Federal government consistently spends beyond high spending targets

Post-pandemic, the Liberals raised annual spending by nearly $100 billion versus their pre-pandemic fiscal plan.

As budget season approaches, one thing is clear. If the Trudeau government is notable for planning astonishingly high levels of spending, it’s equally notable for overspending beyond its original plans. At all times—when they first took office in 2015, in the pre-pandemic years, and now—the Liberals have consistently raised their spending targets, then spent more than targeted.

Begin at the beginning. Inheriting a projected balanced budget in 2015, the Liberals proceeded to spend federal finances into deficit in the 2015-16 fiscal year (ended March 31, 2016) before presenting the first budget of their own in the spring of 2016. That budget called for $1,219 billion in program spending over the next four years. What the government actually ended up spending was $1,269 billion for the 2016-17 to 2019-20 fiscal years, blowing past their initial plan by a cumulative $50 billion.

Even worse, they set government spending on a higher trajectory—while cumulative spending in the Liberals’ first four full fiscal years in office was 4.1 per cent more than initially planned, the spending level for fiscal year 2019-20 alone was actually 11.1 per cent above the original target. So not only did the Liberals overspend their Budget 2016 fiscal plan by $50 billion over four years, they significantly weakened the fiscal outlook by permanently raising baseline spending for future years.

That federal program spending exploded to $624 billion in 2020-21 from $349 billion in 2019-20 is not surprising given the onetime expenses during the pandemic, and the $479 billion in spending in 2021-22 also included pandemic-related costs. But while some COVID spending was justifiable, much of the new spending was not. According to an analysis by Fraser Institute economists, $360 billion in pandemic-related spending, at least 25 per cent was unnecessary waste.

What about after the pandemic? In post-pandemic fiscal year 2022-23, program spending was $448 billion and debt interest expenses $35 billion, for a total of $483 billion. Compare that to what the Liberals initially planned in Budget 2018, the earliest fiscal plan to project out to 2022-23. Budget 2018, itself no model of fiscal responsibility, planned $350 billion in program spending and $33 billion in debt interest costs for a total of $383 billion (excluding a $3 billion “adjustment for risk”) in 2022-23.

So post-pandemic, the Liberals raised annual spending by nearly $100 billion versus their pre-pandemic fiscal plan. Comparing expected spending for 2023-24 with the plan in Budget 2019 shows a similar discrepancy. The 2023 Fall Economic Statement projects $450 billion in program spending and $496 billion in total spending versus $369 billion in program spending and $402 billion in total spending for 2023-24 in the Liberals’ 2019 fiscal plan (which itself contained material upward spending revisions from Budget 2018).

Speaking of the Fall Economic Statement, it also revised the spending trajectory upward from what the Liberals budgeted in the spring. In Budget 2023, the Liberals projected $2,395 billion in program spending over the next five fiscal years—or $2,630 billion including interest expenses. Because of new spending commitments and higher borrowing costs, five-year program spending is now expected to be $2,422 billion ($28 billion higher) and total spending $2,688 billion ($58 billion higher).

That’s a significant spending plan increase in only half a year. However, given the Trudeau government’s track record of missing its targets, don’t be surprised if actual spending comes in even higher than the latest forecast.

Author:

Matthew Lau

Adjunct Scholar, Fraser Institute

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Business

Global elites insisting on digital currency to phase out cash

Published on September 16, 2025

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By David James

The aim is to have the digital euro fully in place by 2030 in order to move Europe fully into the United Nations’ post-capitalist system described in Agenda 2030.

It always pays to scrutinize closely the comments of financial elites because they are rarely honest about their intentions. An instance is the comments of Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank (ECB) who said there will be a vote next month in the European Union parliament on the next step toward creating a digital euro, which would be a central bank digital currency (CBDC).

A central bank digital currency is money issued by the central bank in digital form as opposed to digital credit issued by banks, which is the dominant form of money in Western societies. She claims that it will mean more freedom for Europeans and that there is nothing to fear.

Lagarde anticipates launching the digital euro in about 18 months. The aim is to have it fully in place by 2030 in order to move Europe fully into the United Nations’ post-capitalist system that is described in Agenda 2030.

Lagarde’s blandishments about what the digital euro represents do not survive close examination. She acknowledged that the main concern of the population is the privacy implications, claiming the ECB is looking at a technology that will offer protections. The private banks, she said, will apply the “rules of scrutiny” that already have access to the transactions. “We are not interested in the data. The private banks are interested in the data.”

Lagarde also said that the “people have dictated” the transition to a digital euro. This looks dubious. Neither the EU Commission nor the ECB is democratically elected. And if the main concern people have with a CBDC is privacy, then why would people prefer it over cash, which is immune to scrutiny? It is not as if a digital euro would satisfy an unmet need. Digital money – credit and online transactions – is already freely available in the banking system.

The ECB is also speaking out of both sides of its mouth, saying on one hand that the digital euro will only complement cash and on the other that cash will be eliminated.

Lagarde made it clear that the aim is to phase out cash completely. Agenda 2030, she claims, “can only be enforced in a cashless economy.” Why? What is it about cash that makes environmental policies impossible to implement? The answer is surely that a digital euro is needed to control people’s behavior, forcing them to comply with environmental rules.

Previous comments by central bankers suggest there is good reason for Europeans to be extremely suspicious. In 2021, the general manager of the Bank for International Settlements, Agustín Carstens, said: “We don’t know who’s using a $100 bill today and we don’t know who’s using a 1,000-peso bill today. The key difference with the CBDC is the central bank will have absolute control on the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that expression of central bank liability, and also we will have the technology to enforce that.”

