Business
Carney Admits Deficit Will Top $61.9 Billion, Unveils New Housing Bureaucracy
The Prime Minister said this year’s shortfall will exceed last year’s $61.9B as Ottawa creates Build Canada Homes to expand affordable housing.
Prime Minister Mark Carney just admitted that this year’s federal budget deficit will be “substantial” larger than last year’s $61.9 billion shortfall. Speaking in Nepean ahead of Parliament’s return yesterday, Carney defended the red ink as the cost of what he called “nation-building” investments in housing, defense, and protection from global trade shocks.
Lets recap for those at home not keeping score, the federal government ran a $61.9 billion deficit last year. It was supposed to be closer to $40 billion, but like every Liberal promise, the reality was far worse. That single number, that $61.9 billion hole, was a turning point. It destroyed what little credibility Justin Trudeau had left, and it forced his own finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, to walk away.
Now, let’s pause here. Chrystia Freeland didn’t just “move on.” She resigned in December 2024 after a bitter clash with Trudeau. She couldn’t defend the runaway spending anymore, couldn’t keep pretending the numbers added up. And when your own finance minister, the person who signed off on the books, decides she can’t be part of the game, and yet she’s ok with Carney spending more???
But here’s the part that’s truly insane. Just last week, those same media outlets were floating headlines about the Liberals preparing an “austerity budget.” The Globe and Mail literally told us Carney was weighing “austerity” alongside “investments.” CTV reported the government’s own House Leader was warning Canadians about “tough choices” ahead of the fall budget. Austerity! After sixty billion dollars in red ink.
And these idiots actually had the gall to use that word, “austerity” while the country drowns in debt, while the deficit is climbing even higher, and while Carney is out there hiring new bureaucrats and creating brand-new agencies with billions of your dollars. You can’t make this up.
And speaking of spin, let’s get to the real show. Because once Carney slipped and admitted the deficit was going to be bigger, he launched into the propaganda portion of the presser, the part where he pretends to be solving the housing crisis. And what’s the solution? You guessed it. Another federal agency. A brand-new bureaucracy carved out of CMHC. Because in Carney’s Canada, the answer to too much red tape is… more red tape.
They’re calling it Build Canada Homes. Sounds nice. It gets $13 billion of your money on day one. It has a mandate to “plan, finance, and build homes.” And who’s running it? Anna Belo — a former Toronto deputy mayor turned private-sector consultant. Because nothing says “housing affordability” like another revolving-door insider cashing a taxpayer-funded paycheck.
The agency’s first big ideas? Modular housing, a $1.5 billion “rental protection fund,” and lots of partnerships with provinces, municipalities, and Indigenous groups. In other words: buzzwords. More meetings. More layers of government. More bureaucracy.
And then, as if to drive the joke home, Carney rolled out his housing minister. Who is it? Gregor Robertson. Yes, the same Gregor Robertson who, as mayor of Vancouver, presided over one of the worst housing affordability collapses in Canadian history. The man under whose watch prices skyrocketed, taxes doubled, and working families were driven out of the city. That’s the expert. That’s the guy they put in charge. Yeah, he’s got “experience” all right. Eye roll.
Even Pierre Poilievre saw straight through it. Speaking to his caucus on Parliament Hill ahead of the fall sitting, the Conservative leader mocked Carney’s shiny new agency as just another layer of government that won’t build homes.
“After six months in office, not a single home has been built. Instead, he’s created another bureaucracy. Meanwhile, CMHC’s own forecast shows homebuilding will fall 13%. In the GTA, it’s already down by half. That is the Carney record.”
Poilievre tied the criticism to Carney’s broader record of announcements without results, comparing the “nation-building” pitch to the agency’s empty promise: new logos, new titles, no shovels in the ground.
This is the Liberal solution in a nutshell: take a crisis they helped create, build another layer of bureaucracy, and put the very people who caused the problem in charge of fixing it. And then tell you, with a straight face, that this time, it’ll be different.
And here’s the kicker. Every dollar of this so-called “nation-building” deficit is a dollar borrowed against your future. Last year alone, interest payments on the debt blew past PBO’s estimate of $49.1 billion… THAT’S MORE than Ottawa spends on health care transfers.
Lets be clear, thank God the fall session is back. Because here’s the truth: these Liberals only shine when the press is playing duck and cover for them. When it’s just press conferences, glossy slogans, and clapping seals, they look untouchable. But the moment Parliament is sitting, the moment committees start pulling threads, the whole show falls apart.
