{"id":296802,"date":"2025-11-17T09:45:04","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T09:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/296802\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T09:45:04","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T09:45:04","slug":"ottawas-operating-spending-not-capital-driving-deeper-deficits-pbo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/296802\/","title":{"rendered":"Ottawa&#8217;s operating spending \u2014 not capital \u2014 driving deeper deficits: PBO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Posted on November 17, 2025<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By\u00a0Craig Lord\u00a0in Ottawa<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/cp-jason-jacques-sm.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\"\/>The parliamentary budget officer projects Ottawa will blow past the new fiscal anchors set out in last week&#8217;s 2025 federal budget.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Interim budget officer Jason Jacques says in a new analysis of the budget that Ottawa is set to run an average deficit of $64.3 billion over the next five years \u2014 double the level set out in the federal government&#8217;s last fiscal update in late 2024.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Despite Prime Minister Mark Carney&#8217;s talk of shifting government spending to capital investment rather than operating costs, Jacques says the deeper deficits are being driven by new day-to-day program spending.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The federal Liberals set fiscal anchors \u2014 benchmarks to show prudent financial management \u2014 to balance the operating side of the budget in three years and maintain a declining deficit-to-GDP ratio over the planning horizon.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jacques says Ottawa is using overly expansive definitions of capital spending and predicts new spending plans will leave the government with an operating deficit.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The PBO&#8217;s analysis of the budget&#8217;s outlook also projects it&#8217;s not likely the government will meet its goal of shrinking the deficit as a share of GDP.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(C) The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Posted on November 17, 2025 By\u00a0Craig Lord\u00a0in Ottawa The parliamentary budget officer projects Ottawa will blow past the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101],"class_list":["post-296802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}