Premier Kathleen Wynne is welcoming a report from four accounting experts that says a $10.7-billion pension surplus can be counted as an asset against the province’s bottom line.
The finding gives her Liberal government ammunition in a spat with Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk, who concluded last year that the money, which is not readily available to the province, should no longer be listed as an asset.
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“There was a conflict between the advice that the auditor general is giving us and the advice that our officials were giving us,” Wynne said Tuesday.
“We sought independent third-party advice and you know we have to take that independent advice very seriously.”
The report, on which the auditor general was briefed last week, will be made public later this month.
Lysyk’s ruling, which reversed 14 years of counting the surplus as an asset, became a point of contention because it affects the size of Ontario’s deficit, which Wynne promised to eliminate by 2018 when she seeks re-election.
Without the surplus from the Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union and Ontario Teachers’ pension plans, last year’s deficit was $5 billion, not the $3.5 billion the government calculated.
Lysyk’s new interpretation of the accounting treatment for the money came after her office took a closer look at the government’s claim on the pension plans it co-sponsors.
The change prompted opposition parties to warn the government suddenly had a massive hole in its budget, but Finance Minister Charles Sousa maintained that the budget would be balanced on schedule regardless.
The practice of counting the pension surplus as a government asset dates to the previous Progressive Conservative government.
Lysyk could not immediately be reached for comment, but told the Star’s Martin Regg Cohn on Monday that she will not back down.
Wynne said the expert panel included four people with “vast experience” on such issues.
The panelists are: Tricia O’Malley, chair of the Canadian Actuarial Standards Oversight Council; Murray Gold, of Koskie Minsky LLP, a law and pension consulting firm; Uros Karadzic, a partner at Ernst and Young, and Paul Martin, a controller with the government of New Brunswick and a former partner at accounting giant Grant Thornton LLP.
“What we have to do as government is get the best advice that we can,” Wynne said Tuesday.
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