In The Weekly Wrap, Sean Speer, our editor-at-large, analyses for Hub subscribers the big stories shaping politics, policy, and the economy in the week that was.
Denial, delay, and the illusion of prosperity—Ford’s unserious approach to the economy is only making things worse
The Ontario government’s latest budget confirms what has been increasingly evident: Premier Doug Ford is presiding over one of the most profligate governments in the province’s history.
Program spending for 2025–26 is now projected to reach $204 billion—roughly $50 billion more than at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s not just emergency-level spending made permanent. It’s a structural and sustained shift in the size and scope of Ontario’s government. Higher deficits and more debt are the symptoms.
Yet here’s the real problem: this isn’t counter-cyclical policy. It’s a policy of denial and delay.
Ontario faces a structural economic malaise—what economists call “secular stagnation.” Productivity growth is weak. Business investment is low. Per capita incomes are flat. Yet the Ford government has essentially abandoned any serious attempt to reverse these trends.
Rather than pursuing bold pro-growth reforms—such as deregulation, tax competitiveness, or government modernization—it has opted for the path of least resistance: spend more, borrow more, and hope that Ontarians are distracted by their deficit-financed cheques.
This is a deeply unserious way to govern a province facing long-term economic headwinds. Fiscal policy is being used not to fix the problem but to obscure it. The Ford government is borrowing and spending to extend the illusion of prosperity.
It wasn’t always this way. When the premier was first elected in 2018, he communicated a clear view of Ontario’s secular challenges. His message of reopening the province to business signaled a proper diagnosis of what beset its economy. The government’s first budget and accompanying red tape reduction legislation were instances of controversial yet proportionate policy solutions.
Yet in the face of predictable pushback, the premier backed down, reversed most of these reforms, and permanently gave up trying to fix Ontario’s structural weaknesses. For the subsequent six years or so, he’s seemingly decided it’s far easier and more popular to send voters cheques and leave the tough stuff to future governments.
That may be good politics for now. But illusions don’t last. Sooner or later, the fog lifts—and what we’ll find is a poorer, less dynamic Ontario marked by high debt, low growth, and declining opportunity.
Why is Mark Carney sidelining science and tech?
Although there’s been a lot of commentary this week about who’s in and who’s out of Prime Minister Carney’s cabinet, there’s been far less attention on the issues or files that were omitted. One of the most surprising and concerning omissions is the lack of a dedicated minister for science and technology.
This decision is more than a matter of mere political symbolism. It reflects a worrying signal about the government’s policy priorities. At a time when peer countries—including the United States, Germany, South Korea, and the U.K.—are boosting public investments in science, research, and frontier technologies, Canada is alone in seemingly deprioritizing this key area of public policy.
It’s not a new problem. Successive governments have consistently viewed the science and technology policy as an exercise in stakeholder relations rather than as core to their understanding of Canada’s economy. This is how we’ve ended up with an incoherent mix of ineffective yet expensive programs, policies, and institutions, each designed to placate one group or another—as opposed to being part of a well-conceived vision for the role of government to support science and technology.
It was evident in the election campaign in which the major parties competed over tax cuts and regulatory reform but put forward virtually no ideas—except for corporate subsidies—when it came to boosting scientific research and technological adoption. The Carney government’s exclusion of a science and technology minister is now in keeping with this bipartisan inattention to these key issues.
Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks to the media as members of his new cabinet look on following a swearing-in ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on Tuesday, May 13, 2025. Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press.
The Conservatives should seize on this issue. It would represent a challenge to people’s perception that the party’s conception of Canada’s economy is too wrapped up in resource development.
One mustn’t abandon free-market principles to recognize a role for the state in science and technology. Quite the contrary. Basic research and pre-commercial development can be cases of market failure that justify state action. History tells us that breakthrough innovations—from the internet to mRNA vaccines—are often the downstream consequence of targeted public investment.
The problem in Canada isn’t that the federal government plays too large a role. It’s that its current role is incoherent, fragmented, and stakeholder driven. We essentially have unconditional grants to university professors on one hand and corporate welfare on the other hand masquerading as science and technology policy. It shouldn’t be a huge surprise that outcomes are poor.
The science and technology file requires new energy and a greater focus. It must move from the periphery of Ottawa’s policy agenda to much closer to the centre. A dedicated minister—particularly a high-profile one—would signal a more sophisticated understanding of its economic significance.
If the Carney government won’t appoint a minister for science and technology, the Conservatives should champion the file: not as a marginal issue but as core to a vision of a limited yet purposeful state.
Sean Speer is The Hub's Editor-at-Large. He is also a university lecturer at the University of Toronto and Carleton University, as well…
