Juno News - July 14, 2025


Senior economist blasts Carney over lack of transparency

Topics
Deanna Sharif protests budget trickery student unemployment crisis
Hosted by
Isaac Lamoureux
Mentioned
Deanna Sharif Robert Kovacic Justin Trudeau Mark Carney Franco Teresano Michael Cooper Karima Saad Hamilton Waleed Alid
Alberta gives school boards until fall to remove graphic sex books from libraries Poilievre DOUBLES DOWN on hawkish immigration stance + Safety Minister advocates for TERRORIST

Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

156.27

Word count

1,857

Sentence count

99

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

A notorious Ottawa chronic protester was found guilty for causing a disturbance and breaching bail conditions. A student economist at the Bank of Montreal is blasting Prime Minister Mark Carney over deficit spending and his government s lack of transparency. Canada s job market saw growth for the first time in 5 months, but students are being left behind.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 A notorious Ottawa chronic protester was found guilty for causing a disturbance and breaching bail conditions.
00:00:11.000 A student economist at the Bank of Montreal is blasting Carney over deficit spending and his government lack of transparency.
00:00:17.000 Canada's job market saw growth for the first time in five months, but students are being left behind.
00:00:22.000 Hello Canada, it's Monday, July 14th, and this is the True North Daily Brief.
00:00:26.000 I'm Isaac Lamoureux.
00:00:27.000 And I'm Willie Tan Tan.
00:00:29.000 We've got you covered with all the news you need to know.
00:00:32.000 Let's discuss the top stories of the day and the True North exclusives you won't hear anywhere else.
00:00:40.000 A woman who has become notorious in Ottawa for her erratic and sometimes violent behaviour at political protests
00:00:46.000 has been found guilty of causing a disturbance and breaching bail conditions on Wednesday.
00:00:51.000 According to court records, Deanna Sharif is accused of assaulting a police officer, assault with a weapon,
00:00:56.000 hate motivated harassment, intimidation, and obstructing a peace officer, all of which will be addressed at her upcoming trial in early 2026.
00:01:05.000 Months earlier, Sharif had been denied bail related to aid offences, including obstructing a police officer, two counts of assault with a weapon,
00:01:12.000 possession of a weapon, possession of a weapon dangerous to the public, intimidation, and two counts of hate-motivated harassment.
00:01:18.000 Sharif arrived at Ottawa's Ontario Court of Justice on Wednesday wearing a keffia patterned caftan dress and a keffia headband,
00:01:25.000 according to Karima Saad, a lawyer and journalist who has been following Sharif's journey through the criminal justice system.
00:01:32.000 The most recent leg in Sharif's journey through Ontario's criminal justice system began when she entered in Confederation Park in August 2024
00:01:39.000 for using a noise device at a protest, despite bail conditions restricting her of such devices.
00:01:46.000 She was out on bail for those charges, under conditions prohibiting the use of sound devices when she was arrested again in August.
00:01:53.000 The more recent incident from August, including her interactions with police and her use of a noise device, was streamed live on social media.
00:02:00.000 A video of the incident was later used as evidence in court.
00:02:05.000 So, Alid, what else do we know about Deanna Sharif? What makes her so notorious around the Ontario protest circuit?
00:02:13.000 Well, Isaac, what's important to understand about Sharif is that she's not just limited to Ottawa.
00:02:17.000 She's shown up at protests in all across Ontario, in Toronto, Hamilton, and always with the same mix of provocation and performance.
00:02:25.000 What makes her stand out is that she intentionally blurs the line between activism and antagonism.
00:02:30.000 She doesn't just attend protests, she seeks the confrontations, and she documents every second of it for her online following.
00:02:36.000 And that's the thing about her. The online presence is a big part of her story.
00:02:40.000 She's managed to raise almost $9,000 on GoGetFunding.com since her April 27th arrest and denied bill in Ottawa recently.
00:02:50.000 Her fundraising of around $9,000 Canadian, that's actually $8,999 on GoGetFunding.com.
00:02:57.000 She's very active on social media and she's framing her issues as political persecution for pro-Palestine and pro-trans views as she's been frequenting pro-Palestinian and pro-trans protests for a very long time.
