Mark Carney is the new finance minister of Canada, but what does this mean for the country's finances? Is he going to be as bad as Justin Trudeau was when he was Prime Minister, or will he be as good as his replacement, Finance Minister Bill Morneau?
00:00:00.000Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. I know I'm going to end up repeating this ad nauseum over the next couple of years,
00:00:08.040but Mark Carney has not budged an inch from the agenda of Justin Trudeau.
00:00:13.720Because in reality, was it Justin Trudeau's agenda, or was it Mark Carney's agenda,
00:00:19.200or is it just how a lot of Canadian leftists think, and so swapping one guy out for the other is really not going to change much.
00:00:26.640Plus, again, as is always repeated, Mark Carney was the financial advisor for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
00:00:36.260So the guy who for five years advised on Canada's finances cannot then be expected to be a complete 180 from Justin Trudeau when he himself takes power.
00:03:14.000And indeed, the spending plan table Tuesday is almost certain to change when it is updated in the fall,
00:03:19.900when it will likely include nearly $24 billion in spending commitments for this year
00:03:24.960that the liberals promised during the election campaign.
00:03:27.520So we already have $33 billion that was spent.
00:03:30.340Now we have, what is it, $486 billion.
00:03:34.500And then at the very least, they are going to bring in another $24 billion.
00:03:40.120And the problem is, is that their platform they ran on assumed that they were going to get a lot of revenues from counter tariffs.
00:03:48.200Well, Mark Carney already abandoned the counter tariffs during the election.
00:03:53.100I didn't think the tariffs were a good idea in the first place.
00:03:55.700I think you just lower taxes in your own economy, make it easier to function in Canada's economy.
00:04:00.460And it doesn't matter if the U.S. puts tariffs on your imports.
00:04:03.720You'll just be doing better in general because it's easier to operate.
00:04:06.840But if you're going to, but he was running on it and then he drops it.
00:04:10.060And now there is, I think it was like $28 billion hole in his spending plan where he was going to spend like $128 billion more or whatever it was.
00:04:19.960And he was thinking or saying to people, don't worry, guys, I'm going to be spending that much more money over the next four years, but we will find at least $28 billion in savings from the tariff revenues as well as finding duplicate programs we're going to eliminate.
00:04:35.200What programs is this man going to eliminate?
00:04:39.720There's been nothing he actually was able to say that was a duplicate program he was planning on getting rid of because the thing is the Liberal Party functions on getting federal government employees to vote for them.
00:04:50.040So what jobs are they going to eliminate in order to, you know, balance this budget out or try and reduce the deficit?
00:04:56.140They're not even attempting to reduce the deficit.
00:04:58.220They're still running with like $40, $60 billion deficits in mind.
00:05:06.060That's them saying, you know, I think we can keep it to $60 billion.
00:05:08.980Well, my goodness, in 2024, Trudeau and Freeland and Carney thought they were going to keep it to $40 billion, and then they ended up going to $63 billion.
00:05:18.300So let's assume if they're saying $60 billion this year, at least assume $80 billion because these guys are not very good with numbers.
00:05:47.560I need to go into some other stuff here.
00:05:49.400Another thing that I find interesting, although at least he seems to be not giving the CBC all the money he was promising, so far he is giving them quite a bit.
00:05:59.000But they say during the campaign, the limerals promised to boost CBC's funding by $150 million a year.
00:06:04.480But in the spending plan table Tuesday, the CBC budget is up just $42 million to $1.43 billion.
00:06:10.960The minister responsible for CBC, Stephen Gilbeau, declined to answer questions Wednesday about this department's spending plan.
00:06:17.240And although I would usually be more sanguine about the fact that at least CBC didn't get the increase we thought they were going to,
00:06:24.400I think what's happening right now with the $33 billion OIC and with the $486 billion now and with the $24 billion plan to then be tabled in the fall,
00:06:35.100I think what you're going to see with Carney, and we're going to have to stay on top of it altogether,
00:06:39.080is you're just going to sort of see in between this large chunk of money that they put forward in the spending plan that they want Parliament to pass,
00:06:48.020just pass it with no details basically.
00:06:50.740They're also going to be kind of nickel and diming their way higher and giving handouts to different departments,
00:06:56.980because, you know, government departments do have their own interests and they do have their own agendas.
00:07:03.360It's not like, oh, you work in government, that means that your interest is the public interest.
00:07:08.120No, departments have their own interests to grow larger and gain more authority and power.
00:07:13.260And so what I think we're going to see from Carney is a continuation of this order and council method
00:07:18.640where he puts forward another couple billion here, $10 billion there, $15 billion there, $3 billion there,
00:07:24.760just, oh, maybe just $250 million this time.
00:10:41.300But yeah, this is not glick and grid for Canada.
00:10:44.860It's not like it's like, you know, the apocalypse approaching.
00:10:48.120But the thing with all the spending and with Mark Carney, the way he's doing things, is Mark Carney is not a dumb man.
00:10:54.100And I think that he is doing this in such a way where he can spend as much as he wants without it really having that big bomb of a story.
00:11:01.400Because if he came out and he tabled a $600 billion budget, which would be like $50 billion more than Trudeau's last budget.
00:11:08.520If he came out with like a $600 billion spending plan all at once, that would be a bomb.
00:11:14.180And so many of his liberal voters would be like, oh, I thought he was going to be fiscally responsible.
00:11:17.880But if he puts one out that's $486 million, which is still like $60, $70 billion less than Trudeau's last budget, and then he spends $33 billion here, silently another $10 over here, he can nickel and dime him his way up to $600 billion.
00:11:32.100And his voters who think he's fiscally responsible are none the wiser.
00:11:35.300Unless you're going to be reading deep articles from the National Post or Globe and Mail going over all the little bits and pieces of spending that are causing this to be a bloated budget.
00:11:45.000The bomb doesn't quite hit as hard when you do it this way than if you just came out and said, our budget's $600 billion and we're running an $80 billion deficit this year.