Thanks for the insight F1. What bothers me is that Wynne already pledged her billion in 2014 and has told us it is at a transfer agent...ready to go. What will she announce in her budget? It seems we wait for the fed budget or Sohi to release trudeau's promised matching billion. Should not this come first? Unless Wynne promises to go ahead without the fed contribution her billion is nothing more than a reminder nothing has happened for 2 years.

It would seem that first would come Trudeau's billion then a road announcement as the FN have been satisfied and the ROF is open for business?

http://www.torontosun.com/2016/02/16/why-liberals-have-moved-up-the-budget

Why Liberals have moved up the budget

TORONTO - Finance Minister Charles Sousa said Tuesday he’ll deliver his budget Feb. 25.

That’s astonishingly early. Last year, the budget was April 23.

So why are the Liberals dropping the budget so soon? They’ve been holding hearings across the province looking for input. Those have now turned into a sham. If they can deliver the budget in just one more week, clearly they were going through the motions and had no intention of using input from those hearings in the formulation of their budget.

Some reasons I believe the Liberals have moved up the budget:

• The sale of Hydro One is proving wildly unpopular. It was a major issue at the door in last week’s byelection in Whitby-Oshawa. Voters gave Premier Kathleen Wynne and her Liberals — and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — an embarrassing thrashing in that vote.

“I hope they took the message from the Whitby-Oshawa byelection, where people are irate over the energy policies of this government,” PC Leader Patrick Brown told reporters Tuesday.

Across the province, what the Liberals have been hearing is more angst about the Hydro One sale. I’m betting they’re hoping an early budget will help shut down that criticism by removing a platform for those people opposed to the sale.

They can’t back away from the sale now because they need the cash to meet their commitment to balance the books by 2017-18. (Will they explain the hydro one sale is to help pay for ROF development as Babjak1 pointed out previously)

• How can the provincial government deliver a budget without knowing what’s in the federal government’s budget? The dramatic drop in resource revenues to provinces such as Alberta will mean a shift in transfer payments. Wouldn’t it be wiser to wait until we see what the federal picture looks like before making major commitments at the provincial level?

• A final reason why Wynne, Sousa, et al may want the budget to happen sooner rather than later is that with every passing day, this government digs itself deeper in debt.

The later the budget, the bigger the hole.

Think of it as the February Groundhog budget. If Sousa sees his shadow next Thursday, we’ll have six more years of deficits.

Regardless the only way out of the hole is the ROF.