00:03:14.000 Behind the scenes, some activists who go to those protests have actually distanced themselves from her.
00:03:20.000 There's sometimes tension because of the fact that she always escalates situations. 1.00
00:03:26.000 Some people, some of her supporters, see her as bold. Others worry that she undermines the broader movements that she's a part of.
00:03:34.000 So, she's not just notorious for what she's done legally, but really where she is at right now is she's basically hijacked attention and essentially alienated everyone, 1.00
00:03:46.000 both people who are supportive and not so supportive of the protests and movements she's a part of.
00:03:51.000 A senior economist at the Bank of Montreal has joined the growing chorus of frustration with Prime Minister Mark Carney's lack of transparency with public finances
00:04:04.000 and his government's failure to table an annual budget despite increasing public spending substantially.
00:04:11.000 Robert Kovacic, senior economist at BMO, wrote a piece commenting on Canada's budget black box.
00:04:18.000 And what's the state of the federal government's finances likely look like?
00:04:22.000 Canada's fiscal picture is getting cloudy given that current government did not table a post-election budget
00:04:29.000 and the cost of the platform has been rearranged by the evolving economic outlook and shifting policy priorities.
00:04:35.000 Kovacic says that given the evolving nature of Canada's trade conflict with the United States and the country's overall economic outlook,
00:04:44.000 the parliamentary budget officer and the Liberal Party platform have likely underestimated how large the budget deficit will be.
00:04:51.000 Kovacic said, quote, all told, it wouldn't be surprising to see the federal deficit jump toward $80 billion,
00:04:59.000 or about 2.5% of GDP, versus $48 billion, at last estimated for the current fiscal year.
00:05:08.000 Kovacic points to Canada's weaker economy and tax cuts that will lead to the budget deficit growing beyond initial projections.
00:05:15.000 Kovacic says the Carney government will add approximately $8 billion to the budget deficit
00:05:22.000 with its current commitment to increase defending spending to 2% of GDP in fiscal year 2025-26.
00:05:31.000 What other criticisms are being laid at the feet of Carney in regards to his lack of budget and financial management of Canada?
00:05:39.000 Yeah, we'll lead. So, Prime Minister Mark Carney is facing growing criticism over his handling of Canada's public finances.
00:05:45.000 For example, Conservative MP Michael Cooper recently accused him of using accounting tricks to hide the true size of the deficit.
00:05:52.000 Just last Wednesday, Cooper said, quote,
00:05:54.000 Carney has no real plan to reduce spending, no real plan to balance the budget.
00:06:00.000 Carney's real plan is to rack up more debt than Justin Trudeau, while making it more difficult to track government spending.
00:06:06.000 Let's call this for what it is. It's called budget trickery. It's called cooking the books.
00:06:11.000 These are some serious claims, especially considering that during former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's tenure, he doubled the country's debt.
00:06:18.000 When he took office, Canada's debt stood at $616 billion, and it reached $1.215 trillion on August 30th, 2024.
00:06:29.000 So, one of the main concerns about Carney is that he has yet to table a formal budget, despite dramatically increasing spending.
00:06:36.000 Canadian Taxpayers Federation Federal Director Franco Teresano reminded Canadians that a budget was tabled during the Great Depression, World War II, and so on.
00:06:45.000 So, Carney really has no excuse.
00:06:48.000 One of the main concerns is Carney's proposal to split the federal budget into two parts, operating and capital,
00:06:55.000 which economists and opposition MPs say create the illusion of a balanced budget while still running massive deficits,
00:07:01.000 and allows Carney to shift and hide spending through the capital budget.
00:07:08.000 For example, Cooper said, quote,
00:07:10.000 In other words, Carney's definition of capital spending includes government handouts, corporate welfare, no doubt to benefit liberal insiders.
00:07:20.000 The C.D. Howe Institute also slammed the idea, warning that dividing the budget this way doesn't change the fact that Canada is heading towards a $92 billion deficit next year,
