November 8, 2025
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HERE'S MY TAKE
Let’s look beyond the headlines that feature budget deficits, MP floor crossings, and the claims of a “generational investment” budget. To make sense of Tuesday’s federal budget, we need to consider three separate, yet intersecting, subplots that together will determine the extent to which what happened this week will have any lasting impact on our lives.
The first is the political story. The second is the fiscal story. The third is a moral story.
Politics isn’t necessarily the most important, but it is immediately consequential. Two weeks ago, I used this space to discuss the government’s options for striking a deal with the opposition parties: forcing an election or enticing individual opposition MPs to ensure the budget’s formal adoption. Unless the “Yeas” outnumber the “Nays,” the budget is moot, and the discussion will turn to an election, given our Westminster system of government.
The government appears to have chosen the path of securing the cooperation of at least three opposition MPs, whether that is achieved through floor crossings, abstentions, or other means. I counted at least nine specific earmarked initiatives in opposition MPs’ ridings that are clearly meant to court their support. To give just one example, the new budget includes funding for a Filipino Community Cultural Centre in the riding of the NDP’s interim leader Don Davies. Whatever merits these projects have on their own, for the government, they have the added benefit of making it very difficult for the local MP to oppose the budget and cause the government to fall. The government was quite open about recruiting opposition MPs, hoping to increase their caucus to majority numbers, not just for this budget vote, but to extend their ability to stay in power.
Conservative Nova Scotia MP Chris d’Entremont got the ball rolling, announcing his switch to the Liberal caucus on budget day. The post-budget Ottawa receptions I attended were filled with gossip about as many as seven opposition MPs who were considering supporting the Liberal budget in one way or another. You’d need to have been inside of rooms that I was not to better evaluate how much of the rumours of enticements and intimidation were true or political mischief. Thursday’s resignation announcement by Edmonton MP Matt Jeneroux added to the intrigue narrative. The main vote on the budget is expected during the week of November 17, so expect the political subplot to have more twists and turns before then. In any case, the political pressure seems to be shifting from the question of whether the government will pass its budget to whether Pierre Poilievre can hold his opposition Conservatives united under his leadership.
The fiscal story that made headlines on Tuesday has its own subplot. The government positioned this budget with a grand promise. “The world is undergoing a series of fundamental shifts at a speed, scale, and scope not seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall,” according to the 493-page official document. “This is not a transition. It is a rupture—a generational shift taking place over a short period of time.” Many aren’t convinced, though, that the government takes its own rhetoric seriously. Wednesday’s Globe and Mail editorial was not alone in concluding that “the Liberals’ actions come nowhere near matching [Finance Minister François-Philippe] Champagne’s soaring rhetoric.”
The $78.3 billion projected deficit—the third-highest in Canadian history outside of a pandemic—adds to the growing national debt. Meanwhile, the budget offers no credible plan to stop borrowing. The argument that this is primarily infrastructure investment rather than operational spending seems not to match the specifics. Much of the spending requires other levels of government to provide matching funding. So, at a time when Canada needs fast investment, this plan sets the stage for ongoing negotiations and future re-announcements, not shovels in the ground or infrastructure available to attract new business development. The projection that this budget will spur more than $1 trillion of new capital investment over the next five years seems like wishful thinking.
Given the need for speed, I have questioned why the government chose to set up its Major Projects Office. If the government needs to set up a special office to fast-track projects of major national importance by getting them through the regulatory process faster, it’s a sign that the government actually needs to fix the regulatory process for all projects. The fact that the regulations can be bypassed for certain projects suggests the regulations themselves are the problem. Fixing them, so that all projects, including smaller private-sector projects, get faster approval is the real path to attracting investment. Fixing the broken regulatory system for everyone would mean that market-driven projects would supplement the government’s priority “nation-building” projects. Strong economies and prosperity flow from private-sector investment far more than from government-driven infrastructure initiatives, especially given the political interference that almost always complicates government projects.
While some of the specific initiatives in the budget seem worthy, most of the analysis I’ve read suggests that the economic story of this budget will not have a happy ending. You don’t need to be an accountant to know that continued red ink is rarely a recipe for prosperity. Between inflation, an emerging recession, ongoing productivity challenges, and trade uncertainty, Canada’s economic problems loom large, and few seem to find solutions in the budget for them.
Politics and macroeconomics are important stories, but for most who do not geek out on the details, the federal budget story is basically a moral one. We rely on the experts to sort through the details on our behalf, but fundamentally, all budgets reflect our priorities, and the choices we make express our collective values.
The deficit and debt reflect a decision to protect what the current generation enjoys, leaving the next generation to pay the bills. That’s a moral choice.
The federal budget’s focus on government spending, rather than facilitating greater private sector involvement, reflects a paternalism and a lack of trust in the ingenuity and creativity (not to mention the responsibility) of ordinary Canadians. That too is a moral choice.
The failure to address obvious issues like inter-provincial trade (which was supposedly going to be fixed by July 1 in the face of our US trade crisis) suggests that we are not ready as a country to come together around difficult decisions. Ultimately, that’s a failure of political will and responsibility and it raises questions about who we are and want to be as Canadians. That is also a moral choice.
On their face, federal budgets and the choices governments make through them affect public finances, whether they set the level of income the state will take through taxes or the level of funds it will collectively redistribute. But their importance is deeper than the numbers. Tax and income redistribution policies have different implications for younger and older generations. And those policies set the conditions for the sort of country the next generation will inherit. So, these are moral choices, not just economic and political ones. More broadly, those on the left will more likely frame the issues in terms of the impact for those on the economic margins and on the natural environment. Those on the right tend to see things in terms of government transparency, public trust, and intergenerational accountability. Regardless of ideology, most recognize that at their core, all budgets reflect our moral choices.
