On December 14, Ontario Premier Mike Harris introduced Canada's newest balanced budget law, delivering on a pledge made to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) on May 30, 1995. Bill 99 - the Balanced Budget and Taxpayer Protection Act - should pass before the next budget.

Where deficits and surprise tax hikes were once the rule in Ontario, they will soon be the exception, and only in an emergency. The new law forces governments to get taxpayer approval for tax hikes. Once the budget is balanced, deficits will be illegal except in emergencies. Overspending cabinet members will suffer pay cuts.

The bill mirrors Manitoba's landmark Balanced Budget, Debt Repayment and Taxpayer Protection Act (1995), itself the product of a grassroots taxpayer campaign. Shortly after Manitoba's law was tabled, the CTF invited Ontario party leaders to pledge support for a similar act. During the 1995 election, Mr. Harris was the one leader willing to sign.

Bill 99 will bring Ontario into a not-so exclusive club of provinces and territories that have passed and enforced balanced budget laws. Saskatchewan and New Brunswick share weaker laws. Quebec's and Alberta are tougher, but they pale in comparison to pro-taxpayer laws in the Yukon and Manitoba.

Liberals and Tories alike have passed balanced budget laws. Even the Parti Quebecois and the Saskatchewan NDP have passed them. There was multi-partisan support for Bill 99 in Ontario, where Opposition Leader Dalton McGuinty joined almost 70 Tories and Liberals voting "aye" to Bill 99 on its first reading.

Many 'social justice' groups - like the authors of successive Alternative Federal Budgets - denounce CTF campaigns for balanced budget laws as "balanced budget extremism."

But this is the rhetoric we've come to expect from activists who routinely include $100 million to finance their own lobby groups in their "federal alternative budget" proposals. Its too bad Finance Minister Paul Martin has seen the light on this issue. He steadfastly refuses to even consider making balanced budgets and taxpayer protection a legal standard. Then again, it's not so surprising given his government's pathetic debt reduction efforts and his personal record as Canada's most tax addicted Finance Minister.

In the real world, the tangible evidence of "fiscal extremism" is the $9 billion interest bill for Ontario's $105 billion debt, or the loss of over $43 billion each year to service Canada's $579 billion debt.

Even after revenue growth and difficult cuts, Ontario must borrow to pay its bills until at least mid-1999. Debt interest will be Ontario's third largest government expenditure in 1998-99.

Balanced budget laws can't force governments to spend every dollar wisely. And they won't force governments to tax fairly. Governments can and will continue to make big fiscal mistakes. But comprehensive balanced budget laws do help taxpayers by preventing unjustified tax hikes and ending the cowardly, immoral and almost criminal transfer of massive debts to future generations.

A government's willingness to pass a balanced budget law is a test of its long-term fiscal resolve. Ontario is finishing its test, but Ottawa hasn't even shown up to start writing. It's just another sign of how many provincial governments have stepped far ahead of Ottawa in their efforts on behalf of taxpayers. If only Martin and his cowardly colleagues cared -