The pretext for the financial power play is climate change and the push toward net zero. A European CBDC is not, as implied by Lagarde, the creation of a new digital monetary mechanism. As economist Richard Werner points out, that already exists – credit and debit cards, for example. The significance of a digital euro is that it threatens the banking system.

That problem does not seem to concern the ECB, however. Indeed, fundamentally altering the banking system may be what they are aiming for. Lagarde said “climate compliance” will become a core element of bank supervision, not a separate initiative, “because climate change presents significant, material financial risks to banks and the entire financial system.”

The ECB’s supervision will mandate that banks integrate the management of climate-related and environmental risks into their existing risk management processes, particularly through new prudential transition planning requirements under what is called CRD VI. European banking, it seems, will no longer be defined by profitability and fiscal soundness but also by the politics of climate change.

The slipperiness of the ECB‘s arguments point to a much darker ambition. Werner says when CBDCs are connected to digital IDs “we are talking about the most totalitarian control system in human history … it gives you as a controller complete visibility on what everyone is doing, every transaction.

“The monitoring is only one aspect. These CBDCs are programmable and you can use big data algorithms, which they sell to us as artificial intelligence, in order to have rules about who can buy what and for what purpose, at what time and at what place – and therefore control all your movement. In the history of dictatorships, there never has been such a powerful control tool.”

There is a flaw, though, in the ECB’s push to change Europe’s financial architecture that may prove fatal to its ambitions. The EU and ECB do not have genuine central control. When the euro was established in 1998, the only way Germany was able to join was on the condition there was no consolidation of the government debt. So, although the ECB notionally sets interest rates for the zone, government debt is held at the national level and each country’s interest rate differs.

The ECB is thus a central bank in name only, unlike the U.S. Federal Reserve, or for that matter most country’s central banks, that oversee their national government debt. A European nation can choose to exit the EU, and each has to have its own monetary policy in spite of the ECB setting a uniform rate.

The push to create a digital euro is most likely an attempt to deal with these contradictions, but at best it will be a makeshift solution and it will take very little for it to fall apart. Disintegration of the European Union, and the common currency, is not out of the question.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is going in the opposite direction. In July, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act, which prevents the Federal Reserve from issuing a retail CBDC directly to individuals.

European debt is becoming increasingly parlous, especially in France where there have even been suggestions that there might need to be assistance from the International Monetary Fund. Italy’s debt, which is 138 percent of GDP, is also problematic. Lagarde is hoping for a rollout of the digital euro in 2027 and completion in 2030. But the Euro zone, and the ECB that oversees it, may not last that long.

Business

Upcoming federal budget likely to increase—not reduce—policy uncertainty

Published on September 12, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Tegan Hill and Grady Munro

The government is opening the door to cronyism, favouritism and potentially outright corruption

In the midst of budget consultations, the Carney government hopes its upcoming fall budget will provide “certainty” to investors. While Canada desperately needs to attract more investment, the government’s plan thus far may actually make Canada less attractive to investors.

Canada faces serious economic challenges. In recent years, the economy (measured on an inflation-adjusted per-person basis) has grown at its slowest rate since the Great Depression. And living standards have hardly improved over the last decade.

At the heart of this economic stagnation is a collapse in business investment, which is necessary to equip Canadian workers with the tools and technology to produce more and provide higher quality goods and services. Indeed, from 2014 to 2022, inflation-adjusted business investment (excluding residential construction) per worker in Canada declined (on average) by 2.3 per cent annually. For perspective, business investment per worker increased (on average) by 2.8 per cent annually from 2000 to 2014.

While there are many factors that contribute to this decline, uncertainty around government policy and regulation is certainly one. For example, investors surveyed in both the mining and energy sectors consistently highlight policy and regulatory uncertainty as a key factor that deters investment. And investors indicate that uncertainty on regulations is higher in Canadian provinces than in U.S. states, which can lead to future declines in economic growth and employment. Given this, the Carney government is right to try and provide greater certainty for investors.

But the upcoming federal budget will likely do the exact opposite.

According to Liberal MPs involved in the budget consultation process, the budget will expand on themes laid out in the recently-passed Building Canada Act (a.k.a. Bill C-5), while also putting new rules into place that signal where the government wants investment to be focused.

This is the wrong approach. Bill C-5 is intended to help improve regulatory certainty by speeding up the approval process for projects that cabinet deems to be in the “national interest” while also allowing cabinet to override existing laws, regulations and guidelines to facilitate such projects. In other words, the legislation gives cabinet the power to pick winners and losers based on vague criteria and priorities rather than reducing the regulatory burden for all businesses.

Put simply, the government is opening the door to cronyism, favouritism and potentially outright corruption. This won’t improve certainty; it will instead introduce further ambiguity into the system and make Canada even less attractive to investment.

In addition to the regulatory side, the budget will likely deter investment by projecting massive deficits in the coming years and adding considerably to federal debt. In fact, based on the government’s election platform, the government planned to run deficits totalling $224.8 billion over the next four years—and that’s before the government pledged tens of billions more in additional defence spending.

A growing debt burden can deter investment in two ways. First, when governments run deficits they increase demand for borrowing by competing with the private sector for resources. This can raise interest rates for the government and private sector alike, which lowers the amount of private investment into the economy. Second, a rising debt burden raises the risk that governments will need to increase taxes in the future to pay off debt or finance their growing interest payments. The threat of higher taxes, which would reduce returns on investment, can deter businesses from investing in Canada today.

Much is riding on the Carney government’s upcoming budget, which will set the tone for federal policy over the coming years. To attract greater investment and help address Canada’s economic challenges, the government should provide greater certainty for businesses. That means reining in spending, massive deficits and reducing the regulatory burden for all businesses—not more of the same.