Remember what happened when they had just two days of committee hearings on that ferry contract? Over a billion dollars, handed to China, while they were busy telling Canadians “Canada First.” They were humiliated. Because when the facts are out in the open, when the spin stops working, this government has nothing left to stand on.
This fall will be no different. Mark Carney can rebrand deficits as “nation-building,” he can launch new bureaucracies and hire insiders at half a million dollars a year, but once Question Period starts, none of that will save him. The reality is simple: this government is not long for the world. And soon enough, we’ll see real austerity… Not because they choose it, but because they’ve run out of money and credibility to keep the game going.
Plus! Some tough lessons learned by journalists at all levels – not everyone is telling the truth and there are many people with the same name. Verify.
By now it’s established that Ontario Premier Doug Ford is either an ever so dreamy “elbows up” super hero kinda guy who’s shown US President Donald Trump who his daddy is or …. a ham fisted, narcissistic blowhard with all the finesse of a drunken linebacker crashing through the Royal Doulton.
If you follow social media, those appear to be the options. You choose.
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His $75 million ad buy attempting to show Americans how Trump is offside on tariffs with the late Republican icon President Ronald Reagan (1981-89) was either, as Ford insists, a triumph, or a disaster of epic proportions. Either way, the result is the Americans broke off trade talks until, well, whenever a very aggrieved Trump next wakes up on the right side of the bed. And the progressive bromance between Ford and Prime Minister Mark Carney looks to be on the rocks, with the latter admitting he apologized to Trump and had advised against the ads. Me? I thought Matt Gurney summarized the situation very well in the Toronto Star.
“The Americans are more than savvy enough to have figured out what we’re up to. They’ve responded to our good cop/bad cop strategy by shooting both cops and then torching the police station.”
The Rewrite, though, is about media, not tugging forelocks and authoring political thumb suckers. So what really made me curious about Ford’s ad spend was whether the premier’s media friends in Ontario were going to get their – what’s that phrase again? – oh, right: fair share.
People may have forgotten but it was only last year when Ford, succumbing to News Media Canada’s lobbying, decided that too much government advertising money was going to American tech companies like Meta and Google and not enough to people who report about him and his opponents. Consistent with the progressive belief that government subsidies can cure any problem, Ford ordered that 25 per cent of the $100 million spent on advertising annually by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), the Ontario Cannabis Store, Metrolinx and the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) be directed to Ontario newspapers. And he didn’t stop there. The directive news release made it clear that “the government is also making similar commitments with its own advertising spending, helping to provide even more support for Ontario jobs and promote Ontario culture.”
Word on the street is that this cashapalooza – announced mere months before an election- has been warmly received by Ontario media, so I was already trying to find out who was getting how much when the US ads launched.
Turns out what should have been a simple task is not so easy. The specifics are not to be found within Ontario’s public accounts. So I wrote to Grace Lee, the director of communications in the Premier’s office and then Hannah Jensen, who also works there. No response. Then I tried again. Still nothing. When I asked if the directive “also applies to the Government of Ontario’s recent advertising buy in the United States so that additional government advertising – as is indicated in the directive – worth 25 per cent of the US spend will benefit qualified Ontario media” I got the same cold shoulder.
So, while there was a bit of publicity regarding Ford’s initial decision to subsidize Ontario publishers to the tune of $25 million-plus, no one is providing the details. The publishers must know and the government must know, but they seem to be keeping it a secret. It doesn’t seem likely, but if Ford is faithful to the words and spirit of his 2024 directive, there should be some additional cash flowing to approved Ontario publishers as a result of his Trump tantrum-inducing investment.
Alas, it appears unlikely the public will ever know if that’s the case or which media outlets are benefiting from the premier’s benefaction. That makes these arrangements look all too grubby. Keeping them in the dark, where they’ll stay because that’s the way the politicians and the publishers like it, is only going to further diminish public trust in media. But it’s unclear most of them care anymore.
A phrase in a Juno News report caught my eye last week and it should serve as a cautionary tale. In its report on a large Alberta Independence rally in Edmonton, separatism-friendly lawyer Jeffrey Rath was, understandably, a key source. But he was loosely quoted when referring to a competing Pro-Canada petition on the question of separation. Juno reported that “Rath said Saturday that he heard (organizer Thomas) Lukaszuk was 50,000 signatures short, with a Tuesday deadline.”
