During its tenure, the Trudeau government rejected any semblance of spending restraint and increased spending (and borrowing) at every turn. However, due to the rising cost of deficits and debt, coupled with pressures to increase spending in neglected areas such as defence, the next federal government—whoever that may be—may finally be forced to find savings and reduce spending.
But where to look?
The government should immediately review all spending on the basis of efficiency, value for money, and the appropriate role of government—similar to the spending review initiated by the federal Chrétien government during the 1990s. Here are some line items ripe for the cutting board.
Spending Area
Projected Spending in 2024/25
Regional Development Agencies
$1.5 billion
Government Supports for Journalism
$1.7 billion
Incentives for Zero-Emission Vehicles
$0.6 billion
2 Billion Trees
$0.3 billion
Canada Infrastructure Bank
$3.5 billion
Strategic Innovation Fund
$2.4 billion
Global Innovation Clusters
$0.2 billion
Green Municipal Fund
$0.5 billion
Total Potential Savings
$10.7 billion
Regional Development Agencies: The federal government operates seven Regional Development Agencies (RDAs), which deliver financial assistance (a.k.a. corporate welfare) to businesses. Despite spending an estimated $1.5 billion in federal taxpayer money in 2024/25, the RDAs do not provide any widespread economic benefits to Canadians. Instead, they simply redistribute those dollars to private firms and pick winners and losers in the free market. When reporting on the results, the government offers vague platitudes such as “businesses are growing” and “communities are developing economically.”
Government Money for Journalism: In 2024/25 the federal government spent an estimated $1.7 billion to support Canadian journalism including the operating costs (e.g. wages) of newspapers and broadcast outlets such as the CBC. Despite these efforts, and the considerable price tag, hundreds of news organizations have closed since 2020 and layoffs have persisted—largely due to the disruptive effects of the Internet. Simply put, the traditional media sector is in decline, and the government’s costly attempts to reverse this trend have been ineffective.
Federal Support for Electric Vehicle Purchases: As part of its push to reduce emissions, the federal government will spend an estimated $587.6 million to subsidize electric vehicle (EV) purchases in 2024/25. This spending is inefficient and wasteful. EV incentives are expensive—costing a minimum of $177 per tonne of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, whereas the federal carbon tax in 2024 was much cheaper at $80 per tonne of GHG emissions.
The 2 Billion Trees (2BT) Program: Ottawa has earmarked $3.2 billion for the program from 2021 to 2031, with expenses in 2024-25 alone estimated at $340 million. While laudable in theory, the program has been poorly executed. In its first two years, the federal government spent roughly 15.0 per cent of the total budget to plant merely 2.3 per cent of the two billion trees. In fact, the 2BT program has used trees planted under a different program to artificially boost its numbers.
Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB): Established in 2017, the CIB is a federal Crown corporation tasked with investing and attracting investment in Canadian infrastructure projects. Over its more than seven-year lifespan, the CIB has approved approximately $13.2 billion in investments across 76 projects (as of July 2024). In 2024/25, federal CIB funding will equal $3.5 billion. Though multiple problems plague the CIB, chief among them is its inefficiency in advancing projects. As of July 2024, only two CIB-funded projects had been completed. This lack of progress was a chief concern in a previous House of Commons committee report that made the sole recommendation to abolish the CIB.
Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF): With federal grants and contributions, the SIF funds projects based on their purported potential to deliver innovation and economic benefits for Canadians. While Canada certainly suffers from a lack of innovation, this spending (to the tune of $2.4 billion in 2024/25) simply shifts jobs and investment dollars away from other firms and industries—with no net benefit for the overall economy. Similarly, increased government spending on innovation may simply crowd out private-sector investment, leading to no net increase in innovation investment.
Global Innovation Clusters (GIC): The federal government launched the GIC program, like the SIF, to address the lack of innovation in Canada. The government expects to disperse $202.3 million through the GIC in 2024/25 alone, targeting the five “clusters” of business activity the government chose in 2018. But again, because the clusters represent specific industries and technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence, marine technologies, manufacturing), the federal government is incentivizing firms to spend time and resources modifying their businesses to secure grant rather than focusing on the development of new/improved goods and services.
