00:00:00.000Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Liberal government's budget 2026 is embarrassingly bad to say the least.
00:00:08.040It's bombing really hard both in terms of the numbers as well as the media rollout of it.
00:00:13.480To encapsulate the entire thing in one photo, check out this picture that Liberal House leader Steve McKinnon posted on his own social media.
00:00:23.120I don't know why his staffers hate him and allowed him to post this, but it really does sum up the whole thing by having a liberal house leader post a photo of himself looking like a serial killer in your nightmares while holding a budget full of generational debt.
00:00:39.880He paired that photo up with this very generic post where he said,
00:00:44.740Building Canada strong, diversifying our trade corridors, making life more affordable.
00:00:50.240With Budget 2026, we are focusing on what we can control, being masters of our destiny.
00:00:56.760And apparently, masters of our destiny is the big tagline of the budget,
00:01:00.780which immediately got lampooned by Pierre Polyev's conservatives,
00:01:04.740who are now saying mastered by our debt, which is 100% correct.
00:01:09.440This entire thing is full of deficit spending, higher immigration targets, while at the same time we actually have falling job numbers as well as crippling debt servicing costs that we were already dealing with.
00:01:23.420Anyways, in just a second here, we're going to be getting into both the numbers as well as the media reaction to the budget.
00:01:29.680But before we do that, I just want to remind you guys, if you like the show, make sure to leave a like on the video, subscribe if you are not yet a subscriber, and consider hitting the join button if you want to help make the channel more sustainable by contributing a couple dollars every month.
00:01:44.700Anyways, let's get into what Pierre Polyev, the leader of the Conservative Party, had to say about the budget the day it was rolled out.
00:01:52.280the minister would have more aptly named this budget mastered by debt mastered by debt that
00:02:02.980will inflate the cost of food fuel and housing the first priority of this budget should have been
00:02:11.240to save canadians money but by adding 765 billion dollars in new debt a record smashing sum over the
00:02:21.680next five years this prime minister will inflate the cost of fuel food and homes this is a costly
00:02:31.180credit card budget that canadians can't afford and conservatives will vote no
00:02:35.680and that sounds ridiculous that it's adding 738 billion dollars of debt over the just the next
00:02:44.060five years or so it like because the actual deficit for this year is only about 62 63 billion
00:02:51.460dollars but that's only if you would take into account direct federal government deficits not
00:02:57.200taking into account other borrowing that the government is doing as well as debt and loans
00:03:03.040taken out by Canadian crown corporations when you add it all together it's so much worse than you
00:03:09.280previously thought but I want to quickly before we get into some of the numbers I want to jump over
00:03:13.800to a reaction that I didn't really expect it was Andrew Coyne who was criticizing the budget I know
00:03:20.320he's supposedly a conservative but he's one of those guys who calls himself a conservative but
00:03:25.340basically only supports liberals these days if you are prime minister mark carney or finance minister0.95
00:03:31.460philippe francois philippe champagne and you have lost andrew coin you suck at your jobs it's not
00:03:39.120that hard to keep him on board just how small parts of the budget that seem aimed at actually
00:03:45.000trying to get back on track fiscally within the next few years, reduce the deficit, try and make
00:03:51.800sure that we're reducing taxes at least in one part of the economy or another. There's nothing
00:03:57.800like that in that. It's just corporate welfare and massive government program spending. So here
00:04:02.980is Andrew Coyne actually making some really good points against the budget. The first indication
00:04:08.240we got that something was kind of odd was this revelation that the deficit for last year, 2026,
00:04:13.720was not $67 billion, which we were told six months ago, but $39 billion.
00:04:21.260Well, it got even odder when you looked at it and they projected forward in time
00:04:24.820and you see the same revisions in spending and revenues.
00:04:27.820Much higher spending than they thought, much lower spending than they thought,
00:04:31.080much higher revenues than they thought.
00:04:32.740So you think, okay, well, maybe the same error will work in our favor on the deficit this time.
00:04:36.140No, the deficit's exactly the same as it was, or more or less exactly the same.
00:04:39.880They took that revenue windfall, that spending windfall, and they spent virtually all of it.
00:04:45.160What Andrew Coyne is describing here is basically the carny liberals cooking the books to make themselves seem more fiscally responsible than they are.
00:04:53.020This is also what they've been doing on the operating budget by saying that by next year, they'll have the operating budget balanced.
00:05:00.400Except the operating budget is basically a reoccurring cost that the government pays every single year.
00:05:05.700and they want you to pin a medal to their chest because, well, on all of our reoccurring costs,
00:05:11.840all of our revenues can pay for it. It's just the capital costs and some other things that are
00:05:16.340bringing us into a deficit, except it's not. When it comes to the operating budget, the government's
00:05:21.100been basically completely redefining entire categories of spending to be capital instead
00:05:26.400of operating to pretend like they at least have part of the budget balance. That's not true.
