TORONTO - Ontario's finance minister says he's not worried that mounting debt will plunge the province into a financial crisis similar to the ones in Greece or Spain.
Dwight Duncan is confident credit rating agencies will maintain their ratings on the province.
"They've been aware of those numbers for some time because we forecast them out in each budget so I believe that yes, things will continue to work well," he said Friday after a speech to the Economic Club of Canada in Toronto. "Our bonds sell out on international markets without a problem."
Duncan said the province's books are no different from other governments in similar economic positions.
The Ontario budget issued Tuesday revealed that the province would spend the next six years in red ink before it rebalances the books in 2017-18.
By then the province's debt will have ballooned to $307 billion from the $241 billion expected this year.
Duncan said Ontarians should be more worried about rising interest rates, which could tack on hundreds of millions of dollars to the province's debt.
Banks are predicting that interest rates should rise from the near-historic low of one per cent by this summer, to reach two per cent by the end of the year.
With each percentage point interest, the province would owe an extra half a billion dollars.
