From the invaluable Wikipedia:
The Ontario government debt is the amount of money the Government of Ontario borrowed from the general public, institutional investors and from public-sector bodies. As of September 30, 2013 the Ontario government’s total debt stood at CDN$288.10 billion.[3] The interest on the debt was CDN$10.3 billion for 2012-2013 budget at an effective interest rate of 4%.[4]It represented 8.4% of the total budgetary expenses and is the fastest-rising cost for the Ontario government.[5] The Debt-to-GDP ratio in 2013 was 37.4%, the highest in Ontario’s history.[6]
I checked the comparison with California’s total public debt. I discounted a Canadian study by Jason Clemens and Neil Veldhuis because of its very low estimate of total state debt in California, for one that compares all state-government debt across fifty US states. In that regard, California’s debt looks like this.
| California | $777,918,403 | $583,627,395 | $119,680,625 | $65,210,000 |
All figures in thousands. So by a standard of calculation common to fifty states, California’s total state debt is roughly $778 billion dollars in 2014.
Ontario’s was $288 billion in 2013, and $295 billion in 2014, according to the official Ontario Financing Authority.
Ontario’s population in 2014 was 13.537 million.
California’s population in 2014 was 37.253 milion
Dividing Ontario’s 2014 debt of $295 billion by 13.537 million people, I arrive at $21,792,125 of provincial government debt per capita.
Doing the same for California, $778 billion by 37.253 million people, I arrive at $20,884,224 of state government debt per capita.
Thus, if these figures are proportionately calculated, then Ontario has a worse per capita debt than the notoriously badly governed California.
Yet it seems we are headed to another Liberal minority government. Go figure.