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. Carney said at a Saturday morning announcement in Whitby, Ont., that keeping the spending taps open was part of standing up to U.S. President Donald Trump. “It’s said there are no atheists in foxholes, there should be no libertarians in a crisis,” said Carney. “In a crisis… the private sector retreats and government needs to step up.” Big-ticket items include $18 billion in new defence spending, including $850 million in accrued capital investment toward new hardware like icebreakers, 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. Carney has also said he’ll bring up defence spending to the NATO target of two per cent of GDP by 2030 at the latest. 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, as well as the school lunch program announced in last year’s budget . New and existing measures will blow a $225-billion hole in the federal budget, with some of it being offset by bigger 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., during the 2025-26 fiscal year. Carney has said that this revenue will go directly to workers and businesses affected by the tariffs. He said on Saturday that, while he was ready for a multi-year trade war, he didn’t want to the tariffs to be in place any longer than they had to be. “We don’t want to rely on those tariff revenues… so we concentrate them today and will deal with them tomorrow,” Carney told reporters. 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 said on Saturday that he would limit growth in operating expenses to two per cent per year, without cutting federal transfers to provinces, territories and individuals. He admitted that he’d need to cap growth in public sector employment to meet the platform’s fiscal targets. “(We’re looking at) a series of measures that are going to make government more effective,” Carney said in response to a question on the platform’s budget math. He noted that the federal public service has grown at an unsustainable rate of 40 per cent over the last decade. Carney said the numbers erred on the cautious side, leaving out likely gains to GDP from the new capital spending. “What we’re not doing… is to give ourselves any credit for that in our numbers. These are very prudent numbers,” said Carney. 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. 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. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said, any way you break it down, Carney’s plan means cuts to services for everyday Canadians. “Mark Carney has now just confirmed it with his platform (that) his plan does include cuts. Massive cuts,” said Singh while unveiling his own platform in British Columbia. Singh said he was “deeply worried” that the so-called operating cutbacks proposed by Carney would bleed into the frontline delivery of essential services like health care. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, also in B.C. on Saturday, said that Carney’s platform would make life even more expensive for Canadians. “Amazingly, Mr. Carney plans to run even bigger inflationary deficits than Justin Trudeau had already budgeted,” said Poilievre. National Post rmohamed@postmedia.com 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.