B+ in savings. | +$8.0B | +$11.0B | Ontario spends $244B/yr. Cutting 3-5% of low-performing programs frees up $8-11B/yr. These are targeted cuts to programs that aren't delivering, not across-the-board reductions; subsidy savings below are counted separately. |
| Establish a tax reform commission. | $0 | $0 | Funded within existing budgets. Any tax changes it recommends would be costed on their own. |
| Modernize public procurement. | +$1.5B | +$2.0B | Ontario buys $30-40B/yr in goods and services. The UK and US cut similar costs about 5% through centralized purchasing; a 4-5% saving here is $1.5-2B/yr. |
| Idea | Lower | Upper | How it was estimated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Set up a permitting, regulatory, and competition reform commission. | ($10M) | ($25M) | Runs about $10-25M/yr, in line with bodies like Australia's Productivity Commission. |
| Create rapid permitting zones for industrial development. | ($50M) | ($100M) | The $50-100M covers permitting teams, pre-cleared sites, and servicing to make land build-ready, modelled on Quebec's industrial zones and US shovel-ready sites. |
| Substantially reduce business subsidies and refocus future ones. | +$3.0B | +$4.0B | Ontario gives out $8-12B/yr in business subsidies and tax credits. Cutting that by a quarter to a half saves $3-4B/yr, separate from the program review above. |
| Idea | Lower | Upper | How it was estimated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Concentrate economic development on industries where Ontario can lead globally. | $0 | $0 | Refocuses money the province already spends through Invest Ontario and existing sector funds; no new programs, no change to spending. |
| Build a high-value export and commercialization strategy. | $0 | $0 | Covered by existing programs (Ontario Centre of Innovation, federal commercialization funds). Reorganizes that spending rather than adding to it. |
| Grow Ontario's automotive cluster as it transforms. | $0 | $0 | Ontario has already committed about $2-4B to EV battery plants (Volkswagen, Stellantis, Honda). This coordinates those existing commitments rather than adding new ones, so no change to spending. |
| Make sure the gains from new technology are shared, not hoarded. | $0 | $0 | Mostly federal and advocacy work. Provincial training and digital costs are covered within existing budgets and expected to save more than they cost over time. |
Every dollar goes to work — with up to 75% back in tax credits.
DonateJoin the movement for a better Ontario. Sign up for updates and be part of the change.
team@ericlombardi.ca