The issue isn’t whether Rath said that or not – it’s whether what “he heard” was based on anything other than wishful thinking and rumour-planting. Reporters should not pass along that form of information without verifying because, as it turned out, Rath wasn’t even close. Needing 294,000 signatures, the Pro-Canada petition collected 456,000 or at least 200,000 more than what Juno’s source, Rath, “heard.”
Fine if Rath wants to make a fool of himself. Reporters should be careful not to share the distinction.
A more established title than Juno was in a shambles last week when the venerable Times of London had to quickly pull a story in which former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was quoted criticizing Democrat mayoralty candidate Zohran Mamdani.
What went wrong? The Times reporter believed he had reached out to de Blasio via email and got a response that questioned Mamdani’s economic plan. The New York Post, also owned by Rupert Murdoch, jumped all over it but when the real former mayor de Blasio responded on X that the report was bogus, The Times stepped back quickly, issuing a statement that it had “apologised to Bill de Blasio and removed the article immediately after discovering that our reporter had been misled by an individual falsely claiming to be the former New York mayor.”
In an interesting twist, the international publication Semafor reported that it had “reached out to a Gmail address our sources believed to be the one used by The Times.”
And:
“You are correct. It was me. The real Bill DeBlasio,” the person who controls the email address responded.
As it turns out, just as there’s more than one Peter Menzies in this world, there’s not just one Bill de Blasio and The Times’ assertion that someone was impersonating the former mayor quickly proved contentious.
The guy who responded to the email turned out to be a 59-year-old Long Island wine importer named Bill DeBlasio.
“I’m Bill DeBlasio. I’ve always been Bill DeBlasio,” DeBlasio (not de Blasio) told Semafor after it knocked on his door. “I never once said I was the mayor. He never addressed me as the mayor.
“So I just gave him my opinion.”
The moral of this story for journos? As the old Chicago City desk saying goes, always “check it out – if your mother says she loves you, check it out.”
In the meantime, we await The Times’ apology to DeBlasio – the one with the wine.
(Peter Menzies is a commentator and consultant on media, Macdonald-Laurier Institute Senior Fellow, a past publisher of the Calgary Herald, a former vice chair of the CRTC and a National Newspaper Award winner.)
Canada’s embassy in Brazil has been having a terrific year. Well, at least that’s how it might look from the perspective of the 15 or so Canadians who live and work there.
Oh sure, they just faced a conviction in a local court over labour law infractions. And, OK, there are also multiple related cases pending. But the vibe down there must be great.
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After all, it never snows in Brasilia and, not counting a half million Canadian dollars for security and “common services”, they spent $1.1 million keeping their various properties running according to a 2024-2025 budget document I’ve seen. Here, courtesy of Google Satellite, is what the embassy itself looks like:
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And here’s how that $1.1 million in spending broke down:
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To be sure, this isn’t a story about vast crooked fortunes being gained through devious financial scams. I’m aware of no 300ft luxury yachts being quietly moved between Dows Lake and the Bahamas each fall and spring. And it’s certainly reasonable for Canadians on foreign missions to expect to enjoy an above-average lifestyle while serving their country abroad.
But perhaps some of the spending here is getting a bit too close to the line. Take the ten pool covers purchased last year for nearly $25,000 (Canadian) in total. The budget document actually notes how such covers can help with the high cost of replacing water lost through evaporation.
In fact, water costs (totaling $103,000 that year) have been rising: they’re 20 percent higher than fiscal year 2022-2023. So it does seem that someone on staff is aware of the problem and is trying to address it. But a simpler solution might involve just shutting down at least some of the pools (there’s no way they need 10 covers for just one pool) or switching to using trucked-in water for the pools (which is supposed to be cheaper).
And how about the $16,900 spent on a Rational iCombi Pro Xs 6 2/3 220V Mono Elétrico oven for the official residence? Nice. But that’s around ten times the cost of a standard high-end home oven. Add to that the $2,140 spent on a KitchenAid 6.6L, Espresso Machine, Pasta Maker, Blender, and Electrical Slicer.
Don’t you just hate it when everything breaks down at the same time?
I realize that, in the grand scheme of things, nothing here feels all that evil. And I know it’s not fair to peer over people’s shoulders and judge their actions from such a distance. But it certainly does look like here’s yet one more Global Affairs Canada operation that’s missed the memo on the need to tone down public spending.
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