Green Municipal Fund (GMF): The GMF spends federal tax dollars on municipal projects that purportedly accelerate the transition to net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In 2024/25, the federal government will contribute $530 million to the fund. While the fund maintains emissions-reduction targets for projects, several projects approved for funding will not reduce GHG emissions in any measurable way—for example, “climate-friendly” home tours and funding for climate advocacy groups in Ottawa. In other words, the GMF is spending taxpayer dollars on projects that make no apparent progress towards the GMF’s stated goal.
In total, these eight spending initiatives add up to approximately $10.7 billion in potential savings for the 2024-25 fiscal year alone. And remember, these are just the low-hanging fruit. The next federal government can find further savings through a more comprehensive review of all spending.
Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.
“So we’re going to have an order on that pretty soon – we can’t do that to our farmers and leisure too, hotels, we’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.”
President Donald Trump said Thursday that changes are coming to his aggressive immigration policies after complaints from farmers and business owners.
“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump wrote in a social media post Thursday morning. “In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”
Later Thursday, Trump made it clear that businesses need workers.
“Our farmers are being hurt badly. They have very good workers – they’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be great. And we’re going to have to do something about that,” the president said.
He added: “We can’t take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don’t have, maybe, what they’re supposed to have.”
Just how Trump may change his approach to immigration enforcement remains unclear, but he said he wants to help farmers and business owners.
“You go into a farm and you look and people, they’ve been there for 20 or 25 years and they work great and the owner of the farm loves them and you’re supposed to throw them out. You know what happens? They end up hiring the criminals that have come in, the murderers from prisons and everything else,” Trump said.
Trump said changes would be coming soon, but gave little detail on how policies could change.
“So we’re going to have an order on that pretty soon – we can’t do that to our farmers and leisure too, hotels, we’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.”
In a later post on Truth Social, Trump said illegal immigration had destroyed American institutions.
“Biden let 21 Million Unvetted, Illegal Aliens flood into the Country from some of the most dangerous and dysfunctional Nations on Earth — Many of them Rapists, Murderers, and Terrorists. This tsunami of Illegals has destroyed Americans’ Public Schools, Hospitals, Parks, Community Resources, and Living Conditions,” the president wrote. “They have stolen American Jobs, consumed BILLIONS OF DOLLARS in Free Welfare, and turned once idyllic Communities, like Springfield, Ohio, into Third World Nightmares.”
He added that deportations would continue: “I campaigned on, and received a Historic Mandate for, the largest Mass Deportation Program in American History. Polling shows overwhelming Public Support for getting the Illegals out, and that is exactly what we will do. As Commander-in-Chief, I will always protect and defend the Heroes of ICE and Border Patrol, whose work has already resulted in the Most Secure Border in American History. Anyone who assaults or attacks an ICE or Border Agent will do hard time in jail. Those who are here illegally should either self deport using the CBP Home App or, ICE will find you and remove you. Saving America is not negotiable!”
For years, Canada’s political class sold us on the idea that carbon taxes were clever policy. Not just a tool to cut emissions, but a fair one – tax the polluters, then cycle the money back to regular folks, especially those with thinner wallets.
It wasn’t a perfect system. The focus-group-tested line embraced for years by the Trudeau Liberals made no sense at all: we’re taxing you so we can put more money back in your pocketbooks. What the hell? If you care so much about my taxes being low, just cut them already. Somehow, it took years and years of this line being repeated for its internal contradiction to become evident to all.
Yet, even many strategic conservative minds could see the thinking had internal logic. You could sell it at a town hall. As an editorial team member at an influential news organization when B.C. got its carbon tax in 2008, I bought into the concept too.
And now? That whole model has been thrown overboard, by the very parties had long defended it with a straight face and an arch tone. In both Ottawa and Victoria in 2025, progressive governments facing political survival abandoned the idea of climate policy as a matter of fairness, opting instead for tactical concessions meant to blunt the momentum of their foes.
The result: lower-income Canadians who had grown accustomed to carbon tax rebates as a dependable backstop are waking up to find the support gone. And higher earners? They just got a tidy little gift from the state.
The betrayal is worse in B.C.
This new chart from economist Ken Peacock tells the story. He shared it last week at the B.C. Chamber of Commerce annual gathering in Nanaimo.
Ken-Peacock- B.C. Chamber of Commerce annual gathering in Nanaimo.
What is shows is that scrapping the carbon tax means the poor are poorer. The treasury is emptier.
What about the rich?
Yup, you guessed it: richer.
Scrubbing the B.C. consumer carbon tax leaves the lowest earning 20 percent of households $830 per year poorer, while the top one-fifth gain $959.
