Ontario's next provincial budget, which must cope with a deficit projected to be almost $25 billion, may be coming on March 25.
Finance Minister Dwight Duncan playfully told reporters at Queen's Park on Thursday that the budget will come down before April 1, after spring break and on a Thursday.
That would make for a date of March 25.
However, the news might not be dire as first feared. Duncan said the provincial government has recently seen its revenues surge from business and income taxes.
He wouldn't say how that might affect the 2009-10 deficit, projected to be $24.7 billion in the fall economic update tabled on Oct. 22.
Duncan did say that so-called "Dalton Days" are a possibility, along with virtually every other policy option, when it comes to wrestling down the deficit.
"No decisions have been taken, but again, I want to caution everybody against speculation," he said. "But again, we have a deficit challenge, no question."
"Dalton Days" is a play on the phrase "Rae Days."
In the recession and deficit-wracked years of the early 1990s, then-NDP premier Bob Rae forced government workers to take unpaid days off as a way to cut costs.
About 80 per cent of government operating costs relate to staffing.
However, the two main unions representing provincial workers oppose the idea, and they have an ally in the NDP.
"It would be wrong-headed to start pulling wages out of the economy at a time when we need people to be making a decent standard of living to stimulate economic activity," said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.
With a report from CTV Toronto's Paul Bliss
