The Liberals aren't tabling a budget. How does that affect the economy — and your wallet?
CBC
The recently re-elected Liberal government isn't planning to release a budget this year, opting instead for an economic statement later this fall. But experts warn that not providing a fiscal snapshot could erode economic confidence and delay the government's agenda.
A federal budget is one of the most significant legislative pieces a government can put forward. It provides an update on the health of the nation's coffers and outlines the government's spending priorities.
Typically the budget is tabled in March or April and passed before the House rises in June. But a 2025 budget hasn't been put forward yet since Parliament was prorogued in January and the election campaign began in March.
Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne indicated Wednesday that the government isn't planning on tabling a late spring budget, and will instead opt to release a "substantive" economic statement later this fall.
Champagne cited ongoing economic uncertainty — due in large part to the U.S. trade war — as one of the reasons the government won't pass a budget before June.
"Hopefully by [fall] there'll be less uncertainty that we need to factor into … I want to be straight with Canadians and give them the best possible [financial and economic] picture that I can," Champagne said in an interview with CBC's Power & Politics.
Champagne also argued most of the government's spending priorities were laid out in the Liberals' election platform.
But Kevin Page, a former parliamentary budget officer and head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Democracy at the University of Ottawa, told Power & Politics that "the reason you have a fiscal plan is to deal with the uncertainty."
"The party platform that the Liberals produced was based on a set of assumptions that would no longer hold. The economy is much weaker now, the deficit will be much higher," Page told host David Cochrane.
"I don't think it's a strong argument. I understand the argument more in terms of compressed timelines."
Budgets are more than just a fiscal document. In many ways, they are also communications documents and a way for the government to signal where it anticipates the economy is headed.
Rebekah Young, an economist at Scotiabank, argued it's important for the government to show its economic projections and what it's prepared to offer if things take a turn for the worse.
"Markets are looking for those sorts of signals and now what we've seen provinces do is put ranges of uncertainty around their assumptions so at least they know roughly where those guardrails are," she told Power & Politics.
"The big question mark is: if things are a lot worse … the government is likely going to have to deliver additional programs beyond what they've already talked about."
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