08:25 AM EST, 11/06/2025 (MT Newswires) -- The Canadian province of Ontario releases its budget shortly after 1 p.m. ET on Thursday, said Scotiabank.

The province's 2024-2025 Public Accounts show a much smaller deficit of $1.1 billion in FY25 (-0.1% of nominal gross domestic product) compared with what was expected in the spring budget (-$6 billion, -0.5%), providing a stronger hand-off to the current fiscal year, noted the bank.

In Ontario's Q1 fiscal update, the deficit for FY26 was unchanged from Budget 2025 at $14.6 bn (-1.2% of nominal GDP) but could change in the fall fiscal update, stated Scotiabank.

Ontario has already announced that it will include in its mid-year update an expansion of its GST rebate on new homes, to fully refund the 8% provincial portion of the HST for first-time homebuyers. This is a fairly narrowly scoped measure, which should be able to be absorbed with Ontario's considerable forecast buffers that included $5 billion allocated for contingencies and reserves (2.3% of revenue) in FY26, added the bank.

Meanwhile, the economic backdrop for this year is proving more resilient than feared at the beginning of the year, according to Scotiabank. The 2025 nominal GDP growth forecast in the Q1 fiscal update was 3.2%, marginally higher than 3.1% in the spring budget but below the bank's September outlook of 3.5%.