{"id":233128,"date":"2025-10-23T00:15:28","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T00:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/233128\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T00:15:28","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T00:15:28","slug":"carney-lays-out-budget-priorities-in-evening-speech-to-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/233128\/","title":{"rendered":"Carney lays out budget priorities in evening speech to students"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Mark Carney<\/a> is outlining his government\u2019s priorities for the Nov. 4 budget in a Wednesday evening speech to students, after meeting separately with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre<\/a> and Bloc Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois Leader Yves-Fran\u00e7ois Blanchet about their priorities.<\/p>\n

The meetings with opposition leaders are taking place a day after Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon said he was worried the opposition parties could trigger a federal election by making impossible budget demands. <\/p>\n

The minority Liberal government is three votes short of a majority, meaning it will need MPs from other parties to either vote with it or abstain in order to avoid an election on confidence matters such as the budget.<\/p>\n

Government House leader calls budget demands from Conservatives, Bloc unreasonable<\/a><\/p>\n

A source familiar with the Prime Minister\u2019s speech told The Globe and Mail that Mr. Carney\u2019s budget-focused speech will pledge to significantly increase non-U.S. exports over the next decade, and will state that the budget will include Canada\u2019s new immigration plan and a talent-attraction strategy. It will also include details about a new \u201cClimate Competitiveness Strategy\u201d and restate the government\u2019s plan to \u201cspend less to invest more.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Globe and Mail is not identifying the source, who was not authorized to comment on the matter.<\/p>\n

Mr. Poilievre released an open letter Monday that said the budget should keep the deficit under $42-billion<\/a>, in reference to the government\u2019s deficit projection that was announced in the December, 2024, fiscal update. He also said it should reduce taxes on income, capital gains, the industrial carbon tax and \u201chomebuilding taxes\u201d and should eliminate various taxes related to packaging, fertilizer and farm equipment that he calls \u201chidden taxes on food.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. MacKinnon dismissed the Conservative demands as \u201cludicrous\u201d and said Wednesday that Mr. Poilievre\u2019s references to taxes on food are imaginary.<\/p>\n

Mr. Carney\u2019s speech is scheduled be delivered at 7:30 p.m. ET. He met with Mr. Poilievre for about half an hour at 4:30 p.m. ET.<\/p>\n

Following the meeting, Mr. Poilievre described his proposals as \u201cvery reasonable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy message is it\u2019s time to reverse course on the costly decade of deficit spending that has given us more expensive food and housing,\u201d he said. \u201cSo if the Prime Minister is serious about making Canada a more affordable country, then he needs to bring forward an affordable budget.\u201d<\/p>\n

Opinion: Canada must overhaul its broken tax system<\/a><\/p>\n

Mr. Blanchet told reporters he met with Mr. Carney earlier in the day. He said the Bloc\u2019s budget demands are well known and could be funded by removing federal subsidies for the oil and gas sector.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s their responsibility to find somebody to vote with them, and only theirs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Randall Bartlett, Desjardins\u2019 deputy chief economist, released a detailed report Wednesday that lays out expectations ahead of the budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile it\u2019s difficult to know exactly how big the planned deficits will be, announced spending and tax cuts make clear that they will be among the largest in recent memory as a share of GDP outside of a recession or pandemic,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

The Desjardins report said the deficit for the current fiscal year could exceed $70-billion, which is similar to an estimate released last month by the Parliamentary Budget Officer. The C.D. Howe Institute said this year\u2019s deficit could be more than $92-billion.<\/p>\n

Mr. Bartlett projects the federal net debt-to-GDP \u2013 a key metric of a government\u2019s fiscal health \u2013 will rise steadily over the coming decade. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhile a debt downgrade isn\u2019t imminent, Canada\u2019s AAA status shouldn\u2019t be taken for granted,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

The federal debt-to-GDP ratio spiked to 47.2 per cent from 31.2 per cent during the COVID-19 pandemic. It improved to 42.1 per cent for the 2023-24 fiscal year.<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s December, 2024, fiscal update had projected that the debt-to-GDP ratio would decline slightly each year.<\/p>\n

The government recently said that within three years, the entirety of the federal deficit will be used for capital spending that boosts growth, as opposed to operational spending.<\/p>\n

Mr. Carney referenced that plan earlier in the day during Question Period.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the government is going to do is use that deficit to grow this economy like it has never seen before,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

With a report from Stephanie Levitz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prime Minister Mark Carney is outlining his government\u2019s priorities for the Nov. 4 budget in a Wednesday evening…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,714,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-233128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-politics","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}