00:05:30.960What Cohen is describing here is that we had windfall government revenues in 2026, mainly because of just higher resource costs. When resource prices like oil and gas go up, the government naturally collects higher tax revenues on it because it has percentage taxes on those items, which means in raw dollars, they're getting way more money than they assumed they were at the beginning of the year.
00:05:54.220And so now what we have is that the liberal government is assuming that those windfall revenues are going to reoccur every single year afterwards.
00:06:07.500If you win the lottery one year, you can't assume the next six or seven years you're also going to win the lottery or at least make that much income.
00:06:18.460That's how juvenile the accounting is in the budget.
00:06:21.880Well, we had way better revenues than we thought we did this last year, so we're going to have way better revenues these next few years.
00:06:29.960Guys, the Iran war is not going to last forever.
00:06:33.540Eventually, oil and gas prices and other resource prices are going to fall, and government revenues on them are also going to fall.
00:06:41.360This is all so asinine, but I'm going to let Andrew Coyne finish here before we move on to some other stuff.
00:06:47.980At a time when economists are practically begging them, would you please get serious about the deficit and the debt?
00:06:53.760It's not a crisis now, but before it becomes a crisis.
00:06:56.440But there's very little on that front. There's very little on the productivity front.
00:07:00.380It's just more or less the same as that last budget last year, which was such a disappointment.
00:07:04.600But would you say, and I'll get to everybody in a moment, would you?
00:07:06.880I love Rosemary coming in here and trying to put words in people's mouths.
00:07:11.180Even Andrew Coyne ends up rejecting what she's trying to put forward at him.
00:07:15.300You say, Andrew, though, that any of that new spending is needed, you know, because Canadians are feeling the pinch of things and housing is an issue and some of the new spending.
00:07:24.880I don't know. Does any of it make sense? Yeah, sure.
00:07:27.200Sure. No, no. The issue isn't that every single program or thing isn't a good program.
00:07:31.740The issue is it's going to all add up. So if you're going to spend more in some areas, you should be able in a half a trillion dollar budget to find savings elsewhere.
00:07:39.900I really liked what Rosemary Barton tried to do there.
00:07:44.620Well, Andrew, can you get back on the liberal boat with us for a second here?
00:07:48.940Would you say that any of the new spending is necessary?
00:07:55.920So even if a dollar is necessary by some metric, that would mean that Andrew Coyne apparently was supposed to say, yes, I agree.
00:08:02.960Some of the new spending is necessary.
00:08:05.460And then even he rightfully pointed out, OK, yeah, spending can be necessary.
00:08:09.520Maybe we can say in the middle of the trade conflict, maybe subsidies to certain parts of the economy are needed in order to sustain them through the conflict before it gets resolved, although that's just that's Mark Carney's fault for not having actually negotiated a resolution yet.
00:08:23.820Yes, Donald Trump started the trade conflict, but Mark Carney seems allergic to trying to get to the trade negotiating table.
00:08:29.740but in the meantime, let's assume that's all baked in. The federal budget, sure, we're going to have
00:08:34.420some tax breaks and subsidies for certain industries that will create higher costs or
00:08:40.520basically reduce your revenues from those areas. Maybe that's necessary, but how can you not in a
00:08:47.180half a trillion dollar budget find other areas of wasteful spending that you can reduce? Now, we had
00:08:52.960been hearing this last year that the Carney liberals have actually been really good on
00:08:58.220immigration reform and reducing the amount of public servants except in this budget in order
00:09:03.660to try and pump the gdp they are increasing both but before we get to that i actually want to show
00:09:09.340you what the debt looks like in this new budget this is being posted by kirk lubomov here who
00:09:15.020always does these really good charts he says for budget 2026 ottawa will need to borrow 765 billion
00:09:23.260dollars over 100 billion dollars every single year and because there's a difference between just the
00:09:28.860deficit you can see the deficit federal deficit there in gray and overall debt the amount of
00:09:34.700borrowing that will have to be done in orange because that includes all borrowing both both
00:09:40.060the federal government directly as well as crown corporations and other areas where the government
00:09:45.340basically ends up taking on all of these liabilities it's super super bad but now let's
00:09:51.020jump over to immigration here another post here by kirk lubomov this really is motivated by trying
00:09:58.300to just pump the gdp yes it's also a little bit of trying to maybe import people who will be voters
00:10:03.980for you later although that's always a bit of a risky gamble for governments because new immigrants
00:10:07.980can also vote against you i always conceive of high liberal immigration numbers as more of just
00:10:13.180an artificial way of increasing the gdp so kirk lubomov here says budget 2026 immigration plan
00:10:20.460370,000 new temporary arrivals per year.