When “transformative budgets” are mentioned, my mind goes back 30 years to the 1995 budget introduced by Finance Minister Paul Martin. As Edward Greenspon puts it, at that time, the federal budget “slashed spending by $25-billion, the equivalent of about $75-billion today, paring the size of government back to early 1950s levels.” Within three years after that budget, the federal government was running a surplus. In fairness, Mr. Martin introduced his budget in the context of a majority Liberal government led by Prime Minister Jean Chretien and after a decade of angst about debts and deficits. The red ink was inherited from the previous Conservative government of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney who, like Prime Minister Mark Carney, talked a bigger game than he delivered on budgets. This week’s federal budget, promising both “austerity” and “investment,” achieves neither. At best, it is a paragraph in an open-ended, unfolding story.
Was this week preconditioning for a real transformative budget still to come in the future? Or are we simply delaying difficult things to the point where we will be left to deal with the economic pain that our lenders and trade partners impose on us, prioritizing their interests over ours and leaving us with few meaningful choices? That’s an open-ended story where the political, economic, and moral subplots are all playing their part in real time.
WHAT I’M READING
Quick Death Decisions
Quebec’s provincial government is not waiting for the federal government to deal with the question of advance requests for euthanasia. Advance requests allow a patient who is worried about eventually losing the capacity to apply for euthanasia to declare in the present the wish to be euthanized upon meeting certain future conditions. Last year, Quebec decided to allow such requests as a matter of healthcare within its provincial jurisdiction. Last week, the province passed a finance bill to increase the number of patients doctors see, effectively limiting them to 15 minutes to deal with a patient’s advance request for euthanasia. “Many physicians who provide medical assistance in dying are worried,” Dr. Georges L’Espérance, who leads Quebec’s equivalent of the Dying with Dignity advocacy group. “Those who would have liked to get involved will put it aside because it takes time. It’s a long process. You can’t do it in 15 minutes, it’s as simple as that.”
The Witness of How We Speak, Not Just What We Say
La Presse reported on Cardus’s recent Faith and Public Space Forum in Montreal, which discussed Quebec’s deepening secularism laws. Columnist Philippe Mercure notes that this gathering of people of different faiths included “Mr. Secularism himself, Professor Guillaume Rousseau, co-author of the famous Pelchat-Rousseau report, which notably recommended banning religious symbols in childcare centers.” He wrote about a clash of ideas but also “respectful debates and a genuine desire to discuss and understand each other better.” I’m proud of the work my colleagues do every day, but it gives me a special pride to see it through the eyes of a columnist who goes out of his way in his article to declare that he does not believe in God. He noticed the tone of this gathering of diverse religious folk, telling his readers, “I'm not asking you to agree with the opinions expressed here, much less to adopt the religious beliefs of those who put them forward. But it seems to me that when they are expressed so calmly, we should at least be able to listen to them without breaking out in hives.”
Golden Price for a Golden Dome
The Economist has noticed that details are scant a year after US President Donald Trump declared his country would create a Golden Dome system, which would provide national protection against missile and drone attacks. And the cost depends on just how extensive a system the US wants to create. “Experts calculate that a smallish Golden Dome, focused on parrying small incoming salvos, might cost just over $250 billion over 20 years, a modest sum by the standards of America’s annual defence spending,” the paper reports. “But a full-fat version with tens of thousands of [space-based interceptors] in orbit—a key factor driving up cost—could run to $3.6 trillion, a vast sum that would cannibalize America’s armed forces.”
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Democrats in the United States are flying high this week. They held on to the governorship of New Jersey, took the governorship of Virginia from the Republicans, and won a referendum in California that redraws electoral district borders in their favour. However, Marc Novicoff in The Atlantic notes that it’s not all sunshine and rainbows for the Democrats. He argues that they still don’t appear to be in a position to take the White House or the Senate, which would be game-changing developments in American politics.
MEANINGFUL METRICS
The federal budget documents outline a planned reduction in the federal civil service of 40,000 positions through a combination of job cuts, attrition, and early retirements. The government will reduce 16,000 full-time equivalent positions, including 650 executive positions. Another 12,000 positions, including 350 executive positions, will be eliminated through attrition and early retirement packages. Although this represents about a 10 percent reduction from the peak size of its workforce, reaching approximately 330,000 positions in the public service will only bring it into line with its 2023 levels, which are still more than 30 percent larger than they were in 2015. A recent Macdonald-Laurier Institute study highlights that the public service has grown at nearly double the rate of the private sector. The report also suggests that there are also productivity issues relating to public sector employment. Therefore, it proposes a framework of indices to document the size and performance of governments over time, which can be applied to both federal and provincial governments.
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TAKE IT TO-GO
The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month reminds us that peace is never accidental. Each year, remembrance calls us not only to honour those who sacrificed their lives for freedom, but to examine what kind of peace we are preserving.
In 2023, I used this occasion to reflect on my own personal history and my family’s involvement in the underground resistance movement during the Second World War. Most of the world is wealthier today than it was then, but fundamentally not much has changed. We are still in a world scarred by war and division. Our challenge is the same as that of our forefathers, namely, whether we will uphold the dignity of every person as an image-bearer of God. It is a profoundly moral and spiritual challenge.
True peace requires more than the absence of conflict—it requires rightly ordered loves and a renewed respect for our common humanity. Sometimes it even involves the fighting of a just war. And so it remains appropriate to pause to remember. Let’s show gratitude for past courage. Let us consider how that should inspire present conviction. And may our remembering lead us, once more, toward the kind of peace worth defending.
Until next week.