Did the Ontario budget bring in record spending, or cuts, to services?

The Ford Ontario Conservatives - gods, how bored I am with them! - brought down a budget yesterday, forecasting (predictably, given the global situation) a large deficit of $13.8 billion, and pushed back again its plans to balance the books in the near future.

They say they are increasing funding for small businesses, education and healthcare. But then they say that every budget, and after every budget the opposition parties get up and say "Oh, no you didn't!". This happens every time. 

So, what's the truth? How can both claims be made with such passion and conviction? Did they increase healthcare funding, or didn't they?

Politics is all about spin. Like or not, that's the truth. So, of course, the party in power, the Conservatives at the moment, says they are making record investments in education and healthcare. That may be technically true - in nominal terms, the education and healthcare budgets are higher than ever before, including under the previous Liberal administration. 

But this misses some important context. Everything costs more now, especially when comparing with the previous administration, which was way back in 2018, a period of particularly high inflation. So, of course expenditure has to increase, just in order to standard still. Plus, Ontario now hosts over 1½ million more people than it did. So, real per-capita expenditure on education, healthcare and pretty much everything else is not keeping pace. In real per capita terms, the measures so glowingly announced by the Finance Minister were actually pretty savage cuts.

But what's a government to do? They can't preface their budget announcement with, "We're bringing in record cuts to essential services!" No-one would ever vote for them again. No-one likes austerity. But no-one likes tax increases either. So, governments tend to sugar-coat their budget announcements by claiming to be investing in services like never before AND giving the hard-pressed populace tax cuts. Of course, that's not true; the math wouldn't add up, even with a constantly increasing debt load from deficit after deficit. But it sounds impressive, and that's what really matters to them.