“Climate leader” British Columbia’s approach was supposed to be the gold standard: a revenue-neutral carbon tax, accepted by industry, supported by voters, and engineered to send the right price signal without growing the size of government.
That pact broke somewhere along the way.
Instead of returning the money, the provincial government slowly transformed the tax into a $2 billion annual cash cow. And when Mark Carney won the federal election, B.C. Premier David Eby, boxed in by his own pledge, scrapped the tax like a man dropping ballast from a sinking balloon. Gone. No replacement. No protections for those who need them most.
Filling the gas tank, on the other hand, is noticeably cheaper. Of course, if you can’t afford a car that might not be apparent.
Spare a thought for the climate activists who spent 15 years flogging this policy, only to watch it get tossed aside like a stack of briefing notes on a Friday afternoon.
Who could not conclude that the environmental left has been played. For a political movement that prides itself on idealism, it’s a brutal lesson in realpolitik: when power’s on the line, principles are negotiable.
But here’s the thing: maybe the carbon tax model deserved a rethink. Maybe it’s time for a grown-up look at what actually works
With B.C. now reviewing its CleanBC policies, here’s a basic question: what’s working, and what’s not?
A lot of emission reductions in this province didn’t come from government fiat. They were the result of business-led innovation: more efficient technology, cleaner fuels, and capital discipline.
That, plus a hefty dose of offshoring. We’ve pushed our industrial emissions onto other jurisdictions, then shipped the finished goods back without attaching any climate cost. This contradiction particularly helped to fuel the push to dump carbon pricing as a failed solution.
The progressives’ choice was made once the anti-tax arguments could no longer be refuted: to limit losses it would be necessary to deep six an unpopular strand of the overall carbon strategy. This, to save the rest. That’s why policies like the federal emissions cap haven’t also been abandoned.
To give another example, it’s also why British Columbia’s aviation sector is in a flap over the issue of sustainable aviation fuel. Despite years of aspirational policy, low emissions jet fuel blends remain more scarce than a long-haul cabin upgrade. The policy’s designers correctly anticipated that refiners would never be able to meet the imposed demand, and so as an alternative they provided a complex carbon credit trading scheme that will make the cost of flying more expensive. For those with a choice, nearby airport hubs in the United States where these policies do not apply will become an attractive alternative, while remote communities that have no choice in the matter will simply have to eat the cost. (Needless to say, if emissions reduction is your goal this policy isn’t needed anyways, since the decisions that matter in reducing global aviation emissions aren’t made in B.C. and never will be.)
I’m not showing up to bash those who have been genuinely trying to figure things out, and found themselves in a world of policy that is more complicated and unpredictable than they realized. Simply put, the chapter is closing on an era of energy policy naïveté.
The brutally honest action by Eby and Carney to eject carbon taxes for their own political survival could be read as a signal that it’s now okay to have an honest public conversation. Let’s insist on that. For years now, debate has been constrained in part by a particular form of linguistic tyranny, awash in terminology designed to cow the questioner into silence. “So you have an issue with clean policies, do you? What kind of dirty reprobate are you?” “Only a monster doesn’t want their aviation fuel to be sustainable.” Etc. Now is the moment to move on from that, and widen the field of discourse.
Ditching bad policy is also a signal that just maybe a better approach is to start by embracing a robust sense of the possibilities for energy to improve lives and empower all of the solutions needed for tomorrow’s problems. Because that’s the only way the conversation will ever get real.
Slogans, wildly aspirational goal setting and the habit of refusing to acknowledge how the world really works have been getting us nowhere. Petroleum products will continue to obey Yergin’s Law: oil always gets to market. China and India will grow their economies using reliable energy they can afford, having recently approved the construction of the most new coal power plants in a decade amid energy security concerns. Japan, which has practically worn itself out pleading for natural gas from Canada, isn’t waiting for the help of last-finishing nice guys to guarantee energy security: today, they are buying 8% of their LNG imports from the evil Putin regime.
Meanwhile, we’re in the worst of both worlds: our courageous carbon tax policy that was positioned as trailblazing not just for B.C. residents but for the world as a whole – climate leadership! – is gone, the poorest are puzzling over why things feel even more expensive, and nobody knows what comes next.
Ken-Peacock- B.C. Chamber of Commerce annual gathering in Nanaimo.
