Although the Carney government’s first budget was billed as generational, with the exception of major defence spending, it proved to be mostly conventional.
Against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s tariffs and the prime minister’s own warnings about a changing global economic order, the government’s economic and fiscal plan clings to the Ottawa consensus of top-down industrial strategy and ever-higher government spending.
The best that could be said is that the Carney government’s hard-headed diagnosis of Canada’s long-run productivity challenges is a notable departure from the Trudeau government’s soft-hearted focus on equity, redistribution, and “growing the economy from the heart out.”
Yet where it falters is that the Carney government itself envisions growing the economy from Ottawa out. The budget, in fact, plans larger deficits than its predecessor in order to increase spending on public infrastructure, climate change, and other priorities. These individual expenditures (or “investments” in the government’s nomenclature) may or may not be good ideas, but it’s hard to see how they amount to a new policymaking paradigm.
Where Trudeau preached the politics of empathy, Carney practices the economics of expertise. Both lead to the same place: Ottawa as the principal actor in the national economy.
Herein lies the essence of the Ottawa consensus. Borrowing from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Brian Lee Crowley, it’s a worldview that sees the state not as a gardener cultivating the conditions for growth, but as a designer assembling the economy piece by piece. It holds that with enough data, talent, and government spending, Ottawa can engineer prosperity from the centre out. It’s the natural creed of a technocratic capital city: managerial, self-assured, and ultimately path dependent.
Does the Carney budget truly represent a 'generational' shift, or is it more of the same 'Ottawa consensus'?
How effectively does the budget address the economic threat posed by U.S. policies like tariffs?
Is the growing deficit a result of external factors or deliberate government choices, according to the article?
Comments (23)
It’s almost like there is a centralized Scareface-like video room where techno-bureaucrat Carney and his minions are looking out and controlling things from.
Very disappointing to see yet another ho hum, status quo Laurentian elite budget.Yet the growing debt and deficits along with their high compounding service costs are a growing concern. The can is still been kicked down the road.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.