2 weeks Ago By National Post View
Liberal Leader Mark Carney released his plan over the weekend to spend $130 billion over the next four years and rack up a deficit of $62 billion — and, because he calls it “investing,” he expects Canadians to trust it. The Liberal leader’s big trick involves dividing his planned spending into “operating” and “capital” categories, just like an annual financial statement. The intent is to emphasize that he plans to dedicate the majority of his new spending to capital (such as infrastructure) rather than operating costs (which include services, staff salaries and other spending on non-physical things), hence the “spend less, invest more” slogan .
The actual accounting behind Carney’s plans is fuzzy; on Monday, University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe remarked that “much of what the platform calls capital is probably just rebranded program spending.” Capital or not, Carney’s plan to overspend is a bad idea: if you buy a mansion and strap yourself to a mortgage you can’t afford, you can be said to be investing in capital — but you might not ever pay it off, crushed under interest with no ability to buy decent furniture, clothes and food. Carney’s would do just that with an entire economy, rather than a household.
Carney’s “capital” budget would include $25 billion for prefabricated homes, $10 billion for building affordable housing, unknown amounts of funding for “clean energy and critical mineral projects,” $5 billion for Indigenous loans (bringing the total up to $10 billion), $4 billion for health-care renovation and new construction, $1 billion for startups, $20 million for classrooms to teach the trades and more. When Carney rattles off these billion-dollar figures, Canadians must remember that the Brookfield business empire, which the Liberal leader has served as a board chair and fund manager, has placed big bets on both prefabricated homes and green energy . As for non-development, Carney would spend $250 million on the conservation of new lands, and an unknown amount on a separate Indigenous-oriented conservation fund.
The rest of his planned spending can be largely characterized as high-cost and low-impact. A grant of $15,000 for “upskilling” mid-career workers in “manufacturing, health care, construction, AI and technology” appears to be a broad payout targeted to middle-aged voters — in particular, electoral fence-sitters who already have decent-paying jobs. Another $2 billion would support Canadian manufacturing, along with $200 million in subsidies for food processing.
The problem-ridden federal daycare program would be kept . The federal Court Challenges Program, which aggressively uses the court system to advance left-wing causes, would be expanded . Carney also intends to keep the Liberal gun buyback program that’s estimated to cost $2 billion , and devote $150 million more to the CBC.
As for the fisheries — which the Liberal government has choked off by cutting allowable catch, taking quota (sometimes unlawfully ) from non-Indigenous fishers and giving it to their Indigenous counterparts, and outright ignoring unlawful fishing by Indigenous people and other black market activity — Carney’s promising a mere “$250 million in the repair and maintenance of small craft harbours.” (Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is proposing to add to this funding pool as well, but more importantly, he’d restore law and order to the sector, and through it, the autonomy of fishers to run their businesses in peace.) Meanwhile, Carney has promised copious amounts of tax credits and cuts in mineral exploration , manufacturing, carbon capture, electric vehicles, hydrogen, artificial intelligence and even personal health care .
He also plans on giving away $5,000 to any Canadian buying electric vehicle chargers — a hint that government EV mandates are here to stay. Carney and his supporters will point to these tax credits to demonstrate that he’s a “business Liberal” immune to the social justice distractions of Justin Trudeau, but the rest of his platform shows that he’s anything but. By all appearances, he’s planning to double down on Trudeau’s fanaticism: he’d make the $265-million federal Black-only business fund permanent; he’d keep the federal apprenticeship grants for employers which pay double if the apprentice hired isn’t white, able-bodied and/or male; he’d also hang on to the $40 million 2SLGBTQI+ Community Capacity Fund, which in practice is merely extra funding for Liberal-aligned activism.
On the file of justice, he intends to spend more on non-citizens with a promise to “support legal aid for asylum seekers and refugees.” As for arts and culture, he’d increase funding for Telefilm Canada , the Canada Media Fund and the National Film Board , all of which have leaned heavily into advancing the left-wing ideals of diversity, equity and inclusion. Under Carney, the federal government’s obsession with DEI wouldn’t go anywhere: his platform mirrors the language of Trudeau’s heavy social justice agenda, promising to “(reshape) systems to better reflect and support all Canadians and make sure that no matter your heritage or identity you can fully participate in Canada” — and “create opportunities for Indigenous Peoples, Black Canadians, and racialized communities.
” This is code for more social justice spending and more race-based hiring. How will all of this be funded? With debt. Carney would dole out “transition bonds,” indebting the government to bondholders by “at least $10 billion per year” (the key term being “at least”).
To dampen his projected blows to the economy, he’s suggesting a modest $28 billion in spending cuts — but these are undefined, supported by no actual plan. Sources of new revenue would be thin: they’d include a carbon import tax (i.e.
, a tariff), but these can’t possibly come close to covering Carney’s many new expenses. It would only be a matter of time before he restored the (currently cancelled ) Liberal capital gains tax hike and contemplated wealth and home-equity taxes to slow the fall. We’ve seen this before: in 2015, the Liberals released a platform that promised to spend (“invest”) $30 billion over three years, and run “a modest short-term deficit.
” It only took a couple of years for the party, once in government, to achieve deficits more than twice the size of those promised. These have been maintained: in 2024, the deficit reached $62 billion. Tombe’s analysis of Carney’s figures wasn’t hopeful, concluding that “the government’s previous fiscal anchors — declining debt-to-GDP and deficits below 1 per cent of GDP — have now been clearly abandoned,” which could mean a future of heightened debt charges and reduced capacity to respond to economic shocks.
Back in January, the little-known government body named Policy Horizons Canada published an alarming brief , warning that “downward social mobility might become the norm” in Canada by 2040. Housing would be unattainable by all but a few; inheritance, not education, would determine one’s ability to get ahead; money might become so tight that people might turn to poaching to afford food. In this future, policymakers “may no longer be able to take for granted that people will be motivated to better their lot.
” “People may lose faith in the Canadian project,” concluded the brief. That’s the path that Trudeau put Canada on. Now that Carney’s platform has been released, plans for gargantuan debts and all, it’s clear that he wants to keep us on this course.
This would be a disaster, a dark reality of which even the federal government is aware. National Post Kelly McParland: Debate proved Ottawa's leaders need to look inside themselvesNP View: Dear Liberal voters, here are some things worth considering.
