The last bullet is nice.

Here are five things to watch for in Thursday’s budget:

• Child-care: As first disclosed by the Star on Wednesday, the Liberals will preserve $63.5 million in federal funding for 7,600 subsidized child-care spaces that had run out after Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives cancelled the national daycare program started by former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin.

• Deficit: The roller-coaster ride for Ontario’s budget shortfall continues. The budget was once expected to be balanced for 2009-10, then the forecasdeficit ballooned to $14.1 billion last March, $18.5 billion in June, and a staggering $24.7 billion in October before ending up at $21.3 billion Wednesday. An eight-year plan to gradually balance the books will be unveiled Thursday.

• Education: The five-year, $6.2 billion “Reaching Higher” plan for universities and colleges that was introduced in the 2005 budget is wrapping up, so a new funding program will be announced to bankroll an additional 20,000 places on campuses and in apprenticeships starting this September.

• Health: Hospital funding will increase but, as the Star disclosed on March 4, the Liberals will unleash a new “patient-based payment” system that would essential force health-care institutions to compete for cash by doing acute care in-patient surgeries and treatments such as hip replacements more cheaply than rivals.

• Northern Ontario: Premier Dalton McGuinty made a vague pledge on Tuesday that the budget would introduce relief for hard-hit northern residents and businesses over and above the help being earmarked for the Ring of Fire, a massive deposit of chromite, which is used in the manufacture of stainless steel, that the government hopes will spark another Gold Rush in the north.