On November 4, the federal government will present its first budget since the April 28 election, which is expected to combine what economists are calling the “worst cuts in a generation” with the largest increase in spending on military hardware since the Second World War.
The Liberal government has claimed a mandate for “doing big things” quickly and at scale. But the big things on offer in this budget are a far cry from what was held out to voters just seven months ago. At a time when Canadians are already struggling with growing unemployment and the high cost of living, this is a budget that will make life harder for the majority of Canadians.
The Liberals insisted this was not the direction they would take during the recent federal election. While clearly moving in a more conservative direction on economic policy, they promised to protect new social programs like pharmacare and public services like the CBC. They gestured to an industrial policy that would create green jobs, protect workers from Trump’s tariffs and tackle climate change.
Unlike Pierre Poilievre, Liberals insisted they would “cap, not cut” jobs in the federal sector. They warned voters that the Conservatives’ “divisive” and “ideological” agenda of lower taxes for the wealthy and higher spending on arms contracts would harm the economy and result in devastating cuts to healthcare, education and other vital public services. Poilievre’s neglect of climate issues was proof that, as Prime Minister, he would “let the planet burn.”
Yet over the summer, after frequent consultations with the Business Council of Canada and other corporate lobby groups, the federal government made a series of announcements that suggest the upcoming budget will jump over the guardrails they offered as reassurance in April.
In June, a memo from Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne was leaked to the media indicating that annual funding for social programs and public services will be slashed by $25 billion over the next three years – not far from the astronomical amounts (up to $33 billion) that Liberals warned a Poilievre government would cut, if elected.
Cuts this deep will threaten nearly everything: healthcare, the new pharmacare program, university funding, transfers to provinces, municipalities and First Nations, climate action, gender equity, migrant rights, water protection, and even Crown corporations like the CBC, Canada Post and VIA Rail. Federal workers are facing up to 57,000 layoffs over the next three years, according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. This is all in addition to cuts to the Public Health Agency of Canada. In advance of the budget announcement, cuts to the Public Health Agency of Canada, mandated 15% across the board cuts to most public sector departments, and devastating restructuring of Canada Post have all been done in quick succession.
The one major exception is spending on defence, which will jump by an unprecedented $20.5 billion this year alone. Much of this will go to purchasing new military hardware like the F-35 fighter jet or possibly to Trump’s grandiose Golden Dome scheme. And while this shift has been sold as a way to assert Canada’s sovereignty, 75% of spending on weapons of war (“defence capital spending”) currently goes to U.S. defence contractors.
If carried through, this budget represents a radical shift in spending priorities for which there is no popular mandate. It is, however, in line with what corporate Canada has been loudly demanding: a budget that imposes austerity for us, while granting billions in defence contracts, subsidies and tax breaks for them, in the name of “nation building” and “national security.”
Canadians expected the incoming Liberal government to make tough choices, and most accepted that certain sacrifices would need to be made to stand up to the bully to the south. But if the November 4 budget aligns with this summer’s announcements, it will bring precisely the kinds of “big changes” that the Liberals vowed to protect Canadians against.
The Council of Canadians warned about the danger of this kind of undemocratic turn to the right in the wake of the April 28 election. Since then, we have been hard at work building coalitions at the local and national level to build up an “unofficial opposition” in the streets, in the absence of any real representation of our voices in Parliament.
A key part of this movement-building is ensuring people know the facts, beyond the spin that the corporate media and the politicians put on things. There’s going to be a lot to unpack in the federal budget in the coming days and weeks. We’ll be working hard to provide you with accurate, informed, movement-relevant analysis of what we are facing.
Nikolas Barry-Shaw
Nikolas is the Trade and Privatization Campaigner for the Council of Canadians and author of the book “Paved with Good Intentions.”
If you have other questions about the federal budget, let us know and we’ll do our best to cover them in the future. You can write to us at: inquiries@canadians.org
The successful “Draw the Line” mobilization on September 20 showed that there is already a basis on which we can build broad popular opposition to the Liberal agenda of cuts and corporate graft. Resisting early and often will be key; minority governments are necessarily vulnerable to public pressure and can change direction quickly when people push back in large numbers. See you in the streets!
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