Liberals promise $130B in new spending and no timeline to balance the budget

OTTAWA — A Mark Carney-led government will spend $130 billion on new measures over the next four years, with no timeline to balance the federal budget, according to the costed Liberal platform released on Saturday. “In times of national crisis, we must remember what we are fighting for: to protect our Canadian way of life,” reads the 67-page platform. “We must protect our belief in the common good — our belief that we are stronger together. Canada will never be America,” Big-ticket items include $18 billion in new defence spending, including $850 million for military hardware, a $6.8 billion nation-building fund and $5 billion for internal trade corridors. Liberals claim that the upfront spending on economic integration will grow the national economy by up to $200 billion. “To unite this country (we) will build one economy where Canadians can work wherever they want (and) (w)here goods can move freely from coast to coast to coast,” reads the platform. The four-year plan also includes billions in gender and equity-related spending, including $160 million to make the Trudeau-era Black Entrepreneurship Program permanent, $400 million for a new IVF program and $2.5 billion for new infrastructure in Indigenous communities. The platform maintains previously announced funding for Trudeau-era child, dental and pharmacare programs. New and existing measures will blow a $1.4-trillion hole in the federal budget, with some of this blow being offset by increasing federal penalties and fines for transgressions like money laundering. The platform also prices in a one-time infusion of $20 billion in revenue from retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. Carney has said that this revenue will go directly to workers and businesses affected by the tariffs. The Liberal platform gives no timeline for a return to balance but says that the operating budget, which accounts for more than 95 per cent of federal spending, will see a modest surplus of $220 million by the 2028-9 fiscal year. Carney has said he’ll bring in a new system of budgeting that separates spending on government programs from investments in capital like roads, bridges and military equipment, but hasn’t given specifics on how this will work. A similar system of capital-based budgeting was used briefly in Alberta in the 2010s, under former premier Alison Redford. “This new approach will not change how Canada’s public accounts are built and will maintain generally accepted accounting principles. It will create a more transparent categorization of the expenditure that contributes to capital formation in Canada,” reads the platform. National Post rmohamed@postmedia.com Get more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here. Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.