TORONTO - Ontario's mounting debt won't plunge the province into a financial crisis similar to those of Greece or Spain, even as the government takes its time to pay down all of what it owes, the province's finance minister said Friday.

Dwight Duncan said he is confident credit rating agencies will maintain their ratings on the province, while the government plans to takes six years to pay off its debt.

"They've been aware of those numbers for some time because we forecast them out in each budget so I believe that yes, things will continue to work well," he said Friday in his first speech since delivering the provincial budget Tuesday.

The Ontario budget revealed investments for farmers, breast cancer screenings and new university spaces, but the province could spend the next six years in red ink before it rebalances the books in 2017-18. By then the debt will have ballooned to $307 billion from the $241 billion expected this year.

Duncan said he is taking the slow and steady approach to repaying debt in order to preserve health care and education in the province.

After his speech to the Economic Club of Canada on Friday, Duncan said the province's debt is similar or better than that of other governments in similar economic positions.

According to the provincial budget document, Ontario's debt-to-GDP ratio is slightly higher than that of Canada, and lower than countries like Germany, the U.S. and Britain.

Duncan said Ontarians should be more worried about rising interest rates, which could tack on hundreds of millions of dollars to the province's debt.

Banks are predicting that interest rates should rise from the near-historic low of one per cent by this summer, to reach two per cent by the end of the year.

With each percentage point increase in interest, the province would owe an extra half a billion dollars.

Duncan said Ontario doesn't have to worry about developing a debt crisis like the one in Europe, which continues to rage on, more than a year after it erupted in Greece. The Greeks, Ireland and Italy owe more on government bonds than their entire economy produces in a year.

As those governments have to sell new bonds to pay off the old ones, banks and investors are increasingly wary of giving them loans, and charge higher interest rates the governments can't afford, which leads to deeper debt.

But Duncan said Ontario is seen as a strong economy and won't have the same trouble on the world stage as the Europeans are having.

"Our bonds sell out on international markets without a problem," he said.

New Democrat Peter Tabuns, who was at the speech, said Duncan isn't serious about reducing debt and instead accused him of focusing on helping big business -- even though the province's economy hasn't really improved as a result.

"If he was seriously pursuing the debt, he would not be continuing to cut corporate taxes," Tabuns said. "We aren't getting the job creation from it."