00:07:29.000 and potentially $350 billion in cumulative deficits over the next four years.
00:07:35.000 Meanwhile, Carney's government is asking departments to find sweeping cuts of up to 15%, prompting warnings from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives that this would lead to unprecedented job losses and deproductions in public services.
00:07:50.000 So, all of this has raised questions about transparency, fiscal credibility, and whether Carney is being honest with Canadians about the country's economic future.
00:08:03.000 Canada's job market saw growth for the first time in five months in June, however, the vast majority of new jobs were part-time positions.
00:08:10.000 Statistics Canada's Labour Force survey was released Friday morning and highlighted that 70,000 of the 83,000 new jobs in June were for part-time work.
00:08:19.000 The unemployment rate went down slightly, reaching 6.9%, which remains the second highest rate in the G7 behind only France, which posted a 7.1% rate in May.
00:08:30.000 Among the provinces, Alberta led the way in job growth, adding 30,000 jobs, however, unlike the national trend, nearly all of them were full-time positions.
00:08:39.000 Alberta's unemployment rate fell 0.6 percentage points to 6.8%, while Ontario's remained unchanged at 7.8%.
00:08:47.000 Ontario saw some of the worst job growth in the nation.
00:08:50.000 The province's poor employment growth was partially due to a job market crisis in Windsor, where the unemployment rate climbed to 11.2%.
00:08:58.000 Ongoing layoffs in the automotive sector due to U.S. tariffs has negatively affected Ontario's job market, primarily in Windsor and Oshawa, home to the province's car part manufacturing industry.
00:09:08.000 Canadian students who are struggling with unprecedented unemployment saw no relief in June.
00:09:13.000 The unemployment rate for students aged 15 to 24 rose to 17.4% up from last year, which was at 15.8%.
00:09:23.000 So, Waleed, what sort of impact can be expected with a 17.4% unemployment rate among students?
00:09:29.000 What effect could that have on the Canadian economy in the long run?
00:09:33.000 Yeah, Isaac, the 17.4% unemployment rate among students is a big, big red flag.
00:09:39.000 And what makes it especially concerning is that this isn't just a temporary blip.
00:09:44.000 This is now the highest June rate we've seen since the end of the Great Recession in 2009, if you exclude the pandemic years.
00:09:53.000 So, what does that mean long term?
00:09:55.000 Well, when students can't get summer or part-time work, it slows down their early career development.
00:10:02.000 They're missing out on experiences, on income, on building up their resume against them the jobs they're looking for in the future, or support them in paying off their student loans.
00:10:12.000 And it's not just bad for the students. Economically, if young people aren't earning, they're not spending.
00:10:17.000 That hits consumer demand, especially in sectors like retail, hospitality, and the service industry.
00:10:23.000 The very industries where students also work.
00:10:26.000 It also delays things like moving out, buying a car, or paying off debt.
00:10:30.000 Another stat from the report that ties into this.
00:10:33.000 More than one in five unemployed Canadians in June had been looking for work for over six months.
00:10:39.000 A clear sign that in Canada, long-term unemployment is becoming more entrenched.
00:10:45.000 So, this student job crisis could bleed into broader youth underdevelopment.
00:10:49.000 Especially if this group enters the workforce with less experience and more financial strain.
00:10:55.000 Now, this is probably why back in March, we saw an Ambascus poll.
00:11:00.000 Highlighting a stark generational divide between young Canadians under age 30 and seniors when it comes to priorities in the April election.
00:11:08.000 For Canadian youth, affordability issues were the overwhelming concern.
00:11:12.000 With 47% setting costs of living as a top concern, while 28% stress housing affordability.
00:11:19.000 The truth is, if youth are moving towards Conservatives, probably something to do with the tough summers that students have been facing in recent years.
00:11:29.000 We're looking at the risk of an entire generation falling behind economically in Canada, which could weigh down on our labour force and productivity for years to come.
00:11:39.000 That's it for today, folks. Thanks for tuning in.
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