00:10:45.780And if somebody wasn't good enough to qualify for a PR status and they could only get a TFW visa, why would we want them to be a PR?
00:10:54.540They're going to be somebody who's not going to contribute nearly as much as they're going to take out of the system.
00:10:59.660So you can see here the chart for the budget 2026 immigration projections.
00:11:05.680Temporary arrivals in 2027 is going to go up to $370 million, and permanent residents are going to go to $380 million, people who are never going to leave.
00:11:14.700That's absolutely ridiculous. My immigration plan for the conservatives should be saying, we want to reduce new permanent residents per year below 100,000. Temporary foreign workers should basically be the same, and we should be trying to make sure way more people are leaving the country every year than coming in.
00:11:35.220And a great way of doing that is cutting off cash welfare programs and other programs being available to non-citizens, both permanent residents as well as TFWs, mainly TFWs first, and then you've got to find ways to basically say, hey, if you're on welfare and you're a PR, we're pulling your PR status because obviously you're not actually a contributor and you're not even a citizen yet.0.97
00:12:00.660come on you can't really sustain yourself here you have to leave that's what the conservatives
00:12:05.340should be doing but this is the one way the liberals are trying to pump the gdp just get
00:12:09.760more warm bodies into the country because even if you just have a hundred bucks in your pocket when
00:12:13.980you show up and you don't get a job you have technically added a hundred dollars to the gdp
00:12:18.480another way that they're trying to pump the gdp numbers or at least make the job numbers look a
00:12:23.360little bit less bad, is they are currently employing more public sector workers to offset
00:12:32.740all the layoffs in the private sector. Kirk Lubomov here again, again, I have to keep using
00:12:38.820him. He's just fantastic with all these charts he puts out. Kirk Lubomov says the worst part
00:12:44.040about Canada's labor force stats from October isn't the 4,700 job losses. So we only on net
00:12:50.960lost 4,700 jobs in October. Not as bad as I actually assumed. It was going to be way less
00:12:56.980bad than I assumed. But then when you dig under the surface, you see what the liberals basically
00:13:01.040did to cook the numbers to make them not look so bad. Kirk goes on to say, it's that the private
00:13:06.600sector lost over 52,000 jobs and over 18,000 full-time jobs are gone. It was a truly awful
00:13:14.960report behind the headline. So public hiring masks private job losses in October. Look,
00:13:20.960In October, the carny liberals, which had been patting themselves on the back,
00:13:25.700because, hey, in certain months, we shed 12,000 federal public servants.
00:13:31.360Except in October, we hired more, all of them back and more.
00:13:35.82049,600 public sector jobs were created in October.
00:13:40.660And at the same time, 52,500 private sector jobs were lost.
00:13:44.900on net, we lost 18,100 full-time jobs and we gained 13,400 jobs. So not only do we still on
00:13:53.540net lose 4,700 jobs, and it was only as not as bad because we hired so many public sector employees,
00:14:01.720but many of the jobs that were created were all part-time only. So yeah, that's not good. I'm not,
00:14:10.040I probably don't even have to tell any of you guys that.
00:14:15.400Let's check out this panel with, which one do I want to do right now?
00:14:20.720You always got to pick and choose.0.77
00:14:21.900I want to jump to Lisa Raitt here, who makes a good point about just the delusional growth numbers that the liberals have baked into this budget in order to try and get to the growth numbers that will reduce the deficit in the future.
00:15:03.940They are not known to be able to increase the revenues 20% year on year over the next five years.
00:15:08.720So if that's the kind of revenues that they're expecting and anticipating, I would say that we need to go back to a cleaner table in terms of what we actually think we're going to get our revenues from.
00:15:19.040And maybe the revenues are something that they're thinking about already, that they have in their minds, that they're hoping those bets we're placing on investment are going to yield these great results.
00:15:30.220And that's what they're thinking is going to be able to catch up with the expenses.
00:15:33.020All we're seeing right now is the expense side.
00:15:35.160And I think we've got to be really clear on what the expense size is.
00:15:37.940And I loved her reaction to that in terms of, like, they think that we're going to get 20% year-over-year growth in our crown corporations.
00:15:49.980Unless we're cooking the books again and saying, well, we're going to have 20% crown corporation growth because the government is throwing more money at them than ever.
00:15:59.160So even if they just burned it on a pyre, technically they are growing a lot.
00:16:03.400Like Alto High Speed Rail, remember, not only is one of their VPs the partner of the finance minister, but they're being given $90 billion.
00:16:16.320So are they technically growing 20% every year based on the money that the government's giving them?
00:16:23.040If we're talking about revenues growing every year from crown corporations, you're out of your mind that you're going to get 20% growth.
00:16:29.200That's what would get you investigated by the federal government if you were a hedge fund trying to claim you could have 20% year-over-year returns.
00:16:38.640You would probably be like, that's what a boiler room stock trading setup would be trying to promise you.
00:16:45.740Oh, yeah, I can give you 20% returns every single year.
00:17:44.660But at the end of the day, if we can't get those projects going and see revenues flowing in the next two years, it ain't going to be pretty.
00:17:51.080So, Lisa, just on that point before we go to Michelle.
00:17:53.400And it's not going to happen because, in fact, the revenues, like these major projects, most of them are not set to be done for several years, if not over a decade.
00:18:05.020It's impossible to know right now, right?
00:18:07.020Because if you look at the agenda they're putting out here on trying to bring in the investment and get the project going, these are medium to like half decade to decade horizon returns.
00:18:19.380And political cycles are obviously not that long.
00:18:21.460right and and that's just the reality that we're in so we'll see the costs or at least the
00:18:26.260projection costs booked right away but it's going to be very difficult to know what the payoff is
00:18:30.340until they actually materializes tangible projects and i think i don't think there's any problem
00:18:36.420with projecting growth based on projects that won't be done for a while into the future but you
00:18:41.860don't run up the credit card today based on those projections because they can always fall through
00:18:48.340you run a fiscally responsible budget maybe you have a deficit in order to pay for some of those
00:18:53.460future major projects but you don't run up the the card this much hoping that the riders of the
00:19:00.340roherum with these major projects are all going to come to the rescue uh are all going to come
00:19:06.260to your rescue and you're not going to be absolutely slaughtered by your debt interest
00:19:09.700costs which we will be getting into in just a second here well we can be hopeful that things
00:19:14.340can accelerate and we end up having some incredible successes and some of our investments really do
00:19:19.380pay off and i don't think that's a bad thing to be hopeful on the economy but i would also say
00:19:24.020the other monkey wrench that you really have to take into consideration is the machinery of
00:19:28.580government changes that are happening in this budget that are substantial so now we're trying
00:19:34.020to make sure that we are having these investments that we're moving forward we're clearing the decks
00:19:39.860on regulations. And at the same time, we're about to throw some big institutions into some
00:19:44.380navel-gazing for quite a while, and whether or not they're going to be able to step up and plow
00:19:48.840through it quickly in order to not have it be hindering our economic benefits. It's going to
00:19:54.260be a real, real test of the public sector. It's effectively a gamble. The Carney liberals are
00:20:00.120making a gamble that they don't even have to be present for later. In fact, they're effectively
00:20:04.780setting up a time bomb in government, hoping that if peer poly of the conservatives get in eventually,
00:20:09.860the debt's going to come due, the bill's going to come due while the conservatives are in government
00:20:14.720in like eight to 10 years from now, rather than what, because it's not going to come due in the
00:20:20.140next two years. Now, you still might see a bunch of the rot from it right now that might turn off
00:20:24.780voters and they'll throw out the liberals and hopefully the conservatives can get this under
00:20:28.000control quickly. But if they can't, it's going to make the conservatives or whoever's in government
00:20:32.420in 10 years look really bad based on decisions that were made today. But now let's jump over
00:20:37.400debt servicing costs in this budget. This is absolutely horrid. So you'll see three lines
00:20:44.440here. This is another one from Kirk Lubomov as well. The gray line is basically the debt
00:20:51.080interest cost projections from budget 2025. Now, they showed that this year or last year,
00:20:58.060technically our debt servicing costs this last year weren't as bad as they thought it was going
00:21:03.180to be because of the windfall revenues. But by 2029, 2030, they had debt servicing costs,
00:21:10.460the interest you pay on the debt. Nothing productive is happening with this money.
00:21:14.780It's simply just keeping the creditors away. That was going to be projected at being $76.1
00:21:20.720billion by 2029, 2030. In the new budget, the orange line budget 2026, it's around more like
00:21:27.700$78 billion, $79 billion. And then the next year, it jumps to $85.5 billion, which is actually $5
00:21:35.560billion more nearly than the spring update this year. Yeah, that's not fantastic. So we're going
00:21:43.260from paying $53.5 billion this last year in debt interest costs up to $85.5 billion in five years,
00:21:52.120like basically a 50% increase in our debt interest costs in just five years from now.
00:22:01.320How are you going to pay for all these investments when increasingly, like, your own federal budget is being eaten up by debt interest costs?
00:22:10.120It will be literally in five years, our debt interest costs are going to be 14% of the budget.
00:22:16.500Just our revenues will be eaten up by literally just debt interest costs.1.00